# Quote — Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd

> Boys today hardly aspire to immortal honor, the honor of self-fulfilling achievement. It is highly disapproved of in the code of the organized system. Instead, they devote themselves to protecting their “personal honor” against insults; and conversely they dream of the transient notoriety which will prove that they are “somebody,” which they doubt. The personal honor that they protect does not include truthfulness, honesty, public usefulness, integrity, independence, or virtues like that. A reputation for these things does not win respect, it has no publicity value; it’s believed to be phony anyway, and if it’s true, the person is hard to get along with.

- Author: [Paul Goodman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman.md)
- Book: [Growing Up Absurd](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd.md)
- Page: 150
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Goodman#Growing_Up_Absurd_(1956)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/boys-today-hardly

## More from this book

> We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least.

p. 94 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/we-certainly-have.md)

> The ancient dream of man to fly among the stars and go through the could and look down on the lands and seas has degenerated in its realization to the socialized and apathetic behavior of passengers who hardly look out the windows.

p. 144 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/the-ancient-dream.md)

> To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.

p. 153 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/to-consider-powerful.md)