We have been taught to wish for it, but the wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults ,
ADAM PHILLIPSEverybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.
More Adam Phillips Quotes
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The child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’
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We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.
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People change, but there really are limits.
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The past influences everything and dictates nothing.
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Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.
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The child can find out what the object ..might be only by finding ..obstacles to its access
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There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs
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You write to find out what you believe.
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To our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need.
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There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden.
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There is nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage
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The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality – to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting – but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail.
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Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.
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Believing in religion is like believing that adulthood is the solution to childhood.
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we are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see.
ADAM PHILLIPS






