Quotes by Wilhelm Reich

About Wilhelm Reich:

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst. A member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud and the author of several influential books – most notably Character Analysis (1933), The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and The Sexual Revolution (1936) – Reich became known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry.
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

You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a gr...

Wilhelm Reich

I observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd.

Wilhelm Reich

For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the Ameri...

Wilhelm Reich

I do not believe that to be religious in the best, authentic sense a man has to destroy his love life and mummify himself, body and soul.

Wilhelm Reich

You don't believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can't bring yourse...

Wilhelm Reich

Because I'm a man who works, who knows what a human being is like inside, who knows that every human being has his worth, and who wants the world to be governed by work and not by opinions about work.

Wilhelm Reich

People should be _very_ careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement.

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich identified "armor" as the sum total of typical character attitudes, which an individual develops as a blocking against his emotional excitations, resulting in rigidity of the body, lack of emotional contact, "deadness". Functionally ide...

Wilhelm Reich

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

Wilhelm Reich

The few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest.

Wilhelm Reich

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich

Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives, they should also govern it.

Wilhelm Reich

Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life's pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.

Wilhelm Reich

Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.

Wilhelm Reich

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.

Wilhelm Reich

The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.

Wilhelm Reich

Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.

Wilhelm Reich

Author Bio

  • NameWilhelm Reich
  • DescriptionAustrian psychoanalyst
  • BornMarch 24, 1897
  • DiedNovember 3, 1957
  • CountryAustria-Hungary; United States Of America
  • ProfessionPsychotherapist; Psychologist; Psychiatrist; Author; Philosopher