YouSaid · the spoken record

M. Scott Peck

lines on the record: 51
first: 2020-11-04
most recent: 2020-11-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I kind of think that it's struggling now. I think that the birth is going to be an ongoing thing. We've always envisaged utopia as being some kind of static place where you get to and then everything's perfect and you don't have to do anymore. And you can sit around on your duff. And I think that utopia is a kind of process. I think that the world is always going to be in the process of being born. Just like we as people.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it is kind of neuter. And I don't think God is neuter. I think God is she, He is very sexy. Yeah, I got a whole lecture I give on that, but I don't think it'd be right for this program.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And inspiration means the incoming of breath or spirit. So I think I was called by God, but if you want secular people, I would call it your muse. Really, they're talking about God, except they're secular peoples. Yeah, and I always say”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I was sitting one autumn evening in my living room and it just said, write me, discipline, love, grace, write me. And I'd had that kind of thing happen before, and I thought it was kind of crazy. So I said, well, let's see how this looks in the morning. And when I've got a clear head, and it looked pretty good. And then I said, let's see how this looks next week. Then after about three weeks started revising my schedule so that I could write it. But you know, to write a book, that's a kind of two-year endeavor. Plus I had to set aside from a busy practice. And I couldn't do something like that unless I was really enthusiastic about it. And enthusiasm, you know, means enthaos, God within. It's like, I couldn't have done it without God's help. And Bach said, God wrote my music. Now, I don't think that God wrote the road last traveled. It's not the literal, unerrant word of God. It's even got a few mistakes in there. But I think that I had some help with it.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the neatest things about this was it was such a small moment. I loved to watch blizzards and heavy stone. I'm always wishing.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And, well, maybe you can give me a certificate of mental health. Mental health. Yeah, I talked to Snowflakes. I said it was nice of you to come by and drift down a little more. And I said, you know, makes me feel kind of better just to see you. And then as it drifted out of sight, I said, you know, maybe you're a friendly snowflake. And then I said, hey, I can write a book about a friendly snowflake.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, people have been urging me for years to write some kind of children's book which would embody the principles of my other work, including the Road Last Traveled. And I said, no, I said, you do it. I said, I don't know how to talk to children. I don't even like children. I don't understand children very well. You do it. But about two years ago, I was out doing a speaking engagement in November in Columbus, Ohio, and it was a really cold gray day. And I got into my hotel room, and I was feeling kind of lonely and sorry for myself that I'd left home. The skyline wasn't too great. But as I was sitting there looking out the window, this one little snowflake started falling past my window. And this got me out of feeling sorry for myself. And I said, well, hi there, Snowflake. And then it kind of drifted down a little bit.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remembered something about having power issues back then with my own father, and I tried to do the best I can. We kind of transcended. He did a wonderful job with the illustrations.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, this was kind of a surprise to me. The greatest pleasure about it is that it's illustrated by my son Christopher. He called up one night and he's an artist out in San Francisco. And I told him I was starting to write my first book that was for children as well as for adults. And he said, hey, let me illustrate it. And we got together. It really worked out well. Now there's some problems.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, I'm really sorry about that, but that kind of... No, I am. Sorry, that kind of stuff hurts and can leave scars that you got to work on, and it is tough.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if I could give one gift to parents, it would be to be able to remember what it was like when they were children, what it was like to be a child. One of the problems of poor parenting is that most parents had forgotten what it was like. It is not easy to be a child because there is so much to learn. And I think that talking to children about saying, yeah, it isn't easy. I'm sorry. It is hurting. Often what we do, you know, we'll say, don't do that, and then wipe that look off your face.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But my two hours a day doing nothing, I call this my prayer time most of the time I'm not praying, I'm just thinking about my life. If I called it my thinking time, people would feel free to interrupt it. But if I call it my prayer time, then that makes it holy. That's another trick of being a religious sort of person. And that's where I get my life in order. That's where I try to look at things in perspective and set my priorities between what is important and what isn't important rather than just quickly responding.