Norman O. Brown Quotes

Truth is error burned up.

The insane do not share the normal prejudice in favor of external reality.

Whoever expects to walk peacefully in the world must be money's guest.

All currency is neurotic currency.

To be seen is the ambition of ghosts, and to be remembered is the ambition of the dead.

Freedom is poetry, taking liberties with words, breaking the rules of normal speech, violating common sense. Freedom is violence.

Love without attachment is light.

The solution to the problem of identity is, get lost

Meaning is not in things but in between them.

Resisting madness is the maddest way of being mad.

To be is to be vulnerable.

The human body is not a thing or a substance, given, but a continuous creation.

The human libido is essentially narcissistic, but it seeks a world to love as it loves itself.

There is no breakthrough without breakage"--Love's Body

Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of 'progress,' but only by viewing history as a neurosis.

History is the enactment of ritual on a permanent and universal stage; and its perpetual commemoration.

The real deceivers are the literalists, who say, I cannot tell a lie.

The dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future.

I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property.

To love is to transform; to be a poet.

The view only changes for the lead dog.