# Quote — Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd

> The “brightness” of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions.

- 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: 85
- 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/the-brightness-of-the

## 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)