Karl A. Menninger's Quotes

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

Love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

The voice of the intelligence is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.

One does not fall in love; one grows into love, and love grows in him.

What's done to children, they will do to society.

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life.

Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse.

One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.

We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.

Police are not all bad guys. Nobody is all bad guys.

Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide.