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PAUL GOODMAN QUOTES

American writer (1911-1972)

Few great men could pass Personnel.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd

When the Devil quotes Scriptures, it's not, really, to deceive, but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them.

PAUL GOODMAN, Five Years

It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd

We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd

The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phony.

PAUL GOODMAN, The Community of Scholars

We live increasingly in a system in which little direct attention is paid to the object, the function, the program, the task, the need; but immense attention to the role, the procedure, prestige, and profit.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd

In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any effect.

PAUL GOODMAN, Social Anarchism, 1986

Where there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd

Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.

PAUL GOODMAN, Creator Spirit Come!

Not to teach the whole curriculum is to give up on the whole man.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd

The ancient dream of man to fly among the stars and go through the clouds and look down on the lands and seas has degenerated in its realization to the socialized and apathetic behavior of passengers who hardly look out the windows.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd

When the Devil quotes Scriptures, it's not, really, to deceive, but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them.

PAUL GOODMAN, "Spring and Summer 1956", Five Years

We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he’s doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won’t, can’t, or doesn’t dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can’t learn, or be intelligent about, what he’s not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere.

PAUL GOODMAN, Growing Up Absurd


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