R. D. Laing Quotes

‘Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.’ – R. D. Laing

‘Insanity – a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.’ – R. D. Laing

‘Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.’ – R. D. Laing

‘There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.’ – R. D. Laing

‘The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.’ – R. D. Laing

‘We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy.’ – R. D. Laing

‘If I don’t know I don’t know, I think I know. If I don’t know I know, I think I don’t know.’ – R. D. Laing

‘Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.’ – R. D. Laing

‘We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.’ – R. D. Laing

‘Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.’ – R. D. Laing