Sheldon B. Kopp Quotes

That is one of the reasons why a man should pick a path with heart, so that he can find his laughter.

In the long run we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.

He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.

I've never began any important venture for which I felt adequate prepared

Often things are as bad as they seem.

If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone.

You can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who you are and take your chances. (105)

Transformations require that we let go of familiar ways of doing things, without yet knowing what we will do next.

To live without the creative potential of our own destructiveness is to be a cardboard angel.

Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty. (10)

He may only get to keep that which he is willing to let go of.

If outrageous imagination is the wine of madness, then come fill my cup.

You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case.

Each of us is ultimately alone.

Again and again I find that my own inner counselor, my secret dreaming self, is not only wise and helpful but usually amusing as well.

You win some, you lose some, and your losses are never made up to you. She will simply have to do without; like it or not, she must face her losses and her helplessness to undo them.

For each of us, the only hope resides in his own efforts, in completing his own story, not in the other's interpretation. (63)

So it is that there is nothing to be taught, but yet there is something to be learned.

The only times that we can have what we long for are those moments when we stop grasping for it. At such times, all things are possible: "to a mind that is 'still' the whole universe surrenders".

Escape is not a dirty word. None of us can face what's happening head-on all of the time.

All significant battles are fought within self.

Anarchy could never get a man to the moon, but it may the only mode that can allow us to survive on earth.

The unlived life isn't worth examining.

Each person's only hope for improving his lot rests on recognizing the true nature of his or her basic personality, surrendering to it, and becoming who he or she really is.

Sometimes life seems like a poorly designed cage within which man has been sentenced to be free.

Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth.

Sometimes it seems to me that in this absurdly random life there is some inherent justice in the outcome of personal relationships. In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to give.

Openness to my own dreams puts me in touch with the oldest, most human aspects of who I am; it helps me find my place in the community of man.

I have long trusted dreams as prophetic visions. I do not mean that they foretell the future, only that they illuminate the present, when my eyes are closed, so that I may see clearly.

One can choose life, or choose death. Having chosen life, I must live it as it is.

All of the truly important battles are waged within the self. (7)

It is not possible to know how much is just enough, until we have experienced how much is more than enough. (64)

Dreams provide a kind of wisdom of the heart, an echoing voice of a profound human sensitivity too often lost to us in the reasonable life of days.