The aim is not to give human beings real goals that warrant belief, and tasks to share in, but to re-establish "belonging," although this kind of speech and thought is precisely calculated to avoid contact and so makes belonging impossible. — Paul Goodman Copy Share Image
Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity. — Paul Goodman Copy Share Image
When there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official… — Paul Goodman Copy Share Image
Freud pointed out, in his Problem of Lay Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M.D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for young analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those… — Paul Goodman Copy Share
It is by losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft, that a man becomes something. — Paul Goodman Copy Share Image
“The Sexual plight of these children [those adolescents experimenting sexually] is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. Is it an eccentric opinion that an important part of the kids' restiveness in school from the onset of puberty has to do with puberty? The teachers talk about it among… — Paul Goodman Copy Share
Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves. ... Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominant society… — Paul Goodman Copy Share
We do not need to be able to say what "human nature" is in order to be able to say that some training is… — Paul Goodman Copy Share Image
An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off the goal Few great men could pass personnel — Paul Goodman Copy Share Image
The stultifying effect of the movies is not that the children see them but that their parents do, as if Hollywood provided a plausible… — Paul Goodman Copy Share Image
“As our organized system perfects itself, there is less "open" environment. It is hard for a social animal to grow when there is not an open margin to grow in: some open space, some open economy, some open mores, some activity free from regulation...A society cannot have decided all possibilities beforehand and have structured them. If society becomes too tightly… — Paul Goodman Copy Share
