“Man is ruined by servility, conformism, obsequiousness, rather than aggressiveness, which is much more common in the environment than within ourselves.”
Source: From the presentation Elogio dell'imperfezione (Garzanti, 1987), Liceo classico Massimo d'Azeglio, Torino; cited in Giovanni Berlinguer, Il leopardo in salotto, Editori Riuniti, 1990.
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Rita Levi-Montalcini 15
Italian neurologist 1909–2012Related quotes

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.

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

“The trouble with most of us is that we'd rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”
Variant: The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism
Source: The Power of Positive Thinking