Full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind. In other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence over the masses, confirms this concept.
Wilhelm ReichIn the course of the history of natural science, it always happens that profound or true thoughts or true facts were always either distorted or flattened out. The danger, especially of distortion, is particularly great in the case of orgonomy. We must be scientific, we cannot be political in these matters. And I personally declare that I will be the first to fight with all my strength, with whatever I've got against such a distortion of our principles.
Wilhelm ReichMan's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.
Wilhelm ReichSexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology
Wilhelm ReichYou think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.
Wilhelm ReichThere is no proof. There are no authorities whatever. No president, Academy, Court of Law, Congress or Senate on this earth has the knowledge or power to decide what will be the knowledge of tomorrow. There is no use in trying to prove something that is unknown to somebody who is ignorant of the unknown, or fearful of its threatening power. Only the good old rules of learning will eventually bring about understanding of what has invaded our earthly existence.
Wilhelm ReichUnless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is.
Wilhelm ReichYou don't believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can't bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think 'about' you, or 'for your benefit', not 'with' you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.
Wilhelm ReichThe question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life.
Wilhelm ReichYou have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder.
Wilhelm ReichOnce we open up to the flow of energy within our body, we can also open up to the flow of energy in the universe.
Wilhelm ReichThe pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.
Wilhelm ReichFollow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily.
Wilhelm ReichOnly one thing matters: live a good, happy life. Do your heart's bidding, even when it leads you on paths that timid souls would avoid. Even when life is a torment, don't let it harden you.
Wilhelm ReichI do not believe that to be religious in the best, authentic sense a man has to destroy his love life and mummify himself, body and soul.
Wilhelm ReichI observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd.
Wilhelm ReichYou beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.
Wilhelm ReichIn recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.
Wilhelm ReichThe working masses of men and women, they and they alone, are responsible for everything that takes place, the good things and the bad things. True enough, they suffer most from a war, but it is their apathy, craving for authority, etc., that is most responsible for making wars possible. It follows of necessity from this responsibility that the working masses of men and women, they and they alone, are capable of establishing lasting peace.
Wilhelm ReichAnd the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express
Wilhelm ReichOnly the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.
Wilhelm ReichThe discovery of orgone energy was made through consistent, thorough study of energy functions, first in the realm of the psyche, and later in the realm of biological functioning.
Wilhelm ReichI know that what you call 'God' really exists, but not in the form you think; God is primal cosmic energy, the love in your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you.
Wilhelm ReichYou yourself create all your misery, hour after hour, day after day. You think the goal justifies the means, even the vile means. You are wrong: The goal is in the path on which you arrive at it. Every step of today is your life of tomorrow. No great goal can be reached by vile means. That you have proven in every social revolution. The vileness or inhumanity of the path to the goal makes you vile or inhuman, and the goal unattainable.
Wilhelm ReichHonest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life's pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.
Wilhelm ReichWe shall no longer hang on to the tails of public opinion or to a non- existent authority on matters utterly unknown and strange. We shall gradually become experts ourselves in the mastery of the knowledge of the Future.
Wilhelm ReichBecause I'm a man who works, who knows what a human being is like inside, who knows that every human being has his worth, and who wants the world to be governed by work and not by opinions about work.
Wilhelm ReichThe few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest.
Wilhelm ReichIt is above all man's social position that decides whether he will sublimate his sadism as a butcher, surgeon, or policeman.
Wilhelm ReichHitler repeatedly stressed that one could not get at the masses with arguments, proofs, and knowledge, but only with feelings and beliefs.
Wilhelm ReichMake it plain that you have no time for war, that you have more important things to do....let the diplomats and marshals of the earth shoot each other.
Wilhelm ReichHow, then,' I hear you ask, 'shall I attain my end, whether it be Christian love, socialism, or American democracy?' Your Christian love and your socialism and your American democracy are what you do each day, your manner of thinking each hour, of embracing your life companion and loving your child; they are your attitude of social responsibility towards your work, and your determination not to become like the crushers of life you so hate.
Wilhelm ReichRooting in work is crucial to any accomplishment. Rooting in mere enthusiasm will in the long run force illusory measures to keep the fires of empty enthusiasm going. And this makes politics and politicians.
Wilhelm ReichPeople should be _very_ careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement.
Wilhelm ReichI am not a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, a Mormon, Polygamist, Homosexual, Anarchist or Boxer. . . . I do not believe that, in order to be religious in the good and genuine sense of the word, one has to ruin one's love life and has to become rigid and shrunken in body and soul. I know that what you call "God" actually exists, but in a different way from what you think: as the primal cosmic energy in the universe, as your love in your body, as your honesty and your feeling of nature in you and around you.
Wilhelm ReichLove, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.
Wilhelm ReichThe fact that Hitler was a political genius unmasks the nature of politics in general as no other fact can.
Wilhelm ReichThe "stiff, dead, retracted pelvis" is one of man's most frequent vegetative disturbances. It is responsible for lumbago as well as for hemorrhoidal disturbances. Elsewhere, we shall demonstrate an important connection between these disturbances and genital cancer in women, which is so common. Thus, the "deadning of the pelvis" has the same function as the deadening of the abdomen, i.e., to avoid feelings, particularly those of pleasure and anxiety.
Wilhelm Reich