Norman O. Brown Quotes

I can say, 'Well, I'm a male. I'm a male human. I'm a medical doctor. I'm an author...' If I go to a religious point of view, I will say, 'I am a soul. I am a spirit.' If I go into science, I will say, 'I am energy. I am light.' But the truth is I have no idea what I am.

At different times in your life, your body needs different things.

I have developed a unique way of looking at the relationship of the human body to health and disease.

The bottom line is that the human body is complex and subtle, and oversimplifying - as common sense sometimes impels us to do - can be hazardous to your health.

Nobody knows 100% what affects the human body, mind or spirit.

The human body is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart.

Read enough books on the body, and you'll find that reality is much stranger than any sci-fi series.

The human body is not a thing or a substance, given, but a continuous creation.

I'm more interested in the psychic intricacies that they build up and try to run away from, and how they self-construct. A lot of my work is about self-construction. Here, it's those folks who are deeply wounded and bewildered. They're not just victims of trauma; they've been shaken so forcefully that they don't quite know how or where to stand.

Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there's not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago.

Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Together, you’ve got a kingdom. If you have a Corvette, you don’t put water in the tank. The human machine deserves the same treatment.

Sense (for a particular art, science, human being, and so forth) is divided spirit; self-restraint is consequently the result of self-creation and self-destruction.

The problem with life is, we often do things that will ultimately be self-destructive and make us unhappy, yet in that moment it seems like the best idea in the world. You have to be careful of moments - they're tricksy things.

He was very much a man of moods, possibly owing to what is styled the artistic temperment. I have never seen, myself, why the possession of artistic ability should be supposed to excuse a man from a decent exercise of self-control.

Learning is to discover that something is possible. We are using most of our energies for self-destructiv e games, self-preventing games. We prevent ourselves from growing the very moment something unpleasant, something painful comes up. At that moment we become phobic, we run away, we desensitize ourselves. Neurotic suffering is suffering in imagination, suffering in fantasy.

We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.

Will, therefore, is the unbroken determination to exercise free choice as well as self-restraint, in spite of the unavoidable experience of shame and doubt in infancy.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.

In one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion.

SIN: Self-Inflicted Nonsense

A token of ecological awareness in a society devoted to self destruction and waste but unwilling to acknowledge its indulgent ways.

Wholeness or health is our natural state. The nature of healing involves removing obstructions to this natural state and bringing individuals into alignment with themselves and their world. Free of these obstructions, an individual's innate intelligence and self-regulating capabilties will guide him toward a state of well being.

How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?

What if you can't do what you once did, like run and jump up and down? You can walk, which is also good for your mind and mental attitude. You can do simpler exercises, like getting up and down from a chair without using your hands. You can stay fairly flexible. The most important thing is to not become sedentary.