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Top 25 David Smail Quotes (2025 Update)

David Smail Quote: “What caused people distress was not so much their own mistakes, inadequacies and illnesses as the powers and influences that bore down upon them from the world beyond their skin.”

1. “What caused people distress was not so much their own mistakes, inadequacies and illnesses as the powers and influences that bore down upon them from the world beyond their skin.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Suffering is a form of knowledge. It tells us what is wrong with our world.”

2. “Suffering is a form of knowledge. It tells us what is wrong with our world.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Our capacity as human beings for imagination and storytelling makes us exquisitely vulnerable to exploitation by those who understand the properties of ideological power.”

3. “Our capacity as human beings for imagination and storytelling makes us exquisitely vulnerable to exploitation by those who understand the properties of ideological power.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “The social havoc wreaked by unfettered economic greed comes to be interiorised as the personal weakness and irresponsibility of those principally affected.”

4. “The social havoc wreaked by unfettered economic greed comes to be interiorised as the personal weakness and irresponsibility of those principally affected.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “We all of us feel that we have things inside us that would make us unlovable if only people knew.”

5. “We all of us feel that we have things inside us that would make us unlovable if only people knew.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Moral rules, as we have seen, simply do not apply in the realm of feelings, if only because feelings cannot be switched on and off at will.”

6. “Moral rules, as we have seen, simply do not apply in the realm of feelings, if only because feelings cannot be switched on and off at will.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “It is of the utmost importance to distinguish between the way someone experiences their problems and what the causes of those problems are.”

7. “It is of the utmost importance to distinguish between the way someone experiences their problems and what the causes of those problems are.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Whether or not we are able to realise our desires, put our plans into effect, do what we know to be right, will depend on our access to powers and resources which we need to acquire, or to have acquired, from the world around us.”

8. “Whether or not we are able to realise our desires, put our plans into effect, do what we know to be right, will depend on our access to powers and resources which we need to acquire, or to have acquired, from the world around us.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “A great deal of distress could be avoided, then, if we could learn to withdraw ‘morality’ from the private world of our feelings and to concentrate instead on the rights and wrongs of our conduct.”

9. “A great deal of distress could be avoided, then, if we could learn to withdraw ‘morality’ from the private world of our feelings and to concentrate instead on the rights and wrongs of our conduct.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Though the contrast between how we feel inside and how we wish to appear to others is universal and causes most of us many an uneasy moment, the extent to which we suffer in this way depends probably on the degree to which we were allowed as children to develop private lives without the threat of adult censure.”

10. “Though the contrast between how we feel inside and how we wish to appear to others is universal and causes most of us many an uneasy moment, the extent to which we suffer in this way depends probably on the degree to which we were allowed as children to develop private lives without the threat of adult censure.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “It is about as sensible to seek the reasons for distress inside the ‘self’ as it would be to see feeling cold as a matter of personal responsibility.”

11. “It is about as sensible to seek the reasons for distress inside the ‘self’ as it would be to see feeling cold as a matter of personal responsibility.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “But in the end the first step has to be taken in fear and trembling, with no guarantee that there will be a positive outcome.”

12. “But in the end the first step has to be taken in fear and trembling, with no guarantee that there will be a positive outcome.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “From the brutal racism of the least privileged, through the proverbial mean resentment of the petit bourgeois to the paranoid secrecy of the very powerful, we are all haunted by the possibility of slipping from our perch.”

13. “From the brutal racism of the least privileged, through the proverbial mean resentment of the petit bourgeois to the paranoid secrecy of the very powerful, we are all haunted by the possibility of slipping from our perch.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “There can be few people who are not familiar with the state of depression. As with anxiety, it is probably when we can’t see the reasons for it that it turns from a painful and unpleasant experience into a malign and threatening form of misery.”

14. “There can be few people who are not familiar with the state of depression. As with anxiety, it is probably when we can’t see the reasons for it that it turns from a painful and unpleasant experience into a malign and threatening form of misery.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “The notion that we should in all circumstances be able to smile through adversity is one of the mystifications that keep the mental-health industry alive.”

15. “The notion that we should in all circumstances be able to smile through adversity is one of the mystifications that keep the mental-health industry alive.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “To bring about change you need access to power.”

16. “To bring about change you need access to power.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Just imagine how terrible life would be if we really could be therapeutically engineered into clones of some kind of norm of ‘adjustment’, and how inevitably therapeutic technique would become an instrument of tyrannical repression.”

17. “Just imagine how terrible life would be if we really could be therapeutically engineered into clones of some kind of norm of ‘adjustment’, and how inevitably therapeutic technique would become an instrument of tyrannical repression.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “The ‘experts’ will not change the world – they will simply make a satisfactory living helping people to adjust to it; the world will only change when ordinary people realize what is making them unhappy, and do something about it.”

18. “The ‘experts’ will not change the world – they will simply make a satisfactory living helping people to adjust to it; the world will only change when ordinary people realize what is making them unhappy, and do something about it.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “We need to abandon our fixation on the ‘normal’ and consider who we are, and how we came to be so.”

19. “We need to abandon our fixation on the ‘normal’ and consider who we are, and how we came to be so.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Much of our waking life is spent in a desperate struggle to persuade others that we are not what we fear ourselves to be, or what they may discover us to be if they see through our pretenses. Most people, most of the time, have a profound and unhappy awareness of the contrast between what they are and what they ought to be.”

20. “Much of our waking life is spent in a desperate struggle to persuade others that we are not what we fear ourselves to be, or what they may discover us to be if they see through our pretenses. Most people, most of the time, have a profound and unhappy awareness of the contrast between what they are and what they ought to be.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Tinkering, however ‘scientifically’, with our minds and bodies will never make the world a better place.”

21. “Tinkering, however ‘scientifically’, with our minds and bodies will never make the world a better place.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “You can no more banish hatred from your heart than you can summon love into it, and the wisest course is to accept that, whatever you feel, you probably have good reasons for it.”

22. “You can no more banish hatred from your heart than you can summon love into it, and the wisest course is to accept that, whatever you feel, you probably have good reasons for it.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Whatever may once have been society’s reasons for reinforcing family loyalties at all costs, there can surely no longer be any justification for people being forced to maintain within them such deep emotional schisms.”

23. “Whatever may once have been society’s reasons for reinforcing family loyalties at all costs, there can surely no longer be any justification for people being forced to maintain within them such deep emotional schisms.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “We believe what we learn about ourselves, however unjust the lesson.”

24. “We believe what we learn about ourselves, however unjust the lesson.”

— David Smail

David Smail Quote: “Many children, however, are in some or many important respects unable to fulfill the expectations of their parents, and carry round with them, so to speak, raw, painful areas of disconfirmation which leave them exposed to sudden attacks of self-doubt and uncertainty, sudden ebbings of self-confidence which may well be experienced as ‘symptoms’ of anxiety or depression.”

25. “Many children, however, are in some or many important respects unable to fulfill the expectations of their parents, and carry round with them, so to speak, raw, painful areas of disconfirmation which leave them exposed to sudden attacks of self-doubt and uncertainty, sudden ebbings of self-confidence which may well be experienced as ‘symptoms’ of anxiety or depression.”

— David Smail

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