R.D. Laing

"The cracked mirror reflects the cracks in the world."

"Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair."

"To achieve authentic existence, one must face the void."

"Families can function as the smallest unit of oppression in society."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe."

"We must recover the capacity for wonder."

"Genuine freedom is the absence of compulsion by internal or external forces."

"The politics of experience is the politics of consciousness."

"Life is not what it seems. Neither is death."

"If I don't know I don't know, I think I know."

"The more one attempts to live in the world of images, the more one attempts to avoid the spiritual collision with it."

"We valorize the warrior spirit, yet punish its manifestations."

"Despair can coexist with beauty and grace."

"The self is continually created and recreated in relation to others."

"Language is a form of organized noise with agreed-upon meanings."

"To be fully present is to be vulnerable."

"The voyage into the interior is the most dangerous of all expeditions."

"We are imprisoned by the language we speak."

"Memory is the treasure house of the mind."

"The capacity to be alone is a prerequisite for the capacity to love."

"Authentic living requires abandoning pretense."

"We learn how to feel by observing others."

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life."

"Power is not intrinsically evil; it is the abuse of power that corrupts."

"One cannot be fully human without acknowledging one's own capacity for destruction."

"Hope is the belief that the future can be different."

"The more you own, the more you are owned."

"Kindness is the highest form of intelligence."

"To understand another, one must surrender one's need to judge."

"History is written by those who survive."