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know a lot of people ask me, Scotty, how can you do all that you can do? How can you keep writing books and run across the country shooting your mouth off and be all involved in this community business and social action and still be something of a husband and something of a father? The reason I tell them that I can do all that is that I spend at least two hours a day doing nothing. Now they immediately tell me, of course they're much too busy to do that. Instead, they're watching you on TV”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are what might be called the right wing and left wing responses, and you may realize why on Thursdays I call myself a radical moderate. But even though they're opposite, they're the same in the sense they both shoot from the hip kind of responses. Take no thought, no energy, no time.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we'll set up an appointment maybe later that day, maybe the next day, maybe the next week. Sometimes with our busy schedule the next month where we will have had the time to think about the issue, where we clearly be able to hear each other rather than making kind of snap decisions. Most parents make really snap decisions. Somebody says, mommy daddy, can I stay out to 2 a.m. this Saturday night? The most common ways people respond is to say... No, of course you can't. You know damn well your curfew's 10. Or another is to say, Oh, sure, dear, whatever you'd like.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Except, you know, the problem was that I would come into the kitchen one afternoon when Lily was fixing dinner for a dinner party of 12 that night and I'd raise some profound issue with my marriage. Or I'd come home at the end of the day totally strung out, and she would no sooner cross the threshold than she'd dump some very complex problem about the children on me when there's no reason I couldn't have waited for a day or even a day or two. And so what we've learned to do now is to say, hey, Hun, I would like to talk to you about such and such. When would be a good time?”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To love them, is to love children, but loving, you remember, isn't just having a feeling like I love my children. It is something that has to be translated into action. It's also something that takes a lot of time. One of the things that's terribly important for parents to do is to learn, again, how to speak to their children with a single voice so nothing can be more destructive for children than to have mummies saying, do it this way and daddy saying no, do it that way, and they can just get torn apart. But this takes a lot of time. The most valuable thing, one of the most valuable tricks Lily and I have learned in our 33 and a half years of marriage is how to make appointments with each other. Now initially, this seemed very stultifying and unromantic that you should need to make an appointment to talk with your husband or your wife.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you can sit around and complain about it for the rest of your life, but that's not going to do any good. Eventually, you need to take responsibility for your difficulties yourself and get on with it.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the gods were amazed because no time before when a human being could have blamed something on the gods, did he not take the opportunity that he held himself responsible? And they were so amazed that what they did, they lifted the curse and they transformed the harpies into what were called the Eumenides or the bearers of grace who then became wise voices teaching him. The message of this is eventually, no matter how badly you've been treated as a child.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And finally, after about 20 years of trying to atone for his problems of doing self-psychotherapy, Orestes went to the gods and said, hey, listen, I've done enough, atonement. I think that you ought to lift this curse. So they held a trial, and Apollo was Areste's defense attorney, and he said, well, you know, the gods really set this up. It really wasn't Orestes' fault. Whereupon Orestes stood up in the courtroom and he said, it was I, not the gods who killed my mother.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, it can be very hard for children to assume responsibility for their own lives when their parents have treated them irresponsibly. Nonetheless, eventually you've got to get unhooked from your parents. You may remember in the road last travel, there's this wonderful old Greek story about Orestes. His mother had killed his father, and that put him in a real”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's really one great rule for discernment. It's been said in two ways. My grandfather used to say, handsome is, is handsome does. And another translation of that was when Jesus said by their fruits.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that parents can incredibly influence their children's lives. Now, there is no way, I think, that most don't try hard enough, don't learn enough. On the other hand, no matter how much you learn, there's no way that you can do it perfectly. My own children who were in their early 30s now are just getting around to really blast me for all the things that I did wrong.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the children are gifts to us from God essentially and that we are stewards of that gift and I think it is terribly important that we learn how to steward that it takes a great deal of time and energy and learning. One of the greatest virtues of having children is the way to learn from them. It's a way of joining the human race and really learning. Yes.