Revolution begins with the self, in the self.... We'd better take the time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, r...evolutionary relationships. Mouth don't win the war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he pr...ivately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing is more horrible than my self in the mirror of hysteria. Nothing is more vulgar than my style in the hands of another. To ...imitate me is to punish me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one's sel...f in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society."... This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough "in formal opposition" to what are deemed "the most sacred laws of society," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have tested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when t...he stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.... Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lovers may be--and indeed generally are--enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy ...and a something of Self in all their speculations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Propaganda has a bad name, but its root meaning is simply to disseminate through a medium, and all writing therefore is propaganda... for something. It's a seeding of the self in the consciousness of others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From the beginning moments of life, the urges for each of us to become a self in the world are there--in the liveliness of our inn...ate growth energies, in the vitality of our stiffening-away muscles, in our looking eyes, our listening ears, our reaching-out hands.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »