Wilhelm Reich quotes

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst, known for his controversial theories about sexuality and the concept of orgone energy. His work bridged psychology, biology, and social theory, attracting both acclaim and criticism. He became a highly polarizing figure and his books were later banned and destroyed in several countries. Here are 113 of his quotes:

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness. (Wilhelm Reich)
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
It is sexual energy which governs the structure of human feeling and thinking. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life's pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Psychic disturbances are the consequences of the sexual chaos of society. For thousands of years, this chaos has had the function of psychically subjecting man to the prevailing conditions of existence, of internalizing the external mechanization of life. It has served to bring about the psychic anchoring of a mechanized and authoritarian civilization by making man incapable of functioning independently. (Wilhelm Reich)
Work democracy does not wish to prevent or prohibit anything. Its only intention is the fulfilment of the biological life functions, of love, work and knowledge. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
The discovery of orgone energy was made through consistent, thorough study of energy functions, first in the realm of the psyche, and later in the realm of biological functioning. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Rooting in work is crucial to any accomplishment. Rooting in mere enthusiasm will in the long run force illusory measures to keep the fires of empty enthusiasm going. And this makes politics and politicians. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterolgical armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Every seemingly arbitrary destructive action is a reaction of the organism to the frustration of a gratification of a vital need, especially of a sexual need. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily... View quote
Wilhelm Reich
The vital energies regulate themselves naturally without compulsive duty or compulsive morality - both of which are sure signs of existing antisocial impulses. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness, of others' strength and greatness. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. (Wilhelm Reich)
Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive development. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
Political irrationalism which infests, deforms and destroys our lives, is - in the strictly psychiatric sense - a perversion of social life, caused by the ostracizing of the natural life functions and by their exclusion from the determination of social life. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
This is a painful bit of truth: Fascism, in the form of irresponsibility, is present in the masses of all countries, nations and races. Fascism is the result of thousands of years of warping of the human structure. It could have developed in any nation. It is not a specific German or Italian character trait. It works in every mortal. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character. View quote
Wilhelm Reich