Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.

- Adam Phillips

To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.

- Adam Phillips

The past influences everything and dictates nothing.

- Adam Phillips

Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.

- Adam Phillips

Believing in religion is like believing that adulthood is the solution to childhood.

- Adam Phillips

The vocabulary of one’s self-criticism is so impoverished and clichéd. We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.

- Adam Phillips

Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.

- Adam Phillips

There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs

- Adam Phillips

People change, but there really are limits. One thing you discover in psychoanalytic treatment is the limits of what you can change about yourself or…

- Adam Phillips