Willard Gaylin

“You can't be a perfectly good person and a perfectly good psychiatrist.”

“In a world of psychic numbing, where we are assaulted by a daily barrage of suffering, it is not easy to feel compassion.”

“We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself.”

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”

“Love is a spendthrift. It gives all and everything and it is not until it is gone that you realize the magnitude of your loss.”

“There are certain things that are so terrible that it is better to lie.”

“I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.”

“Depression is a caricature of grief.”

“Feeling good is not always good.”

“To be a ‘free’ personality is not to be unbound, random, and spontaneous; it is to be the architect of a life that is accountable to a chosen ideal.”