The past influences everything and dictates nothing.
ADAM PHILLIPSWhen we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe
More Adam Phillips Quotes
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The vocabulary of one’s self-criticism is so impoverished and clichéd.
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Believing in religion is like believing that adulthood is the solution to childhood.
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We are children for a very long time.
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Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
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To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.
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Transgression is a quest for solitude
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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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I am always true to myself, that is the problem. Who else could I be true to?
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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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Excesses of appetite are self-cures for feelings of hopelessness. ..
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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 ,
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There is nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage
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we are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see.
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Sanity, in other words, becomes a pressing preoccupation as soon as we recognize the importance of recognition.
ADAM PHILLIPS