Charles A. Reich Quotes

The fascist state is the corporate state.

We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

Vladimir Nabokov liked to examine cruelty and the human condition. That didn't mean he was cruel; there's no evidence he kicked puppies just for the fun of it. Similarly, 'Black Mirror' likes to examine possible dystopias, but that doesn't mean the show is cynical enough to endorse them.

Things happen in 'If This is a Man' that are beyond ordinary daily experience, but it is still us to whom they are happening, and the understanding Levi seeks is no different in kind from that sought by Shakespeare in 'King Lear', or Conrad in 'The Heart of Darkness'.

I wake up at night thinking about Euripides' 'Hecuba.' That to me is a story that says so much about what it is to be a human being in the middle of a world of unreliable things and people.

In a certain state it is indecent to live longer.

I am always talking about the human condition and about American society in particular: what it is like to be human, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on from darkness into darkness and that darkness carpeted.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?

So no, I’m not too big on religion...and not very fond of politics or economics either...And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?

The impossibility of outraging nature is the greatest anguish man can know.

This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.

The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.

Men die and they are not happy.

No other life forms know they are alive, and neither do they know they will die. This is our curse alone. Without this hex upon our heads, we would never have withdrawn as far as we have from the natural—so far and for such a time that it is a relief to say what we have been trying with our all not to say: We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.

From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations.

Modern man's difficulties, dangerous beliefs and feelings of loneliness, spiritual emptiness,and personal weakness are caused by his illusions about, and separation from, the natural world.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

Outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I find within myself.

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.

Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers.

The contradiction is somehow unresolved. In the case of the business propaganda, it's particularly ironic because while business wants the population to hate the government, they want the population to love the government. Namely, they're in favor of a very powerful state which works in their interest.

Many people in America throw the term "fascism" around, particularly for Middle-Eastern terrorists, but in fact what fascism really is is a close alliance between a unitary executive and a state and large corporations and a state.

I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.

Nature, and the natural human condition, generates tremendous suffering. We have the means to overcome that, and we should deploy it.