Academy of Ideas

“In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid.”   Henry David Thoreau, A Natural History of Massachu...

“In every walk of life, we assume the expression and appearance of the person we want others to believe we are. Hence, we may say that this world is a world of masks.” François de La Rochefoucauld, Th...

“One third of all the sorrow I must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberat...

“Know how to appear the fool. The wisest sometimes play this card, and there are times when the greatest knowledge consists in appearing to lack knowledge. You mustn’t be ignorant, just feign ignoranc...

Given that man is the physically stronger sex, it may seem preposterous to claim that many men fear women more than women fear men. Yet across cultures and throughout history, women have often been po...

“We should not forget that every neurosis entails a corresponding amount of demoralization. If a man is neurotic, he has lost confidence in himself. A neurosis is a humiliating defeat and is felt as s...

When considering how to improve modern day society many people gravitate toward political solutions. Others suggest that we need a sort of revolution of consciousness in which people move to a more en...

Some people allege that the politicians, bureaucrats and corporate elite that make up the ruling class are conspiring to enrich themselves, gain more power, and transform society into a totalitarian d...

“[Modern man] is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by powers beyond his control. The gods and demons have not disappeared at all, they have merely got ne...

“The self-handicapper reaches out for impediments, exaggerates handicaps, and embraces any factor reducing personal responsibility for mediocrity…”  Steven Berglas and Edward Jones, Drug Choice as a S...

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind The internet has connected the world, but it has also unleashed a torrent of hostility. The primary source...

“The difficulties of our psychotherapeutic work teach us to take truth, goodness, and beauty where we find them. They are not always found where we look for them: often they are hidden in the dirt or ...

The modern West is in decline. Economic stagnation, rising tax burdens, moral disorientation, political corruption, bloated bureaucracies, and soaring levels of poverty, drug addiction and homelessnes...

“…the fairy tale is the great mother of the novel, and has even more universal validity than the most-avidly read novel of your time. And you know that what has been on everyone’s lips for millennia, ...

“And then comes the knowing that in me there is space for a second, large, and timeless life.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God According to Carl Jung the second half of li...

“This is an exceedingly dangerous time and we are confronted with a problem which has never been known in the conscious history of man… This is not a light but a darkness; the powers of darkness are c...

“We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become…more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent.” Friedrich Nietzsche, On the G...

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”      T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men Throughout Western history, the idea of civilizational collapse has been bound up with visions of apoca...

“We have technology, convenience, security, and a measure of prosperity, but where is the beauty? Where is the beauty that we know we cannot really live without?”    John-Mark Miravalle, Beauty: What ...

Marie-Louise von Franz was a Swiss psychologist who closely collaborated with Carl Jung from 1933 until his death in 1961. One of von Franz’s primary topics of interest was fairy tales. For like myths...

“Will men be able to give up toying with the idea of another war? It is now a question of existence or nonexistence. . .For the danger that threatens us now is of such dimensions as to make this last ...

“And the word “courage” should be reserved to characterize the man or woman who leaves the infantile sanctuary of the mass mind.” Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly In the privacy of our minds many of us dis...

“News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging.”    Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News Most people think that consuming the news makes one an inf...

“The spiritual decline of the earth is so far advanced that people are in danger of losing their last spiritual strength, the strength that makes it possible even to see the disintegration and to reco...

 “We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.” W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions Intuition is one of the most powerful faculties for gaining ...

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”  Hanlon’s Razor What is responsible for the sickness of modern society? Is it the evil machinations of the power hungry...

“Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor have become mere entries in technique’s filing cabinet.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society In the ...

“Big Pharma is one of the largest and most profitable businesses in America, and in order to sell their chemical goods to allegedly treat the mind/psyche, pharmaceutical companies must convince societ...

“The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.”      Leonardo Da Vinci Today many subscribe to hustle culture and believe that to be successful in business, a career, or a creat...

“It’s easy to be a naive idealist. It’s easy to be a cynical realist. It’s quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.”       Marie-Louise von Franz To be a philosophical ...

In an interview in 1964, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke stated:      “The most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won’t be men or monkeys. They’ll be machines—the remote descend...

 “The Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which the phone-based childhood replaced the play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness.”     Jonathan Ha...

“There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.”    Arthur S...

Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of history’s greatest novelists, but he is also one of history’s greatest psychologists. His stories contain depictions of characters who span the spectrum of human...

“For it was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, “What is your idea, in infesting the sea?” And the pirate answered,...

One of the surest ways to ruin our life is to be in a close relationship with a narcissist. Whether it be a narcissist as a parent, husband, wife, colleague, or friend, if we are forced to deal with a...

 Many believe that the most important social divide in the West today is between the political left and right. Much of the discourse in the corporate and independent media revolves around this battle,...

“. . .when a living organism is cut off from its roots, it loses a connection with the foundation of its existence and must necessarily perish.”   Carl Jung, Aion Carl Jung dedicated his life to a sin...

“The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all…Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life...

…totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it… bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate ex...

“…in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freenes...

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.” Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel’s Journal Depression is the darkest of human experiences. It saps o...

In the 1st century AD, the Greek orator and philosopher Dio Chrysostom wrote:  “Luxury makes pains seem even harder, and dulls and weakens one’s pleasures. For the person who is always luxuriating and...

“It seems to me that we face very grave crises indeed and that, if we are to survive, we need not just a few new measures, but a complete change of heart and mind.” Iain McGilchrist, The Master and Hi...

“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and [destroys] itself. . .It is in vain to Say that Democracy is … less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristo...

“To live alone one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both…” Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols According to a 2010 study published in the journal P...

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”   George Orwell, 1984 George Orwell’s writings have experienced a spike in popularity over the past several de...

“Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.”    Hippocrates Modern medicine has achieved remarkable results. Its ability to save people from ailments which a mere generation ago would h...

“The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel bef...