In a normal person the motor and sensory nervous systems act as the windows of the individual personality.... [ellipsis in origina...l] The broken, many-stained and pictorial windows through which the light is struggling under disadvantages to harmonize itself with the physical world at large are found in three classes of persons--the mentally deficient, the morally deficient, and the insane. In these, the light is there, but the images, as in a broken cathedral window, are more or less shattered and confused.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even if someone knew the entire physical history of the world, and every mental event were identical with a physical, it would not... follow that he could predict or explain a single mental event (so described, of course).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantation...s. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No further evidence is needed to show that "mental illness" is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be el...ucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The female sex have long been the acknowledged possessors of a sort of mental quickness and intellectual acumen, or rather sharpne...ss of vision, which may be better understood by the term sprightliness of imagination, which has enabled them to discern, or at least to recognize those smaller springs of action that regulate the conduct of mankind, which, from their supposed insignificancy, have escaped the grosser sex.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is little wonder that rape is one of the least-reported crimes. Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the ac...cused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I always get back to the question, is it really necessary that men should consume so much of their bodily and mental energies in t...he machinery of civilised life? The world seems to me to do much of its toil for that which is not in any sense bread. Again, does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatur...es are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists--in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »