Involuntary Quotes

• An involuntary return to the point of departure is, without doubt, the most disturbing of all journeys.

  Iain Sinclair

  Travel, Journey, Doubt

  Iain Sinclair (2004). “Downriver, or, The vessels of wrath: a narrative in twelve tales”, Penguin Books Ltd

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• Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it

  Thomas Szasz

  Commitment, Slavery, Problem

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• The involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.

  Kate Millett

  Character, Medicine, Odds

  Kate Millett (1990). “The Loony-bin Trip”, p.312, University of Illinois Press

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• All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

  Mark Twain

  Emotion, Genuine

  Mark Twain (1992). “Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays: 1891-1910”

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• Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

  Blaise Pascal

  Desire, Our Actions, Causes

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• It was involuntary. They sank my boat.

  John F. Kennedy

  Peace, War, History

  Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (1965)

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• Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men.

  Unknown

  Men, Scary, Way

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• Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

  Vaclav Havel

  Lying, People, Support

  Vaclav Havel, John Keane (2016). “The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe”, p.43, Routledge

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• Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

  W. H. Auden

  Marriage, Interesting, Romance

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• It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.

  Northrop Frye

  Block, Emotional, Thinking

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.83, Princeton University Press

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• Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.

  Iris Murdoch

  Jealousy, Jealous, Sin

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.217, Penguin

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• The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Ideas, Theatre, Crowds

  "The Art of the Theatre".

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• Use of a mentally ill person's involuntary confession is antithetical to the notion of fundamental fairness embodied in the due process clause.

  William J. Brennan

  Fundamentals, Use, Fairness

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• I later spent... five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis, and always attempting a legal argument for release.

  John Forbes Nash

  Eight, Months, Jersey

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• Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

  Mark Twain

  Motivation, Integrity, Emotional

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.22, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

  Blaise Pascal

  Our Actions, Causes, Morality

  Blaise Pascal, Roger Ariew “PensŽes”, Hackett Publishing

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• Pursuing employment or climatic relief, we live in voluntary exile from our extended families and our longer past, but in an involuntary exile from ourselves and our own past.

  John Thorn

  Past, Relief, Employment

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• The body is a marvelous machine...a chemical laboratory, a power-house. Every movement, voluntary or involuntary, full of secrets and marvels

  Theodor Herzl

  House, Secret, Machines

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• Modern slavery - be it bonded labor, involuntary servitude, or sexual slavery - is a crime and cannot be tolerated in any culture, community, or country ... [It] is an affront to our values and our commitment to human rights.

  Hillary Clinton

  Country, Commitment, Rights

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• Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Belief, Ought

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.559, Wordsworth Editions

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• It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews. The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization.

  Richard Wagner

  Lying, Civilization, Evil

  "'Das Judenthum in der Musik' ('Judaism in Music')". Essay by Richard Wagner, 1850.

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• The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, near-sightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another.

  John Cheever

  Men, Organization, Perfection

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• By deriving it's just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft, and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute money or property nor to force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by the people. No individual possesses the power to take another's wealth or to force others to do good, so no government has the the right to do such things either. The creature cannot exceed the creator.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Government, People, Defense

  Ezra Taft Benson (1986). “The Constitution: A Heavenly Banner”, Shadow Mountain

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• Mindgasm (noun) - An exhilarating neurostorm of intense intellectual pleasure. Fully revelatory understanding of a certain topic. Involuntary contractions of brain muscles usually accompanied by the overwhelming sensation of truth proximity. Visionarism. State of awe.

  Jason Silva

  Understanding, Intellectual, Brain

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• The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.

  Sigmund Freud

  Attitude, Ideas, People

  Sigmund Freud, Angela Richards (1953). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

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