“A man cannot be comfortable [or cannot be made comfortable] without his own approval.”
Barbara Walters (1929) American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality
Occasionally attributed to Walters; actually written by Mark Twain in What Is Man? and other essays (1917), p. 17.
Misattributed
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 219-220
Context: There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.
Erving Goffman (1922–1982) Sociologist, writer, academic
Erving Goffman (1967: 10), as cited in: Trevino (2003,, p. 37).
1950s-1960s
“A will of his own in a young man without a shilling is a superfluity”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
The Monthly Magazine
“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.”
Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet
G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist
Said of Benito Mussolini while comparing him to Hildebrand (i. e. Pope Gregory VII), as quoted in "The Pearl of Great Price" by Robert Royal, his Introduction to "The Resurrection of Rome" by G. K. Chesterton in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (1990) by Vol. XXI, p. 274
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C. (22 October 1883).
1880s, Speech at the Civil Rights Mass Meeting (1883)
Variant: No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death
"The Present Outcome of Psychoanalysis", p. 196
The Denial of Death (1973)
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
p 23
The Undiscovered Self (1958)
