David Bohm Quotes

Laughter is a strange response. I mean, what is it? It's a spasm of some kind! Is that always joy? It's very often discomfort. It's some sort of explosive reaction. It's very complex.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

It is difficult to imagine how any behavior in the presence of another person can avoid being a communication of one's own view of the nature of one's relationship with that person and how it can fail to influence that person.

One cannot be independent of the deep thinking of the people.

The paradigm of the 'Aquarian Conspiracy' sees humankind embedded in nature. It promotes the autonomous individual in a decentralized society... The new perspective respects the ecology of everything: birth, death, learning, health, family, work, science, spirituality, the arts, the community, relationships, politics.

How we behave in our public lives inevitably reflects values, attitudes and experiences embedded in our private lives and vice versa.

Without creative personalities able to think and judge independently, the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.

The mind is lowered through association with inferiors. With equals it attains equality; and with superiors, superiority.

The Social Sciences will concern themselves with the rationalization of social control... the control of human behavior.

Reformers of all classes must recognize that it is useless to preach peace by itself, or socialism by itself, or anti-vivisection by itself, or vegetarianism by itself, or kindness to animals by itself. The cause of each and all of the evils that afflict the world is the same the general lack of humanity, the lack of the knowledge that all sentient life is akin, and that he who injures a fellow-being is in fact doing injury to himself. The prospects of a happier society are wrapped up in this despised and neglected truth, the very statement of which, at the present time, must … appear ridiculous to the accepted instructors of the people.

Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms.

We are part of the zeitgeist, and we are communicating in a human, real way.

Really, laughing is such a strange reaction to something. The idea of it is so bizarre, so instinctual, and kind of magical.

How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!

As social animals, we are extremely susceptible to the moods of other people. This gives us the power to subtly infuse into people the appropriate mood for influencing them.

It's strange how the mind works while you're acting, because you have all sorts of quick thoughts going on as well as the motivations with the character.

We are always influenced because we do not live in a vacuum together with our intentions. We are in a relationship with everything that occurs.

I believe that the Universe is like a single organism, and we are all little nerve endings feeding our experiences back into a whole.

Research such as ours is driven by the human imperative to understand where we are. It motivates the study of our positions in family, or in society, or on earth. The results may be termed geology, or sociology, or poetry.

The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.

Whenever I speak, I talk to the collective consciousness of my audience.

Everybody influences everybody else, in my opinion. There are different trends in music all the time. No matter who starts them, if it's a true trend in the music, it ends up influencing other people as well.

Singing involves a great deal of psychology.

Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication.