11 Quotes & Sayings By Luke Rhinehart

Luke Rhinehart was born in the small town of Madrid, New York in 1941. He grew up steeped in the American West, where his father was a rancher, and he was an avid reader of adventure stories. After graduating from high school, he left home to study biology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He spent most of his college years determined to complete the course work necessary to work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts Read more

However, after five years of study he was dropped by his fifth employer because he couldn't find a job related to his advanced degree. He drifted for many years, working on boats and doing odd jobs while trying to write. When he was thirty-two years old, Rhinehart decided to hitchhike around the world with only a backpack and a book about leadership that he had written while still in college.

The journey took ten months and ended abruptly when he received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. During the course of treatment it became clear that he would never walk again. Despite this devastating setback, Rhinehart continued to write on his typewriter.

The result was Reality Therapy: A New Way of Healing Human Problems Through Controlled Thought Reform (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972). It became an instant cult classic and has been translated into over twenty languages. Despite being unable to leave his house for most of the next twenty years due to his illness, Rhinehart kept writing till he completed The Dice Man (Doubleday & Company, 1982).

1
From children to men we cage ourselves in patterns to avoid facing new problems and possible failure after a while men become bored because there are no new problems. Such is life under the fear of failure. Luke Rhinehart
2
And it's his illusions about whatconstitutes the real world which are inhibiting him... His reality, his reason, his society. .. These are what must be destroyed Luke Rhinehart
3
Like the turtle's shell, the sense of self serves as a shield against stimulation and as a burden which limits mobility into possibly dangerous areas. The turtle rarely has to think about what's on the other side of his shell; whatever it is, it can't hurt him, can't even touch him. So, too, adults insist on the shell of a consistent self for themselves and their children and appreciate turtles for friends; they wish to be protected from being hurt or touched or confused or having to think. If a man can rely on consistency, he can afford not to notice people after the first few times. But I imagined a world in which each individual might be about to play the lover, the benefactor, the sponger, the attacker, the friend: and once known as one of the next day he might yet be anything. Would we pay attention to this person? Would life be boring? Would life be livable? I saw then clearly for the first time that the fear of failure keeps us huddled in the cave of self - a group of behavior patterns we have mastered and have no intention of risking failure by abandoning. Luke Rhinehart
4
I am born anew at each green fall of the die, and by die-ing I eliminate my since. The past - paste, pus, piss - is all only illusory events created by a stone mask to justify an illusory stagnant present. Luke Rhinehart
5
Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself. Luke Rhinehart
6
Love is one of society's many socially accepted forms of madness. Luke Rhinehart
7
Psychoanalysis seemed an expensive, slow working, unreliable tranquilizer. If LSD were really to do what Alpert and Leary claimed for it, all psychiatrists would be out of a job overnight. Luke Rhinehart
8
All belief is the least reliable form of knowing... Where there is a natural knowing of God, there is not need for belief. The highest form of certainty is something you know so thoroughly and so naturally that it's impossible to put into words. Luke Rhinehart
9
One desire, my friends, one: to kill yourself. You must desire this. You must feel that a voyage of discovery is more important than all the little trips which the normal consumer self wants to buy. Luke Rhinehart
10
It's the way a man chooses to limit himself that determines his character. A man without habits, consistency, redundancy - and hence boredom - is not human. He's insane. Luke Rhinehart