Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
IRVIN D. YALOMWe take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself.
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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.
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Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
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Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
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To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
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Many people are in despair because their dreams didn’t come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true.
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A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
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Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
IRVIN D. YALOM