The human being needs a framework of values, a philosophy of life, a religion or religion-surrogate to live by and understand by, in about the same sense that he needs sunlight, calcium or love.

No psychological health is possible unless this essential care of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by himself.

[Concerning] the usual contempt with which an orthodox analytic group treats all outsiders and strangers ... I urge you to think of the young psychoanalysts as your colleagues, collaborators and partners and not as spies, traitors and wayward children. You can never develop a science that way, only an orthodox church.

The sacred is in the ordinary...it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's own backyard...travel may be a flight from confronting the scared--this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.

Since my mother is the type that's called schizophrenogenic in the literature-she's the one who makes crazy people, crazy children-I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.

What we call 'normal' in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don't even notice it ordinarily.

The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy