Double Bind Quotes

You can and you can't You will and you won't You'll be damned if you do You'll be damned if you don't

They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

It doesn't make sense to have to do the wrong thing in order to do the right thing.

We encourage failure among young men; we celebrate it... It's a badge of honour for a man. Yet attach those same words and experiences to a woman, and society writes her off.

Every word wants to be taken literally, else it decays into a lie. But one mustn't take any word literally, else the world becomes a madhouse.

I don't want to call myself a perfectionist, because perfection is imperfection.

I'm in a Catch-22. If I don't go after a ball, I'm lazy, I'm not giving it 100 percent. If I do dive for the ball - which I did, and blew out my shoulder - it's, Why did I play it so hard?

It is kind of funny that the people who don't think Hillary Clinton is fit and healthy enough to be president are so worried that Hillary Clinton is fit and healthy enough to be president.

The United States often finds itself in a situation where if it goes in militarily then it is criticized for going in militarily, and if it doesn't go in militarily, then people say, why aren't you doing something militarily?

Schizophrenia --its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win." It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms

It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you wont deny.

The way the public sees it is this. If we don't leave, we are idiots. If we do leave but don't succeed in our mission, we are incompetent. But if we do succeed, it's because it was easy and anyone could have done it.

If you stay away from parties, you're called a snob. If you go, you're an exhibitionist. If you don't talk, you're dumb. If you do talk, you're quarrelsome. Pardon me while I change my nail polish.

She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying?

Veels vithin veels, a prison in a prison.

We are in a double bind. We are expected to feel inferior not only as women, but because we are old.

If you complain, you’re ‘playing the victim’; if you don’t complain, you are a victim.

If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!

Here's what I've learned about Hillary Clinton: She will be criticized when she speaks; she will be criticized when she doesn't speak. And so I think she should speak her mind.

I need a hobby, and I don't want it to be basketball. I want it to be music. So to get away from music, I do other music.

The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.

Half of these people are trying to insult me by staying away and half of them are trying to insult me by coming.

But alas, I'd have to find a way to be opinionated without being too opinionated, authoritative without being a bitch about it, smart without being elitist, fair without being a pushover. If the boyfriends of my youth found me too authoritative when I should have been cheering on the sidelines as they kicked and tossed and smacked balls toward the vanguard, the male colleagues of my adulthood kept reminding me of my lack of authority as they unconsciously displayed theirs. I was always failing someone's standards of legitimacy, as a girlfriend, as a producer of opinions. It was an eternal no-win.