Wilhelm Reich Quotes

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.

Our Creator has put in us hungers that this earth can- not satisfy. We cannot be completely self-contained on earth. Physical sense cannot give us a full life, nor can knowledge alone. No life is full unless it is linked to some- thing that goes on after we are dead.... If we have nothing more to live for than just to get ahead in a competitive system, then democracy will go down before other philosophies.

Democracy tends to be a collaborative process, a committee, a consensus.

Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a Life-purpose... Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what real happiness is... Even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work!

I think if your direction in life is clear and if you develop the wish to accomplish/have a fulfilled life and to contribute something to others, I think that definitely gives you such a strength to want to be alive, that that would be the best placebo.

Resolved, that I will live so, as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.

If everybody has a voice, then you end up with something average.

We must consider not only why the classical theory of democracy appears to be in contradiction with the observed practice, but also why the many different responses to this observation, though mutually incompatible, all share the belief that democracy is the best form of political organization.

The children are being conditioned to think that the purpose of life is to get a good job. You get paid but you don't get satisfaction from your work.

Democrats consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them, therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.

It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man.

Involve people in the problem and work out the solution together.

"What would people say about you when you're gone?" That to me was a very important question. I thought about that for a couple of years and said, "What people say about you when you're gone doesn't matter. You're gone." What really matters is, "What do you say about yourself in the here and now? Are you proud of what you're doing?" If you had a short lease and it ended today, or it ends tomorrow, what would you wish you would have done? You better do it.

No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.

Popular sovereignty has to be given by a people to itself, and this is the important meaning of self-determination.

Listen to your Own Heart Concerning the Path you Wish to Travel.

Work is only justified by leisure time. To admit the emptiness of leisure time is to admit the impossibility of life.

Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.

The voice of the people may be said to be God's voice, the voice of the Panchayat.

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another's failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one can say, This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task, then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets.

We intend freedom and justice to conquer. Yes, we do have a creed and we wish others to share it. But it is not part of our policy to impose our beliefs by force or threat of force.

Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.

What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make others people's decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or at the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it must be levity.