Psychology is a rubber stamp pressed upon a slippery, dodging ghost.
Maxwell Bodenheim
A long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy.
Charles Manson
A wonderful discovery, psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple
people feel they're complex.
S. N. Behrman
Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them
are the maddest of all.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
If Vienna had been on the equator and its bourgeoisie had gone around in
Bermuda shorts, would Freud have described the same neurotic symptoms?
Umberto Eco (1932-), "Reading Things"
Everything in therapy is really about sex, except sex, which is really
about aggression.
insight by anonymous director of a psychiatric ward
We psychiatrists get rid of symptoms that we don't like and give
patients symptoms that they don't like.
Robert Klitzman, M.D.
I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state appointed
psychiatrist is our 'friend.'
Jack Handey
A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes
from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly
scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.
Susan Sontag
A vigorous five mile walk will do more good for an unhappy,
but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology
in the world.
Paul Dudley White
And the doctor said, "...I have a problem. I am insecure." Percey said,
"You are a psychiatrist, and you are insecure?" The doctor said, "What
good is it to be a psychiatrist if I do not know I am insecure?"
Willard R. Espy
It never ceases to amaze me the things you can do in the
name of treatment that you could never get away with in a
circumstance called punishment.
Louise Armstrong, on aversive therapy
I am far from convinced that being released from the African witch
doctor was worthwhile if I am now (in order to support the moral
contradictions and the spiritual aridity of my life) expected to
become dependent on the American psychiatrist.
James Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time"
Don't worry, smile and dance
You just can't work life out
Don't let them moods entrance you
Take the wine and shout
Pete Townshend, "Empty Glass"
Imagine America without self-help books. Imagine everyone grappling with
their problems and forging their identities, using their own intuitions
and powers of analysis and maybe some help from their friends. Imagine
that. I can't...Self-help books market authority in a culture that
idealizes individualism but not thinking and fears the isolation of being
free. "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us," Kafka wrote.
Self-help is how we skate.
Wendy Kaminer, closing paragraph of her book
"I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional"
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)
We adore chaos because we love to produce order.
M. C. Escher (1898-1972)
Order emerges from disorder through history.
Eric Voegelin
Our undisciplinables are our proudest product.... Let us hope our
output of them will never cease.
William James (1842-1910)
A tranquil city of good laws, fine architecture, and clean streets
is like a classroom of obedient dullards, or a field of gelded
bulls-- whereas a city of anarchy is a city of promise.
Mark Helprin
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters
mean more in a university, where a few undisciplinables ... may be
infinitely more precious than a faculty full of orderly routinists.
William James (1842-1910)
There's more to be found out about yourself in chaos rather than
structure, and in rage rather than complacency. That's where you
are most yourself, in a nowhere place.
Julianne Moore in "Premiere" (Nov. 1995)
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
John Milton (1608-1674)
Allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental
Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work
efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts.
I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd
gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of
carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine
and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself
beautifully to its new position.
Robertson Davies (1913-1996)
Why is it that the silhouette of a storm-bent leafless tree against an
evening sky in winter is perceived as beauty, but the corresponding
silhouette of any multi-purpose university building is not, in spite of
all efforts of the architect? The answer seems to me, even if somewhat
speculative, to follow from the new insights into dynamical systems.
Our feeling for beauty is inspired by the harmonious arrangement of
order and disorder as it occurs in natural objects--in clouds, trees,
mountain ranges, or snow crystals. The shapes of all these are
dynamical processes jelled into physical forms, and particular
combinations of order and disorder are typical for them.
Gert Eilenberger, quoted in James Gleick, "Chaos" (1987), p. 117.
Golf is tiddlywinks played while standing up and and wearing a hat.
Florence King, 1999
Golf is an exercise in Scottish pointlessness for people who
are no longer able to throw telephone poles at each other.
Florence King, 1999
I play [golf] with friends sometimes, but there are never friendly games.
Ben Hogan
If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out.
Paul Gallico
If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball.
Jack Lemmon
It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I
did it in one afternoon on the golf course.
Hank Aaron
Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even
smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Anyone who likes golf on television would enjoy watching the grass grow
on the greens.
Andy Rooney
It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when
one is playing golf.
Robert Lynd
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
Dave Barry
The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not
be caught dead in otherwise.
Roger Simon
Golf ... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough
alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball
where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. ''
P G Wodehouse (1881-1975), The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922)
I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mum and dad.
Greg Norman
Aggressive play is a vital asset of the world's greatest golfers.
However, it's even more important to the average player. Attack this
game in a bold, confident, and determined way, and you'll make a giant
leap toward realizing your full potential as a player.
Greg Norman
I build confidence when I practice a variety of shots - hitting it high
or low, working the ball. A lot of golfers go to the range and just hit
full shots. That doesn't build on-course confidence, because you won't
always hit full shots out there. My confidence is built on knowing I
can effectively work the ball in any circumstance.
JoAnne Carner
I go into the locker room and find a corner and just sit there. I try
to achieve a peaceful state of nothingness that will carry over onto
the golf course. If I can get that feeling of quiet and obliviousness
within myself, I feel I can't lose.
Jane Blalock