Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Paul Goodman (American Novelist, Essayist)

Paul Goodman (1911–72) was an American novelist, playwright, poet, literary critic, psychotherapist, and social commentator known for his range of output and the intellectual rigor of his thinking. Goodman’s published writings include novels, short stories, biographies, plays, and social and literary criticism.

Born in New York City, Goodman was educated at City College, New York, and the University of Chicago. He lived a bohemian lifestyle and taught sporadically at various colleges and universities, including the University of Chicago, Black Mountain College, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of Wisconsin.

In the 1950s, Goodman co-founded what became the Gestalt Therapy Institute; it promoted a manner of psychotherapy that stressed personal responsibility and self-regulating adjustments. Gestalt therapy became enormously popular in the 1970s.

Goodman began writing in the 1930s, but his notable output dates from the 1950s. A self-described anarchist, he became associated with the counter-culture, though he criticized the New Left in New Reformation (1970.) He was a prolific essayist and short story writer; his The Collected Stories (1978–80) runs to four volumes. The Empire City (1959) is a sarcastic portrait of New York.

Goodman had a significant following among youth in the 1960s, particularly after the publication of Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System (1960) about the alienation of American young people. He is now primarily remembered as a social critic and anarchist philosopher.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Paul Goodman

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Travel, Tourism

To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.
Paul Goodman

Few great men could pass personal.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Business

For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby’s woeful face or the venerable tower.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Speech, Conversation

When a village ceases to be a community, it becomes oppressive in its narrow conformity. So one becomes an individual and migrates to the city. There, finding others like-minded, one re-establishes a village community. Nowadays only New Yorkers are yokels.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Cities, Country, City Life

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.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Food, Eating

It is by losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft, that a man becomes something.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Dedication, Commitment

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.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Opinions, Opinion

Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.
Paul Goodman
Topics: Comedy

Enjoyment is not a goal; it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity.
Paul Goodman

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