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I'm indebted to my father back in the 50s. This was more pointed. He told me about an Oriental sage he was asked by a reporter or somebody like you whether he was an optimist or a pessimist. And he said, oh, he said, I'm an optimist, of course. And the reporter said, well, how can you possibly be an optimist with all of this racial problems and corruption and inflation and war and whatnot? And he said, well, he said, I'm not very optimistic about this century, but I'm profoundly optimistic about the next one. Well, now that's 40 years later, I'm not so optimistic about the first half of the 21st century, but I'm profoundly optimistic, Oprah, about the second half if we can get there without blowing ourselves up or killing ourselves off with racial problems.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we chose to do so, we've got this technology of peacemaking or reconciliation. And I can guarantee you, take it out of this country for a moment, that in South Africa, if you took five Anglos and 15 blacks, 15 Afrikaners and about 35 blacks, which is about proportional population, got them in a room together for four or five days and got them to submit to these rules, to the disciplines of community building. I can guarantee you that they would leave there, not only loving each other, but able to work together with a profound effectiveness. But the problem is how do you get them into the room? I was talking about the Baptist Church, the Southern Baptist Church. There's been a huge conflict going on for 40 years there, and they've had peacemaking machinery off in the wings, but people haven't used it. A lot of people would rather fight than switch. And it is not so easy to learn. We can learn. We know how to do this if we're willing to.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Than it is to be civil. To be civil requires that we listen to people, and that means that we might get changed. It requires that we think about new things. It is much easier to sit with your prejudices and not get to know other people and not change.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my book, A World Waiting to Be Born, is subtitled Civility Rediscovered and is about civility, about people relating together with civility. A lot of it is also about this business of pain again because I point out it is easier to be uncivil.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, indeed. I think that we can. But boy, what a lot of discipline over the past 60, 70 years, just as we have learned how to blow ourselves off the face of the earth. Unbeknownst to most people, we have developed a technology, a human technology, as opposed to a technology of bombs or things to make peace, technology of reconciliation, peacemaking, or consensual decision-making or what we call community building. And so we know how to get blacks and whites together greens, yellows, and purple peep leaders. We know how to resolve conflicts. But the problem is to get people to use this knowledge.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Americans in their distaste for pain will think that middle age begins when you're 60, and then suddenly 65, they find that they're in old age. Well, I'm in late middle age, and if you want to look at that as a problem that you can solve, you're not going to get anywhere. Aging is not a problem that you can solve. Now, if you look at it, okay, what have I got to learn from the aging process and beginning to face my mortality? Then you got a great deal.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had said that without any discipline, you can't solve any problems. With some, you can solve some, and with total discipline, you can solve all problems. But... The solution to some problems is to accept that there is no solution. For instance, I am getting old and I'm getting old quite rapidly. I'm not in middle age, I'm in late middle”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. You don't have to look at it that way, but I think as I was saying, we religious folk get to have spiritual crises. I think it can, if we take a spiritual view of things, I think that it can facilitate our growth.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's when the work of real loving begins, which I defined you may remember as the will to extend yourself. It means go beyond where you ordinarily would be. The will to extend yourself for someone else's spiritual growth, your spouse or your children, or your own. Or your own, and that's very important. We also have to extend ourselves not only for other people, but we have to extend ourselves for ourselves.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that their stars got crossed or something. When they find that they're out of love or they find in the context of a marriage that they're feeling lonely. I had a fantasy when I got married that I would never feel lonely again. And then I found myself at times when I was very difficult to communicate with Lily and we were in different places and I was feeling quite lonely. But actually that's just par for the course. But what happens to a lot of people, yeah, they figure out, gee, I just must have made a mistake. The stars didn't work out and it's wrong when it's par for the course.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now you're slugging through the mud and the swamp sometimes. And that's where we learn a great deal. And then it can become something really rich and strange and wonderful, but it is not unfailing ecstasy.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It becomes an entirely different ballpark. What happens, I was saying that we fall in love with the fantasy that we have, and then what happens after a couple of weeks or a couple of months or even after a couple years after we gotten hooked, like you're thinking of doing, then you wake up one morning and we realize that our beloved no longer conforms to our fantasy. We're left there with a stranger”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is some kind of genetic trick that is pulled on us or an illusion falling in love when we're in love it is not a unselfish loving kind of thing. As a matter of fact, it is a totally narcissistic kind of phenomenon. It is what Martin Buber and his followers have called an II relationship. When we fall in love with somebody, we do not fall in love with somebody else. We fall in love with a fantasy.