Quotes from Paul Goodman

There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison. But the damage done by those who pass off poison as food is far less than that done by those who generation after generation convince people that food is poison.

We do not behave as if we believed that the affairs of our world were significant enough for the intervention of great men.

An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off the goal Few great men could pass personnel

All men are creative but few are artists.

The philosophic aim of education must be to get each one out of his isolated class and into the one humanity.

Comedy is something that we can all share, no matter what language we speak or our background, it has the power to unite us all.

It takes application, a fine sense of value, and a powerful community-spirit for a people to have serious leisure, and this has not been the genius of the Americans.

It rarely adds anything to say, 'In my opinion' - not even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.

In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any effect.

It is by losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft, that a man becomes something.

I have learned to have very modest goals for society and myself, things like clean air, green grass, children with bright eyes, not being pushed around, useful work that suits one's abilities, plain tasty food, and occasional satisfying nookie.

Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity.

Not to teach the whole curriculum is to give up on the whole man.

We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least.

Few great men would have got past personnel.

Few great men could pass personnel.

Free action is to live in the present society as though it were a natural society.

In brief, ...the inevitability of centralism will be self-proving. A system destroys its competitors by preempting the means and channels, and then proves that it is the only conceivable mode of operating.

People are forced by their better judgment to ask very basic questions: Is it possible, how is it possible, to have more meaning and honor in work? to put wealth to some real use? to have a high standard of living of whose quality we are not ashamed? to get social justice for those who have been shamefully left out? to have a use of leisure that is not a dismaying waste of a hundred million adults?

Patience is drawing on underlying forces; it is powerfully positive, though to a natural view it looks like just sitting it out. How would I persist against positive eroding forces if I were not drawing on invisible forces? And patience has a positive tonic effect on others; because of the presence of the patient person, they revive and go on, as if he were the gyroscope of the ship providing a stable ground. But the patient person himself does not enjoy it.

Education is a natural community function and occurs inevitably, since the young grow up on the old, towards their activities, and into (or against) their institutions; and the old foster, teach, train, exploit and abuse the young. Even neglect of the young, except physical neglect, has an educational effect -- not the worst possible.

What swells the costs in enterprises carried on in the interlocking centralized systems of society, whether commercial, official, or non-profit institutional, are all the factors of organization, procedure, and motivation that are not directly determined to the function and to the desire to perform it....

Low pay generally means harder work under worse conditions.

The family is the American fascism.