Quotes from R. D. Laing

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man.

I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men.

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.

Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.

Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.

Any experience of reality is indescribable!

Experience is mad when it steps beyond the horizons of our common, that is, our communal sense.

When family relations are no longer harmonious we have filial children and devoted parents.

In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal.

To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.