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you were asking about love and love not being a feeling. You know, there are going to be this Saturday night. There are going to be thousands of men sitting in bars crying in their beer and saying to the barkeep that I really love my children so much and I love my wife so much. Meanwhile, they're not home and they're drinking away the family income. And they are feeling. I mean, they are being honest when they tell the barkeeper.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I preach a lot about what I need to learn, but I did say in that one of the things that we are here to learn is discipline. This is what we teach our children or try to from the word go. And if we don't have any discipline, we can't solve any problems. And I think that's part again of what life is about. It's about solving problems.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a byproduct of you being loving good and a lot of knowledge and a lot of enlightenment is going to come your way as long as you see it as your task to learn.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the key is to accept that it's difficult and also see that we are here to learn. I think that's what the meaning is. Some other place, some other time we may get to be fulfilled. We may get to be happy. Happiness is a byproduct. So for instance, if you want love and you're going out to get love, chances are you're not going to get love. On the other hand, if you are loving and you work on being a loving person, chances are a lot of love is going to come your way.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in fact, you're probably going to get over that depression more quickly if you think of it in terms of the spiritual crisis, which often it is. Not that there aren't biological causes of depression. And again, I think one of the things that we need to do desperately in our culture is to start dignifying discomfort of certain kinds, start dignifying depression in some ways in the road less traveled. You may remember there's a little subsection entitled The Healthiness of Depression. Yes. Midlife crisis, we need to start dignifying crises in our lives”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's one of the virtues of being a sort of spiritual or religious kind of person. You know, other people just get ups and downs in their lives, whereas we religious folk get to have spiritual crises. It is much more dignified to have a spiritual crisis than a depression.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got out of the plane entirely and started flapping my own arms and got about three feet off the floor and then I got really good at it and I got about eight feet off the floor and at that point I stopped having them.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Little bit. I sort of started, I would be on an airplane. I was the pilot for some reason I keep trying to get this thing like an old goose off the ground, and then as my dreams went on, I got a little better. We finally got off.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, what better news could there be than that? We cannot lose. We are bound to win. We are guaranteed winners once we simply realize that.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there is a wonderful author by the name of Donald Nicole, who wrote a book entitled Holiness. And in the introduction to it, he referred to it as a how-to book. He says, if you're caught carrying around a book on holiness and people ask you what you're doing with it, you're likely to say, well, I'm just interested to see what authorities have had to say about the subject. He said, but actually there's no reason for you to buy or read a book on holiness unless you're interested in becoming holy. So it's a how-to book. About two-thirds the way through that book there's a little sentence where Nicole says he says, we cannot lose. We cannot lose once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us holiness.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. Again, the current message of our culture is that we're here to be happy and fulfilled. I do not think that is the meaning of life. I think that the meaning of life is that we're here to learn, that this lifetime is what Keats referred to as this veil of soul making.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that we should hope for some happiness and some relief of pain, and I think this is why doctors are good. And I don't think that all pain is good. But we grow also only through pain. As Benjamin Franklin said, those things that hurt instruct. And I think that what happens to wise people is that sometimes they will actually come to welcome some of the pain in living because that's what they learn from.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is the kind of thing you're not supposed to think about. You know, we are bombarded by the media and even by the church with messages that we should be happy, that the reason that we're here is to be comfortable and fulfilled. And then when people get finding that they're not happy and they're not feeling comfortable or fulfilled, I think that something must be wrong with them because I think that life ought to be easy because that's the kind of message of our culture. It ought to be easy. If you just do it right, it's going to be easy. And they got that and they said, oh, thank God.”
2020-11-04 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Dr. M. Scott Peck · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source