{"author":"Neel Burton","author_id":"Neel+Burton","total_quotes":64,"quotes":[{"text":"Philosophy is a bitter medicine with many fearsome side effects, but if you are able to stomach it, it can cure your soul of the many ills and infirmities of ignorance. Given the choice, most men prefer not to take it, and many of those who do soon find that they cannot carry on with it. In the end, they choose what is more pleasant over what is more wholesome, and prefer the society of those who encourage them in their follies to that of those who admonish and improve them. You, on the other hand, appear to be minded otherwise, for when a young men sets for himself the highest standards of education and conduct, he naturally shuns the company of mindless nobodies and boldly seeks out that of the singular men who are prepared to teach him and challenge him and exhort him to virtue. In time, by his strivings, he will come to realize that it is from the hardest toil and noblest deeds that the purest and most persisting pleasures are to be had, and, taking pity on other men, and thinking also of the gods, he will do everything in his power to share this precious secret.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["medicine","philosophy","plato"],"id":5198,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"If two people with no symptoms in common can both receive the same diagnosis of schizophrenia, then what is the value of that label in describing their symptoms, deciding their treatment, or predicting their outcome, and would it not be more useful simply to describe their problems as they actually are? And if schizophrenia does not exist in nature, then how can researchers possibly find its cause or correlates? If psychiatric research has made so little progress in recent decades, it is in large part because everyone has been barking up the wrong tree. It is not a question of getting a bigger and better scanner, but of going right back to the drawing board.What’s more, medical-type labels can be as harmful as they are hollow. By reducing rich, varied, and complex human experiences to nothing more than a mental disorder, they not only sideline and trivialize those experiences but also imply an underlying defect that then serves as a pseudo-explanation for the person’s disturbed behaviour. This demeans and disempowers the person, who is deterred from identifying and addressing the important life problems that underlie his distress.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["diagnosis","madness","mental-disorders","mental-health","mental-illness","psychiatry","research","schizophrenia"],"id":17283,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"One of the central tenets of the Western worldview is that one should always be engaged in some kind of outward task. Thus, the Westerner structures his time—including, sometimes, even his leisure time—as a series of discrete programmed activities which he must submit to in order to tick off from an actual or virtual list. One need only observe the expression on his face as he ploughs through yet another family outing, cultural event, or gruelling exercise routine to realise that his aim in life is not so much to live in the present moment as it is to work down a never-ending list. If one asks him how he is doing, he is most likely to respond with an artificial smile, and something along the lines of, ‘Fine, thank you – very busy of course!’ In many cases, he is not fine at all, but confused, exhausted, and fundamentally unhappy. In contrast, most people living in a country such as Kenya in Africa do not share in the Western worldview that it is noble or worthwhile to spend all of one’s time rushing around from one task to the next. When Westerners go to Kenya and do as they are wont to do, they are met with peels of laughter and cries of ‘mzungu’, which is Swahili for ‘Westerner’. The literal translation of ‘mzungu’ is ‘one who moves around’, ‘to go round and round’, or ‘to turn around in circles’.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["happiness","meaning","success"],"id":28244,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"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.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["decision-making","decisions","failure","judgement","success"],"id":29525,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"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.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["humor","philosophy","psychology","psychotherapy","wit"],"id":45212,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"Depression is our way of telling ourselves that something is seriously wrong and needs working through and changing.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["depression","hope","melancholy","mental-health","mental-illness","sadness","self-knowledge","subconscious"],"id":49420,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"True humility derives from a proper perspective of our human condition: one among billions on a small planet among billions, like a fungus on a tiny fragment of cheese. Of course, it is nearly impossible for human beings to remain this objective for very long, but truly humble people are nonetheless far more conscious of the insignificance of their true relations, an insignificance that verges on non-existence. A speck of dust does not think itself more superior or inferior than another, nor does it concern itself for what other specks of dust might or might not think. Enthralled by the miracle of existence, the truly humble person lives not for herself or her image, but for life itself, in a condition of pure peace and pleasure.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["emotions","happiness","joy","perspective","philosophy","psychology"],"id":50912,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"The problem with studying is that it gets in the way of education.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["academia","college","doctorate","education","studying","university"],"id":55471,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"Just as Prometheus delivered stolen fire to man, so Eve, and the serpent, delivered man into self-consciousness, setting him up, were it not for his short lifespan, as rival to God. At the same time, man’s self-consciousness removed him from nature into a life of toil, doubt, fear, guilt, shame, blame, enmity, loneliness, and frailty—and the product of this separation, the fruit and flower of this exile, is, of course, culture. ‘God,’ said the writer Victor Hugo, ‘made only water, but man made wine.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["bible-study","consciousness","creation-myths","culture","greek-mythology","religion","wine"],"id":84538,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"Resentment is a powerful and corrosive force, both on the slippery left and the slippery right, and the history of humankind can largely be read as a history of resentment. Aside from a profound philosophy of capital, what we really need is a profound psychology and philosophy of resentment. We must learn to live for ourselves, without reference to the other, and, at the same time, to rise above and beyond ourselves. Or else history will keep repeating itself, and our life will be a living death.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["capitalism","communism","envy","fascism","history","philosophy","politics","psychology","resentment","socialism"],"id":106721,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":64,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}