Norman O. Brown Quotes

To be seen is the ambition of ghosts, and to be remembered is the ambition of the dead.

Mankind today is still making history without having any conscious idea of what it really wants or under what conditions it would stop being unhappy; in fact what it is doing seems to be making itself more unhappy and calling that unhappiness progress.

The boundary line between self and external world bears no relation to reality; the distinction between ego and world is made by spitting out part of the inside, and swallowing in part of the outside.

Whoever expects to walk peacefully in the world must be money's guest.

The solution to the problem of identity is, get lost

There is no breakthrough without breakage"--Love's Body

To be is to be vulnerable.

The dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future.

Truth is error burned up.

The opposite of war, the true war, is poetry

Jokes and folklore and poetic metaphor, the wisdom of folly, tell the secret truth.

To love is to transform; to be a poet.

For two thousand years or more man has been subjected to a systematic effort to transform him into an ascetic animal. He remains a pleasure-seeking animal.

Utopian speculations ... must come back into fashion. They are a way of affirming faith in the possibility of solving problems that seem at the moment insoluble. Today even the survival of humanity is a utopian hope.

The human libido is essentially narcissistic, but it seeks a world to love as it loves itself.

The real deceivers are the literalists, who say, I cannot tell a lie.

The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God's ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.

Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of 'progress,' but only by viewing history as a neurosis.

I perceive a necessary gap between seeing and being. I would not be able to have said certain things if I had been under the obligation to unify the word and the deed. As it is I can let my words reach out and net impossible things - things that are impossible for me to do. And this is a way to pay the price for saying or seeing things.

I've been impressed by the extent to which one gets sentenced by one's own sentences. One explores certain things in play and then in a strange way they become commitments which one has to live. I have gained a deep respect for the demonic power of the word. Words are not idle. They have consequences.

Meaning is not in things but in between them.

The view only changes for the lead dog.

The alternative to dualism is dialectics: that is to say, love

The insane do not share the normal prejudice in favor of external reality.