Philip Rieff Quotes

Self-confidence is inseparable from submission to the creedal order, and through that order, to the supreme authority expressed in that order. ... Deep individualism cannot exist except in relation to the highest authority. No inner discipline can operate without a charismatic institution, nor can such an institution survive without that supreme authority from a relation to whom self-confidence derives. Without an authority deeply installed, there is no foundation for individuality. Self-confidence thus expresses submission to supreme authority.

Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.

Religion may have been the original cure; Freud reminds us that it was also the original disease.

Intellection must address the matter of its feeling.

Man is tied to the weight of his own past, and even by a great therapeutic labor little more can be accomplished than a shifting of the burden.

Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.

Reason cannot save us, nothing can; but reason can mitigate the cruelty of living.

Beyond the wounds of the child and the scars of the man, there is something in the heart of love itself that makes love pathetic.

Scholarship is polite argument.