112 Quotes by Paul Goodman

We do not behave as if we believed that the affairs of our world were significant enough for the intervention of great men.

Penology...has become torture and foolishness, a waste of money and a cause of crime...a blotting out of sight and heightening of social anxiety.

There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy... the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul... the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.

To translate, one must have a style of his own, for the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.

When 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.

I move in a society so devoid of ordinary reality that I am continually stopping to teach good sense, to give support, to help out, as a young gangster might help an old lady across the street on his way to the stick-up.

Be patient, do nothing, cease striving. We find this advice disheartening and therefore unfeasible because we forget it is our own inflexible activity that is structuring the reality. We think that if we do not hustle, nothing will happen and we will pine away. But the reality is probably in motion and after a while we might take part in that motion. But one can't know.

Low pay generally means harder work under worse conditions.

All men are creative but few are artists.