Frasi di Sam Keen

„Noi ci innamoriamo non quando troviamo una persona perfetta, ma quando arriviamo a considerare perfetta una persona imperfetta.“

—  Sam Keen

27 maggio 2018, ore 07.20
Origine: [it, https://www.m2o.it/programmi/memories/puntate/memories-del-27-05-2018/, Memories Puntata del 27/05/2018 su m2o Radio, m2o.it]

„We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.“

—  Sam Keen

Variante: Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
Origine: To Love and Be Loved

„There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?'

If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man

„Burnout is nature's way of telling you, you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man

„Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.“

—  Sam Keen

„Trust what moves you most deeply.“

—  Sam Keen

„The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble.“

—  Sam Keen

„Outlaw consciousness is born the moment I drop out, stop the world, cease being an actor identified with the mythic roles I have been playing in society. Change begins when I do nothing except observe. The wisdom of the railroad crossing: Stop. Look. Listen. Meditation is the healthy form of voyeurism.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 135

„The “bleeding hearts” who want love without anger, relationship without conflict, harmony without contradictions, are forced to create an illusory world of unambivalent love. … It is not accidental that such perfect persons (who never question their own motives, or suspect their hidden ideology or self-interest) make other feel tainted and guilty. Every sentimental sermon is served with a side-dish of guilt. In their presence, honest doubt is named cynicism, anger is called evil, and ambivalence is castigated as craziness.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 84

„Beneath the smiling mask, we can see the injury that results from a deficiency of rebellion. The nice ones are never quite real. They lack self-definition, self-confidence, because they have never created boundaries and limits for themselves by making decisions. Having never dared to break the taboos they suffer from shame. Their sins are ones of omission rather than commission. They “have left undone those things they ought to have done,” most especially deciding for themselves what is good and evil.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), pp. 82-83

„The standard Christian conscience does not permit the believer to look upon the self and find beauty, goodness, natural kindness, strength. Self-knowledge is tainted with self-hatred. The rules of the game of the Christian conscience are such that, when I look within, I must take the blame for all evil, all hardness of the heart that I find, but give God all the credit for any evidence of love. … It is not surprising that the practice of meditation … has remained under a cloud in the West, and that we have, consequently, created a culture of extroverts.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 162

„Pleasers … make up what Earl Shorris has called “the oppressed middle,” the middle-managers who enjoy “the comforts of fearful people” and pay by submitting to their superiors’ definitions of happiness and success.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 82

„Hero tales suggest the price of courage is beyond the ordinary budget. They tempt us to disown the common capacity of the human spirit to transcend normality.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 134

„It is only from the perspective of the outlaw … that we are able to see that mythically informed normality is a form of mass hypnosis.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 99

„Kierkegaard said that the only way we can be released from the enchantment, the siren song of the myths, is to play the music through backwards. To break the spell of the ego I must recover my personal and political history, I must demythologize the private, family, and public myths that have informed me.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 140

„The man who comes home exhausted because he has been taught to believe without question that his male identity is based on nine-to-five loyalty and the giving of his best energies to the corporation has made a decision about his sexuality. He sacrifices his corpus to the corporation. His chosen method of expending energy and structuring time disallows afternoon dalliance with his wife or lover.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 101

„Being impotent because they have never dared to assert themselves, they continually play the blame game. They are innocent and powerless and, therefore, others are always to blame when things go wrong. … They have yet to bite the apple of consciousness.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 83

„Overstimulation of the adrenal glands (with consequent exhaustion of the spirit) is the price of our incorporation within the male womb of the modern corporate society.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 101

„The female has learned by long experience to win by losing, to wield power in the passive-aggressive manner of the sadomasochist.“

—  Sam Keen

Origine: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 115