Best 28 quotes of Frederick Salomon Perls on MyQuotes

Anxiety is the gap between now and later.

As Albert Einstein once said to me: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity." But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing.

A thousand plastic flowers don't make a desert bloom. A thousand empty faces don't fill an empty room".

Awareness in itself is healing.

Have a dialogue between the two opposing parts and you will find that they always start out fighting each other until we come to an appreciation of difference.

Humans don't really improve on our own functioning, we only interfere with it, distort it, and disguise it.

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

If you are bored, you are not paying attention.

If you take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself, how you produce your symptoms, how you produce your illness, how you produce your existence-the very moment you get in touch with yourself-growth begins, integration begins.

I have one aim only: to impart a fraction of the meaning of the word now.

It feels much nobler to feel guilty than resentful, and it takes more courage to express resentment than guilt. With expressing guilt you expect to pacify your opponent; with expressing resentment you might stir up hostility in him.

I wonder why people use only walls for hanging pictures.

Learning is to discover that something is possible. We are using most of our energies for self-destructiv e games, self-preventing games. We prevent ourselves from growing the very moment something unpleasant, something painful comes up. At that moment we become phobic, we run away, we desensitize ourselves. Neurotic suffering is suffering in imagination, suffering in fantasy.

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

...nobody can stand truth if it is told to him. Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable.

Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.

So if you find out how you prevent yourself from growing, from using your potential, you have away of increasing this, making life richer, making you more and more capable of mobilizing yourself. And our potential is based upon a very peculiar attitude: to live and review every fresh second

Teaching means to show a person that something is possible.

The only difference between a wise man and a fool is that the wise man knows he's playing.

There's always a possibility of richer maturation - of taking more and more responsibility for yourself and for your life...And this is what I hope...to make you understand how much you gain by taking re-sponsibility for every emotion, every movement you make, every thought you have...We touch each other by honestly being what we are, not intentionally making contact.

To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness.

We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.

You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage.

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage. Imagine how happy I felt when I got relief from bladder pressure. How long did that happiness last?

Awareness is like the glow of a coal which comes from its own combustion... In awareness a process is taking place in the coal (the total organism).

By remaining alert in the centre, we can acquire a creative ability of seeing both sides of an occurrence and completing an incomplete half.