Quotes About Alienation

In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. She even thought in English. But her long blanks and darkness of abstraction were Polish.

With the English, nothing could save him from being the eternal outsider, not even love.

Connie was absolutely afraid of the industrial masses. They seemed so weird to her. A life with utterly no beauty in it, no intuition, always "in the pit.

When Clifford became really roused in his feelings about the common people, Connie was frightened. There was something devastatingly true in what he said. But it was a truth that killed.

She felt different from the rest of them, with their hard, easy, shallow intimacy, that seemed to cost them so little.

The final fact being that at the very bottom of his soul he was an outsider, and anti-social, and he accepted the fact inwardly, no matter how Bond-Streety he was on the outside. His isolation was a necessity to him; just as the appearance of conformity and mixing-in with the smart people was also a necessity.

Everything is sold. You don't give one heart-beat of real sympathy. And besides, who has taken away from the people their natural life and manhood, and given them this industrial horror? Who has done that?

Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt

How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

He registered a dizzy 7.6 mmv over Brodmann 32, the area of abstractive activity. Since that time I have learned that a reading over 6 generally means that a person has so abstracted himself from himself and from the world around him, seeing things as theories and himself as a shadow, that he cannot, so to speak, reenter the lovely ordinary world. Such a person, and there are millions, is destined to haunt the human condition like the Flying Dutchman.

She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

A man is after all himself and no other, and not merely an example of a class of similar selves. If such a man is deprived of the means of being a self in a world made over by science for his use and enjoyment, he is like a ghost at a feast. He becomes invisible. That is why people in the modern age took photographs by the million: to prove despite their deepest suspicions to the contrary that they were not invisible.

The truth is I dislike cars. Whenever I drive a car, I have the feeling I have become invisible. People on the street cannot see you; they only watch your rear fender until it is out of their way.

He is a moviegoer, though of course he does not go to the movies.

No tengo nada que ver con este sistema, ni siquiera lo necesario para oponerme a él.

Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, is now one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as aesthetic pleasure of the first order.

They're strangers but they still find reasons to hurt each other.

Turing did have a tendency toward being a loner. His homosexuality made him feel like an outsider at times; he lived alone and avoided deep personal commitments.

rise of computers could mean that "man will become a passive, purposeless, machine-conditioned animal.

When I got the tattoo, I knew I was drawing a crooked line between myself and society.

Al igual que, de repente, yo no encajaba en ninguna parte. Ni en la escuela, ni en la casa... y cada vez que me daba vuelta, otra persona que había conocido desde siempre se sentía como un extraño para mí. Incluso, me sentí como un extraño.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.