Viggo Mortensen Quotes

Sigmund Freud was very much a creature of his time. He did not 'invent' the unconscious.

I was in Jungian analysis for 20 years, 1976-96.

The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.

My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right.

It is important not to copy other people's careers but set the tone of who you want to be. My father's always encouraged me to do that.

In Ministry, we've only had one message: Think for yourself.

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence.

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.

A thinking man can never be a party man.

Under Freud's influence, many ambitious biographers - not to mention psychologists, philosophers, and historians - have sought answers in their subject's childhood.

When I was hanging out with Joey Clements in Chicago, I made it a point not to try to emulate him. I wanted basically to create my own character. I didn't want him to think I was hanging out with him solely to use him as research.

I'm not trying to be a role model to kids, because I don't have any children, but I do think everyone should have a free spirit.

My father was an amazing man. No person is perfect, and no father-son relationship is perfect. He wanted me to live my life my way and never think about what he would have done or what he would have wanted to do.

'The Pink Lady' rides the Freudian wave. You know, the big lady, the relationship to mom - those things are obviously part of that piece.

I have been my own man. I feel like I can be me but I have obviously learned from the best.

People have own mind, own views.

I don't have a role model.

I am not dependent on Pep. He is a great coach, but I do not need to take the same path as him.

I'm not a person of mentors.

Coach Saban's a great coach; he does it his way, and I have to do it my way. I have to cut my own cloth.

No one tells me what to think. I think for me.

We've got minds and souls as well as hearts; ambition and talents as well as beauty and accomplishments; and we want to live and learn as well as love and be loved. I'm sick of being told that is all a woman is fit for! I won't have anything to do with love until I prove that I am something beside a housekeeper and a baby-tender!

Dissent is the mark of freedom, as originality is the mark of independence of mind. … No one can be a scientist … if he does not have independence of observation and of thought.

Only he is free who cultivates his own thoughts and strives without fear to do justice to them.