I remember having much more extensive notes on this book, but I still have plenty of quotes.

Paul Goodman on Abstractions: “The buoyant abstractions, spoken as if miracles were for the asking, ward off pain and uneasy conscience when one is no longer going to try to do anything practical.”

Paul Goodman on Absurd Ideas: “Either one drifts with their absurd system of ideas, believing that this is the human community. Or one dissents totally from their system of ideas and stands as a lonely human being. (But luckily one notices that others are in the same crisis and making the same choice.)” This is the bit that inspired my essay series, Chronicles of Absurdia!

Paul Goodman on American Censorship: “In American society, we have perfected a remarkable form of censorship to allow everyone his political right to say what he believes, but to swamp his little boat with literally thousands of millions of newspapers, mass-circulation magazines, best-selling books, broadcasts, and public pronouncements that disregard what he says, and give the official way of looking at things. Usually there’s no conspiracy to do this. It is simply that what he says is not what people are talking about and it’s not newsworthy.”

Paul Goodman on American Society: “American society has tried so hard and so ably to defend the practice and theory of production for profit and not primarily for use that now it has succeeded in making its jobs and products profitable and useless.” He said this in 1959!

Paul Goodman on Celebrity Endorsements: “…the menagerie of Very Important People who exist only for ceremonial occasions and to sponsor funds and drives for enterprises in which they will have no further function.”

Paul Goodman on Escapism: “…at the movies, where the real scene is by-passed, they watch with absorbed fantasy, and afterwards sometimes mimic what they saw.” This is still true and continues with television and today social media like TikTok and YouTube.

Paul Goodman on Fatalistic Self-Destruction: “…the fatalistic self-destruction of the kids struggling for life in an environment not suited to produce great human beings, is more interesting than the successful doings of that society.”

Paul Goodman on Growing Up: “Growing up is sometimes treated as if it were acculturation, the process of giving up one culture for another…”

Paul Goodman on Growth: “Growth, like any ongoing function, requires adequate objects in the environment to meet the needs and capacities of the growing child… until he can better choose and make his own environment.”

Paul Goodman on His Definition of Faith: “The sense that life is going on and the confidence that the world will continue to support the next step of it, is called Faith.” This is a very different definition of faith than I’m used to reading, one that’s nonreligious, and is one that must be further explored.

Paul Goodman on How Many of Us Are Useless: “The plain truth is that at present very many of us are useless, not needed, rationally unemployable. It is in this paradoxical atmosphere that young persons grow up. It looks busy and expansive, but it is rationally at a stalemate.” 

(Of course, the other option is to make your own work, which was made realistically possible by technology that Goodman couldn’t have dreamed of 1959. And yet, we are faced with an even worse version of this situation.)

Paul Goodman on Important Reforms: “Important reforms did not occur when they were ripe, and we have inherited the consequences: a wilderness of unfinished situations, unequal developments, and inconsistent standards, as well as new business.”

Paul Goodman on Internationalism Without Brotherhood or Peace: “…we now have an internationalism without brotherhood or peace, even concealing science as a strategic weapon; and a general sentiment that the rule of reason is infinitely impractical.”

Paul Goodman on Making the Excellent Trivial: “…equal to our businessmen, our government and public spokesmen have a knack for debasing the noble and making the excellent trivial.”

Paul Goodman on Paying for Foolishness: “… everybody is paying for foolishness, for in fact the new models are only trivially superior; the whole thing is a sell.”

Paul Goodman on People Tolerating Broken Systems: “But it is in these circumstances that people put up with a system because ‘there are no alternatives.’ And when one cannot think of anything to do, soon one ceases to think at all.” He writes this right after perfectly predicting the future of media, schools, the scientific community, and big Pharma in the preface of Growing Up Absurd!

Paul Goodman on People Trying to “Prove Themselves”: “The proving behavior is endless. Since each activity is not interesting to begin with, its value does not deepen and it does not bear much repetition. Its value as proof quickly diminishes. In these circumstances, the inevitable tendency is to raise the ante of the compulsive useless activity that proves one is potent and not useless.”

Paul Goodman on Political Protest: “…as society becomes more close-knit and total, a criminal act may be a dumb political gesture, and political protest is certainly taken as criminal.”

Paul Goodman on Progressive Education: “It was as if progressive education resolved that in the education of the children there should be no missed revolutions and no unfinished situations.” I take this to mean creating problems where they don’t exist.

Paul Goodman on Public Schools: “No effort is made to increase the pool of ability; and the public schools are, effectually, to be used as apprentice training grounds for the monopolies and the armed forces.” (No different today.)

Paul Goodman on Real Opportunities: “It is not a ‘psychological’ question of poor influences and bad attitudes, but an objective question of real opportunities for worthwhile experience.”

Paul Goodman on Remedying Stupidity: “One method to remedy stupidity… is to invite the free expression of criticism and hostility…” Oddly enough, social media gave us this, but along with it severe tribalism, too.

Paul Goodman on Role Playing: “Role playing protects a deep conceit of one’s abstract powers: one ‘could’ if one wanted, but in fact is never tested.”

Paul Goodman on Sciences Becoming Supreme: “When the sciences are supreme, average people lose their feeling of causality.” This is why science literacy is paramount to a successful society!

Paul Goodman on Seasoned Experience: “All the things that constitute seasoned experience… accumulate knowledge, establish better habits, make hypotheses probable, and suggest further projects.” These are what I aim to do with my own work.

Paul Goodman on Serious Leisure: “It takes application, a fine sense of value, and a powerful community spirit for a people to have serious leisure, and this has not been the genius of the Americans.” 

Paul Goodman on Small VS Big Anger: “Small anger is continually generated, never discharged; big anger, that goes with big initiative, is repressed. Therefore, the angry situation is projected afar. People must find big distant causes to explain the pressure of anger that is certainly not explicable by petty frustrations. It is necessary to have something worthy of the hatred that is unaware felt for oneself. In brief, one is angry with the Enemy.” (From gestalt therapy, II, viii, 8 – quoted in Growing Up Absurd)

Paul Goodman on Socializing the Youth: “…growing up is now interpreted as a process of socializing some rather indefinite kind of animal, and ‘socializing’ is used as a synonym for teaching him the culture.”

Paul Goodman on Statistically Calculated Organizations: “There is an organized system of reputations that is calculated statistically to minimize risk and eliminate the unsafe; likely it succeeds in this. It may make the enterprise as a whole less efficient, for it guarantees excluding the best, but be that as it may; the important thing is that there has ceased to be any relation whatever between ‘personal honor’ and community or vocational service.”

Paul Goodman on Stereotypes of Passions: “…the big stories of crime and divorce are treated in stereotypes of ‘passions’ as if people were characters in movies. But nature soon imitates art, and people imitate the stereotypes and produce further big stories.”