Irvin D. Yalom

Quotes

• “Upon learning that her cancer had spread to her spine, Paula prepared her thirteen year-old son for her death by writing...”
• “Why does the same book elicit such a range of responses? There must be something in the particular reader that leaps out...”
• “I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy - I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps ...”
• “Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence...a...”
• “I explain to my patients that abused children often find it hard to disentangle themselves from their dysfunctional fami...”
• “It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life...”
• “Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costl...”
• “More than death, one fears the utter isolation that accompanies it. We try to go through life two by two, but each one o...”
• “We're not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the rela...”
• “You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be a...”
• “Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instru...”
• “I hate it that she has so insinuated herself into the interstices of my mind that I can never root her out. And most of ...”
• “Someone's got to do some more research, but I would really like to know: when a CBT therapist really gets distressed, wh...”
• “Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitud...”
• “Credinta, oricat de pasionata, de pura, de arzatoare, nu spune absolut nimic despre realitatea existentei lui Dumnezeu”
• “If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.”
• “The amount of death terror experienced is closely related to the amount of life unlived.”
• “Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?”
• “Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.”
• “To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone.”
• “That just seems to be the way we’re built.”