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 »
Cranks, in defending their mental constructs (and here, curiously, may be their closest approach to psycho-pathology and to seriou...s scholarship), can be formidable logicians, if not exactly sound reasoners. Most cranks, in fact, see themselves as free-lance scientists, scholars, or investigators of mechanical problems, assassination conspiracies, the origins of poetry, the destiny of the universe, the meaning of life, the nature of crankery, the fate of man, or the will of God. They share with more orthodox scholars both a professional curiosity and a possessive attitude toward whatever domain of knowledge they have chosen to make their province. They differ from them most critically in the soundness of their critical faculties. But is this difference really as great, as intrinsic to their personalities, as it first appears? Perhaps professional academics have no greater sense of limit, of proportion, and of really critical intelligence; it may be only the overwhelming weight of that institutional discipline that keeps the minds of scientists and scholars safely within the straight (and narrow) paths of academic orthodoxy.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 »
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 »