Wilhelm Reich Quotes

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

Actually, in the wild, we'd be the only person that we wouldn't recognize, if you think about it.

I know that in many things I am not like others, but I do not know what I really am like. Man cannot compare himself with any other creature; he is not a monkey, not a cow, not a tree. I am a man. But what is it to be that? Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity, but I cannot contrast myself with any animal, any plant or any stone. Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself?.

What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture.

There seems to be no unexpressed self in animals, as if they are as fully themselves in flesh as possible, with no lag of consciousness to fill up, while we keep trying to grow into something else.

Whenever man forgets that man is an animal, the result is always to make him less humane.

I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.

I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are.

The truth is, if a werewolf behaved like this psychopath it wouldn't be because he was part animal, but because he was still too human. Only humans kill for sport.

If you treat an animal right, they don't run away. They're not like us. They run away from people they don't trust; most times we run away from ourselves.

In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.

...nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.

Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

You can't change what you don't acknowledge.

We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. And if I've done anything, I've had kids express themselves as they are.

It'll be taught in homes that it's not okay to make fun of a kid because he's gay or it's not okay to make fun of a girl cause she's fat. But that we have been living for so long in a culture where so many people's parents supported those beliefs that there wasn't any infrastructure for children understanding right and wrong in those situations, if that makes sense.

We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it.

Were I to be angry at men being fools, I could here find ample room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself; and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity?

When we deny the spiritual dimension to our existence, we end up living like animals. And when we deny the physical, sexual dimension to our existence, we end up living like angels. And both ways are destructive, because God made us human.

Only humans are judgmental, and because you are, you assume that I must be. Yet I am not, and that is the great truth you cannot accept.

I asked myself the question, 'What do you want of your life?' and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, 'Exactly what I have - but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.