“The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions.”

— Wilhelm Reich , book Listen, Little Man!

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions. Under the pressure of some task which was dear to him he learned better and better to sense the threat that comes from his smallness and pettiness. The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man.

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Wilhelm Reich 89

Austrian-American psychoanalyst 1897–1957

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“The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness, of others' strength and greatness.”

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Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness, of others' strength and greatness. He is proud of his great generals but not proud of himself. He admires thought which he did not have and not the thought he did have. He believes in things all the more thoroughly the less he comprehends them, and does not believe in the correctness of those ideas which he comprehends most easily.