R. D. Laing Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old R. D. Laing quotes, R. D. Laing sayings, and R. D. Laing proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world. R. D. Laing
Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair. R. D. Laing
Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world. R. D. Laing
Each time a new baby is born there is a possibility of reprieve. Each child is a new being, a potential prophet, a new spiritual prince, a new spark of light precipitated into the outer darkness. R. D. Laing
Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that. R. D. Laing
The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn. R. D. Laing
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death. R. D. Laing
Psychological breakdowns are actually breakthroughs to enlightenment. R. D. Laing
Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings. R. D. Laing
We are born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially men, but are in an alienated state, and this state is not simply a natural system. Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings. R. D. Laing
We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world -- mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt. R. D. Laing
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. R. D. Laing
The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation. R. D. Laing
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. R. D. Laing
True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is. R. D. Laing
Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth. R. D. Laing
The mad things said and done by the schizophrenic will remain essentially a closed book if one does not understand their existential context. In describing one way of going mad, I shall try to show that there is a comprehensible transition from the sane schizoid way of being-in-the-world to a psychotic way of being-in-the-world. R. D. Laing