Experience is mad when it steps beyond the horizons of our common, that is, our communal sense. R. D. Laing More Quotes by R. D. Laing More Quotes From R. D. Laing Before one goes through the gate one may not be aware there is a gate One may think there is a gate to go through and look a long time for it without finding it One may find it and it may not open If it opens one may be through it As one goes through it one sees that the gate one went through was the self that went through it no one went through a gate there was no gate to go through no one ever found a gate no one ever realized there was never a gate R. D. Laing self long thinking I'm ridiculous to feel ridiculous when I'm not. R. D. Laing ridiculous feels Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie. R. D. Laing ifs beauty lying Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings. R. D. Laing diversity fate destiny We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love. R. D. Laing destroying-ourselves violence love Attempts to wake before our time are often punished, especially by those who love us most. Because they, bless them, are asleep. They think anyone who wakes up, or who, still asleep, realizes that what is taken to be real is a ‘dream’ is going crazy. R. D. Laing crazy real dream To mystify, in the active sense, is to befuddle, cloud, obscure, mask whatever is going on, whether this be experience, action, or process, or whatever is "the issue." It induces confusion in the sense that there is failure to see what is "really" being experienced, or being done, or going on, and failure to distinguish or discriminate the actual issues. This entails the substitution of false for true constructions of what is being experienced, being done (praxis), or going on (process), and the substitution of false issues for the actual issues. R. D. Laing issues confusion clouds Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible. R. D. Laing imbeciles fool children What we think is less than what we know; What we know is less than what we love; What we love is so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are. R. D. Laing spirituality love-is thinking In a world full of danger, to be a potentially seeable object is to be constantly exposed to danger. Self-consciousness, then, may be the apprehensive awareness of oneself as potentially exposed to danger by the simple fact of being visible to others. The obvious defence against such a danger is to make oneself invisible in one way or another. R. D. Laing simple self world The truth brings with it a great measure of absolution, always. R. D. Laing absolution ethics honesty If I do not know that I do not know, I think I know. R. D. Laing ifs knows thinking We are born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially men, but are in an alienated state, and this state is not simply a natural system. Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings. R. D. Laing destiny men world What is to be done? We who are still half alive, living in the often fibrillating heartland of a senescent capitalism -- can we do more than reflect the decay around and within us? Can we do more than sing our sad and bitter songs of disillusion and defeat? R. D. Laing decay done song Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years. R. D. Laing fifty men years Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. R. D. Laing normal men children Philosophy does not exist. It is nothing but an hypostatized abstraction. R. D. Laing abstraction doe philosophy Any experience of reality is indescribable! R. D. Laing indescribable reality In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal. R. D. Laing ambiguous sanity madness There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. R. D. Laing bipolar pain trying
