Quotes by Havelock Ellis

About Havelock Ellis:

Henry Havelock Ellis is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis. He served as president of the Galton Institute and, like many intellectuals of his era, supported eugenics.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

Havelock Ellis

Birth-control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in our social life.

Havelock Ellis

The omnipresent process of sex, as it is woven into the whole texture of our man's or woman's body, is the pattern of all the process of our life.

Havelock Ellis

When love is suppressed hate takes its place.

Havelock Ellis

The husband - by primitive instinct partly, certainly by ancient tradition - regards himself as the active partner in matters of love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity.

Havelock Ellis

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.

Havelock Ellis

What we call 'morals' is simply blind obedience to words of command.

Havelock Ellis

A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.

Havelock Ellis

The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness.

Havelock Ellis

The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps.

Havelock Ellis

The by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product.

Havelock Ellis

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way.

Havelock Ellis

Socialism also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments.

Havelock Ellis

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.

Havelock Ellis

One can know nothing of giving aught that is worthy to give unless one also knows how to take.

Havelock Ellis

There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.

Havelock Ellis

The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal importance that they should train themselves.

Havelock Ellis

Of woman as a real human being, with sexual needs and sexual responsibilities, morality has often known nothing.

Havelock Ellis

Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.

Havelock Ellis

The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.

Havelock Ellis

The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.

Havelock Ellis

Author Bio

  • NameHavelock Ellis
  • DescriptionBritish physician, writer, and social reformer
  • AliasesHenry Havelock Ellis; H. Havelock Ellis
  • BornFebruary 2, 1859
  • DiedJuly 8, 1939
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPhysician; Psychologist; Writer