1963 interview, used in The Century of the Self (2002)
Context: My argument with so much of psychoanalysis, is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness, when in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people's suffering; that the problem is not to undo suffering or to wipe it off the face of the earth but to make it inform our lives, instead of trying to cure ourselves of it constantly and avoid it, and avoid anything but that lobotomized sense of what they call "happiness." There's too much of an attempt, it seems to me, to think in terms of controlling man, rather than freeing him. Of defining him rather than letting him go. It's part of the whole ideology of this age, which is power-mad.
“Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.”
Source: Community And Growth
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Jean Vanier 36
Canadian humanitarian 1928–2019Related quotes
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
“Each must the other take as sign, short sign
To stop the whirlwind, balk the elements.”
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure
Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, 1992, pp 35-36
From books
In reference to the Alabama Council on Human Relations, an organization which was joined by King, whose church's meeting room was used to hold monthly meetings for the Montgomery chapter the council. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)
1950s
Context: Although the Montgomery council never had a large membership, it played an important role. As the only truly interracial group in Montgomery, it served to keep the desperately needed channels of communication open between the races.
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated. In providing an avenue of communication, the council was fulfilling a necessary condition for better race relations in the South.
RTV Rijnmond De moord op Pim Fortuyn http://www.rijnmond.nl/Homepage/Nieuws?view=/News%2FPagina_items%2Fdossiers%2FDe%20moord%20op%20Pim%20Fortuyn, Biografie Pim Fortuyn auf Google Sites http://sites.google.com/site/superlutser/biopim
Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.