Wilhelm Reich was a Jewish Austrian-American physician, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst who practiced medicine from 24 March 1897 until 3 November 1957. He belonged to the second generation of analysts following Sigmund Freud. Being the writer of many noteworthy publications, he emerged as one of the most innovative personalities in the annals of psychiatry.

Wilhelm Reich Quotes

01. “Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”
― Wilhelm Reich

02. “Man’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 Reich

03 “The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”
― Wilhelm Reich

04. “The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary. ”
― Wilhelm Reich

05. “I 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 Reich

06. “Love is the absence of Anxiety.”
― Wilhelm Reich

07. “And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn’t the courage to express”
― Wilhelm Reich

08. “Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.”
― Wilhelm Reich

09. “We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate eachother or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life’s healthy needs.”
― Wilhelm Reich

10. “The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it.”
― Wilhelm Reich

11. “’Mysticism’ here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world.”
― Wilhelm Reich

12. “You 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 Reich

13. “Open avowal of dictatorship is much less dangerous than sham democracy. The first one can fight; sham democracy is insidious.”
― Wilhelm Reich

14. “I observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd.”
― Wilhelm Reich

15. “I 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 Reich

16. “One cannot equate “capitalism” and “democracy.”
― Wilhelm Reich

17. “Religiosity that is hostile to sex is the product of authoritarian society.”
― Wilhelm Reich

18. “Because 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 Reich

19. “I came to consider the instinct as nothing more than the “motor aspect of pleasure.””
― Wilhelm Reich

20. “Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives, they should also govern it.”
― Wilhelm Reich

21. “The socially irresponsible man is the man absorbed in sexual conflicts.”
― Wilhelm Reich

22. “Only 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 Reich

23. “Love, work and knowledge are the wellsprings of our life. They should also govern it. WILHELM REICH”
― Wilhelm Reich

24. “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.”
― Wilhelm Reich

25. “The 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 Reich

26. “social existence remains a dream only because the thoughts and feelings of the human animal are blocked off from the simple and obvious.”
― Wilhelm Reich

27. “When social cooperation is disrupted, state power is always strengthened.”
― Wilhelm Reich

28. “Fascism of the masses is nothing but disillusioned radicalism plus nationalistic philistinism”
― Wilhelm Reich

29. “The fascist mentality is a mentality of the subjugated “little man” who craves authority and rebels against it at the same time”
― Wilhelm Reich

30. “I’m afraid of you, little man, very much afraid, because the future of mankind depends on you. I’m afraid of you because your main aim in life is to escape–from yourself.”
― Wilhelm Reich

31. “Politically, we are still stuck in the systems of thought of the Greek and Roman slave states, no matter how much we rant about “democracy.”
― Wilhelm Reich

32. “Apartment houses, public transportation, and schools tell us something about the technical development of a society. They do not tell us whether the members of that society are suppressed subjects or free workers, whether they are rational or irrational men and women.”
― Wilhelm Reich

33. “Truth is dangerous when it concerns you.”
― Wilhelm Reich

34. “Never force anything, just let it be natural, and it will always be okay. Okay?”
― Wilhelm Reich

35. “Most people are actually far less potent than they imagine themselves in their dreams, and
are endowed with far greater qualities and capacities than they translate into action.”
― Wilhelm Reich

36. “Shalt’s” and “shalt not’s” will break in later in a most tragic fashion and murder Christ in every single child.”
― Wilhelm Reich

37. “They love Jesus because he is what they are not and cannot ever be. They try to drink his strength and simplicity and spontaneous beauty into themselves. But they do not succeed. They cannot”
― Wilhelm Reich

38. “In real man, the “god-given” genital embrace has turned into the pornographic 4-lettering male-female intercourse.”
― Wilhelm Reich

39. “All human philosophy is riddled with the nightmare of searching in vain.”
― Wilhelm Reich

40. “I am a biological and cultural mongrel and proud of it; in mind and body, I am a product of all classes and races and nations. I don’t pretend to be racially or socially pure like you, or a chauvinist like you, petty fascist of all nations, races, and classes.”
― Wilhelm Reich

41. “You did not know, Little Man, what a library is for.”
― Wilhelm Reich