Philip Rieff

"Commitment without dogma is impossible."

"We mistake the removal of restraint for the achievement of freedom."

"The sacred is that which is protected by an interdict."

"Modern culture is the systematic violation of taboos."

"Credulity is the price of living in a therapeutic age."

"The family is the last resistance to total mobilization."

"Morality is impossible without the transcendent."

"We have traded the fear of God for the fear of psychology."

"The intellectual is no longer a priest of culture but its prophet of dissolution."

"All lasting cultures are built on refusal."

"The therapeutic promise is the great lie of our age."

"Freedom without form is chaos."

"We live in an age that worships the negation of culture."

"The sacred text is the enemy of the therapeutic state."

"Authenticity is the idol of modernity."

"Culture dies when the young cease to rebel against their parents' wisdom."

"The self that needs no others is an illusion of modern thought."

"Art without dogma becomes mere decoration."

"We have replaced moral authority with therapeutic authority."

"Meaning emerges from the intersection of memory and commitment."

"The modern world celebrates the violation of every boundary."

"Wisdom is not adjustment but resistance to the age."

"The death of God was not followed by silence but by noise."

"Culture requires the courage to say no to the self."

"We mistake sincerity for truth."

"The erosion of inhibition is the erosion of meaning."

"All true art is transgressive, but not all transgression is art."

"We have become priests of the therapeutic gospel."

"The sacred depends on the power to forbid."

"Modern consciousness is the consciousness of unlimited possibility."