'...pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.' 

                        -Andre Breton 'Manifeste du Surrealisme' 1924


'If a man becomes ill he will consult a doctor, and being confider of the efficiency of the doctor, he will then place himself under hi. direction, in the hope of finding his health again.
When mankind becomes ill, it will go on pretending to be in perfect health until the malady so presumes upon the body of society that the rot must be hewn resolutely away, by revolution against the ostrich-like will of the patient.
Our civilisation is a man dangerously close to death; and such is his illness that if he is to be restored to vigour, he must abandon forever many of his oldest habits and set himself to acquiring new ones.
Now what are these dangerous habits that have led us to this morass? The chief one, and that with which we are immediately concerned, is the habit of thinking. '


'Today reason rules almost as much by force as by habit. At this moment, while we are at war against totalitarian ideologues, we yet permit the more repressive dictatorship of reason over our mind. It is a tribute to the efficiency of this policeman-ship that we may look upon this planet and see how utterly Christ has failed.'


'Reason was the weapon with which man defended himself against those who would do him harm, it was the servant that would provide his food and tend his needs and desires. And as such, it served its purpose. It became a habit. It was the correct, the only way to think.
Those who revolted were called criminals, madmen, anarchists or occasionally, after they had been murdered, saviours, prophets, reformers.
To crush the breaking up of the tradition, physically enforced laws were made, each one presuming to be the illumination of some reasonable ideal.' 

'In its labour, the mind seeks to return to the past- into a world of pre human organism; of substand pulising with the life force, but not yet evolved into humanity. We beome aware of the convulsive struggle of matter to shape itself toward its human destiny.'
                       -James Gleeson, 1941 'The Necessity for Realism'


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The Necessity of Surrealism