Mary Esther Harding > Quotes

“One thing only can stand against the power of the unconscious and this, paradoxical as it may sound, is the power of individuality.”
― M. Esther Harding

“(Feminist woman) is too concerned with trying to be man's equal, and so discounts all differences, physiological as well as psychological. She never depreciates man, for her aim is to be like a man, equal to a man, no whit his inferior. She no longer has any standpoint for criticism for him, because she has sold her birthright, her feminine inheritance, her uniqueness, by cancelling the difference arising from the fact that she is female.”
― Mary Esther Harding, The Way of All Women

“But when in later life the attention is withdrawn from the external world it may be that the life-energy gathers itself together for its last and most significant creative act. The human being himself becomes the recipient of his own life energy.”
― Mary Esther Harding, The Way of All Women

“Fanaticism rests not on fact but on psychological projection. It is the correlate of doubt, not of certainty. This illusion is particularly apparent in the religious sphere, where every man is convinced that God is as he sees him and not otherwise—a conviction so strong, so invincible, that one would die for it, as many have actually done. For the conviction of the persecutor is just as strong as that of the martyr, and he feels himself compelled either to convince one who holds a different opinion or to eliminate him.”
― Mary Esther Harding, THE 'I' AND THE 'NOT-I': A STUDY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS No. 79 [ 1st ]