Neel Burton
30 quotes
Biography
Neel Burton is a British psychiatrist, philosopher, writer, and educator. He is an author of several books, including Psychiatry (2006), Living with Schizophrenia, The Meaning of Madness (2008), Master your Mind (2009), The Art of Failure – The Anti Self-Help Guide (2010), Growing from Depression: A Self-Help Guide (2010), Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception (2012), Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions (2015), and Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking (2019).
"A man shrinks or expands into the degree and nature of his ambition. Ambition needs to be cultivated and refined, and yet has no teachers."
"Our life is just as long or short as our remembering: as rich as our imagining, as vibrant as our feeling, and as profound as our thinking."
"Love, like madness, can only fill the models that society makes available."
"The problem with studying is that it gets in the way of education."
"My basic political principle: If something, whether right- or left-wing, is driven by love and solidarity, it is right; if it is driven by hate and fear it is wrong. Simple as that."
"Love is like chickenpox. It's much worse when it comes late."
"Of all funny things, truth is the funniest."
"An artist is someone who, needing nothing and no one, wants everything and everyone."
"It is no coincidence that, on all four sides, in all four corners, the borders of the Roman Empire stopped where wine could no longer be made."
"One needs to be either more brave or more good, because if courage is lacking goodness can substitute, while cowardice is the deficiency of both."
"The irony is, nothing is more frightening than being frightened."
"The three most powerful seasonings are hunger, variety, and gratitude."
"If you say it very softly, with a smile, you can get away with saying almost anything, even the truth."
"There are essentially three types of people: those who love life more than they fear it, those who fear life more than they love it, and those who have no clue what I'm talking about."
"When we stop noticing small things, we are no longer truly alive."
"No one ever pays to learn the most important things."
"Philosophy gives life to life."
"Maths is at only one remove from magic."
"It takes ten good decisions to make up for one disastrous one. This is why it is better not to make nine good decisions than to make one bad one—which is what happens most of the time."
"The two greatest warriors are Truth and Time. Be sure to march behind, and not against, them."
"A writer is someone who, needing nothing and no one, wants everything and everyone."
"In philosophy, phenomenology is the study of the structures of experience and consciousness. Wine blind tasting is the best phenomenology, phenomenology par excellence, returning us from our heads into the world, and, at the same time, teaching us the methods of the mind."
"Man is mostly a collection of emotions, most of which he would do better not to be feeling."
"A genius is no more—and no less—than someone who insists on the truth, while others face the other way."
"Xenophobia is when you smile at people and they don't smile back."