On Kindness Quotes

“(The French psychoanalyst Lacan suggested that the Christian injunction ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ must be ironic because people hate themselves.)”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness

“Kindness—that is, the ability to bear the vulnerability of others, and therefore of oneself—has become a sign of weakness (except of course among saintly people, in whom it is a sign of their exceptionality).”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness

“loneliness is the inevitable cost of looking after ourselves.”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness

“Unkindness involves a failure of the imagination so acute that it threatens not just our happiness but our sanity. Caring”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness

“The pleasure of kindness is that it connects us with others; but the terror of kindness is that it makes us too immediately aware of our own and other people’s vulnerabilities (vulnerabilities that we are prone to call failings when we are at our most frightened). Vulnerability—particularly the vulnerability we call desire—is our shared biological inheritance. Kindness, in other words, opens us up to the world (and worlds) of other people in ways that we both long for and dread. How can people, from childhood onward, feel confident enough to take such risks?”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness

“Kindness consistently preoccupies us, and yet most of us are unable to live a life guided by it.”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness

“psychoanalysis is an account of how and why modern people are so frightened of each other. What”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness

“When God is dead, kindness is permitted. When God is dead, kindness is all that people have.”
― Adam Phillips, On Kindness