"Intense fatigue or illness may also weaken the control of the cortex. Hence we find tired or sick persons responding to threats with a greater degree of undifferentiated anxiety. In psychoanalytic terms, we would speak of this as regression."

"The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity."

"If the will remains in protest it stays dependent on that which it is protesting against."

"In this type of anxiety neurosis the anxious attitude is so intimately a part of the individual's method of evaluating stimuli, of orienting herself or himself to every experience, that he or she cannot separate him - or herself enough from anxiety to comprehend the goal of avoidance of, or freedom from, anxiety. What Nancy sought was to be able to step cautiously from rock to rock without falling; the idea or possibility of not being on a precipice at all did not occur to her."

"Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all."

"Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about."

"Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair."

"I'm the problem of anxiety we must, therefore, always ask the question of what vital value is being threatened"

"Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations."

"Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs - not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can 'be', that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves."

"Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos."

"Everyone belongs to a society, whether he wishes it or not, whether he chooses it or not, whether he contributes constructively to its development or does the reverse. Community, on the contrary, implies one's relating one's self to others affirmatively and responsibly. Community in the economic sense implies an emphasis on the social values and functions of work. Community in the psychological sense involves the individual's relating himself to others in love as well as creativity."

"The threat, thus, in anxiety is not necessarily more intense than fear. Rather, it attacks us on a deeper level. The threat must be to something in the 'core' or 'essence' of the personality. My self - esteem, my experience of myself as a person, my feeling of being of worth - all of these are imperfect descriptions of what is threatened."

"When I use the word rebel for the artist, I do not refer to revolutionary or to such things as taking over the dean's office; that is a different matter. Artists are generally soft - spoken persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images. But that is precisely what makes them feared by any coercive society. For they are the bearers of the human being's age - old capacity to be insurgent."

"Humor is the healthy way of feeling 'distance' between one's self and the problem a way of standing off and looking at one's problems with perspective."

"But there also seems to be in our culture a curious cautiousness - 'You'll get these abundant gratifications only if you don't feel too much, don't let on you want too much. The result is that, instead of conquering the world like Horatio Alger, we should wait passively until the genie of technology - which we don't push or influence, only await - brings us our appointed gratifications. All of this is a part of the rewards which go with belief in the vast myth of the machine in the twentieth century."

"But are we not at the point where we can no longer make the distinction between normal and neurotic? Do we not all have these conflicts, in greater or lesser degree? And do not all conflicts move into contradiction at some point? When all is said and done, all anxiety arises from conflicts, with its origin in the conflict between being and nonbeing, between one's existence and that which threatens it. All of us, no matter how 'neurotic' or 'normal, ' experience the gap between our expectations and reality. This distinction becomes less important, and I believe we must look at all anxiety, preferably without special labels, as part of the human condition."

"Neurotic anxiety, therefore, is that which occurs when the incapacity for coping adequately with threats is not objective but subjective - I.e., is due not to objective weakness but to inner psychological patterns and conflicts which prevent the individual from using his powers."

"Are we to conclude that these chief gods, Zeus and Yahweh, did not wish humankind to have moral consciousness and the arts of civilization? It is a mystery indeed.The most obvious explanation is that the creative artist and poet and saint must fight the actual (as contrasted to the ideal) gods of our society - the god of conformism as well as the gods of apathy, material success, and exploitative power. These are the 'idols of our society that are worshiped by multitudes of people."

"The threat of frustration of a biological urge does not cause conflict and anxiety unless that urge is identified with some value essential to the existence of the personality."

"Escapist creativity is that which lacks encounter."

"If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself."

"There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood."

"It will no doubt be agreed that there are multitudes of these defiant, aggressive types in our culture. But they do not frequent psychoanalysts' offices because our competitive culture (in which, to a considerable extent, the individual who can aggressively exploit others without conscious guilt feeling is 'succesful') supports and 'cushions' them to a greater extent than the opposite types. It is generally the culturally 'weak' individuals who get to the psychoanalyst; for in cultural terms they have the 'neurosis' and the succesfully agressive person does not."

"Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line."

"Anxiety has a purpose. Originally the purpose was to protect the existence of the caveman from wild beasts and savage neighbors. Nowadays the ocassions for anxiety are very different - we are afraid of losing out in the competition, feeling unwanted, isolated, and ostracized. But the purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence. This normal anxiety of life cannot be avoided except at the price of apathy or the numbing of one's sensibilities and imagination."

"I think Dostoevsky was right that every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture where he says this is me and the damned world can go to hell."

"Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight."

"The line between 'normal' and 'neurotic' begins to appear when any activity becomes compulsive - that is, when the person feels pushed to perform the act because it habitually allays his anxiety rather than because of any intrinsic wish to perform the act."

"Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity."

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way."

"One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves."

"But, as is obvious to any observer, many people are thrown into anxiety by situations which are not objectively threatening either in kind or degree. The person may very often state himself that the occasion of his anxiety is a relatively minor event, that his apprehension is 'silly, ' and he may be angry with himself for letting such a minor thing bother him; but he still feels it."

"One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him."

"When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship."

"The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality."

"The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's convictions - not obstinately or defiantly (these are gestures of defensiveness not courage) nor as a gesture of retaliation but simply because these are what one believes."

"In the individual who is characterized by independence without corresponding relatedness, there will develop hostility toward those whom he believes to be the occasion of his isolation. In the individual who is symbiotically dependent there will develop hostility toward those whom he regards as instrumental in the suppression of his capacities and freedom."

"Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism."

"Depression is the inability to construct a future."

"Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing."

"Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego - preserving strategies."

"By the creative act, however, we are able to reach beyond our own death. This is why creativity is so important and why we need to confront the problem of the relationship between creativity and death."

"Courage is the basic virtue for everyone so long as he continues to grow to move ahead."

"Every authentic artist is engaged in this creating of the conscience of the race, even though he or she may be unaware of the fact. The artist is not a moralist by conscious intention, but is concerned only with hearing and expressing the vision within his or her own being. But out of the symbols the artist sees and creates - as Giotto created the forms for the Renaissance - there is later hewn the ethical structure of the society."

"Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness."

"Much self - condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark, 'One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man'. In ancient Athens, when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by exclaiming, 'Your vanity shows forth from every whole in your coat'."

"Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death."

"Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the 'divine madness, to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non - being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean."

"But attempts to evade anxiety are not only doomed to failure. In running from anxiety you lose your most precious opportunities for the emergence of yourself, and for your education as s human being."