transpa

Michelangelo
“Which spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognise the fact, that the foot is more elegant, than the shoe, and the skin is more beautiful, than the garment with which it is clothed?”
– Michelangelo, Italy

“Clothes make the man.
Without clothes, we are just human beings.”
– Anonymous

Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, ca. 1511
Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, ca. 1511

John Paul II with Bill Clinton
Pope John Paul II with Bill Clinton

“Because of being created by God, the human body can remain naked and uncovered, yet, untouched, still preserves its splendour and beauty.”
– Karol Wojtyla, Poland – later Pope John Paul II

“To be ashamed of ones nude body, is blasphemy and disregard of divine creation, for man is modeled to the image of God.”
– Anonymous

Oscar Wilde Memorial in Dublin
Oscar Wilde Memorial in Dublin

“If people were meant to be nude, they would have been born this way.”
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish writer

“Avow your body, do not cover it unnecessarily – for it is you, who is in it.”
– François Picardin

“Nudity makes you noble, clothing makes you vain.”
Helmut Schultze, German naturist

“To associate a nude body always with the concept of eroticism, is about as intelligent, as to think always of eating in context with the mouth.”
– Kurt Tucholsky

“Actually, you should declare the whole world a ‘clothing optional’ area. Then all people could run around everywhere as they like. For the few prudish ones, who feel insulted by seeing nude people, you could provide separate camps, in which wearing clothes would be mandatory. And only if a normal person (naturally nude) would approach such a camp close enough, the prudish ones would have once again the opportunity to obsess about their morbid aggression by feeling insulted therefore without becoming a burden to normal people any more.”
– Anonymous

Kurt Tucholsky 1896 an seinem ersten Schultag
Kurt Tucholsky in 1896 on the first day of school

“Swimwear beats everything in terms of uselessness.”
– Lorenz Kerscher

“Prudery is aStendhal kind of meanness, the worst of all.”
Stendhal

Lorenz Kerscher: foot gymnastics
Lorenz Kerscher: foot gymnastics

Goethe medal from 1982, reverse side
Goethe medal from 1982, reverse side

“The human without a covering is actually the human.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I have an indispensable faith in the expressive power of the human body and a never-tiring reverence for the dignity of nudity.”
– Pablo Picasso

“As long as children are not allowed to see naked adults at times, the children must necessarily feel that there is a secret, and when they feel that way, they become irritated and indecent.”
Bertrand Russell, mathematician, pedagogue and philosopher, England
in his book Marriage and Morals (1929),
cited from wikiquote on Marriage and Morals, ch. 8, p. 116[1].

“With our clothes, we throw away at the same time all the intentions and considerations of ourselves and enjoy impartially, which is good for us.”
– Hans W. Fischer, Das Schlemmerparadies

Bertrand Russell with John and Kate
Bertrand Russell with John and Kate

“NudityAlain Danielou is equal with freedom, virtue, truth, and health.”
“Identification of the gods and man
with nature requires nudity.”
Alain Daniélou (1907–1994), French historian, intellectual, musicologist, indologist, and hindu

“The children Truth and Lie grew up as very close friends. One day, they went swimming nude in the river. Lie first climbed out of the water and decided to put on the clothes of Truth. Lie then suggested to Truth to change clothes. But naked Truth preferred to stay the way, she was.”
– A fable from England

Jeff Jarvis - Re publica
Jeff Jarvis - Re publica
The German paradoxon

“In the society of nudes, no one is naked.”
Jeff Jarvis, Journalist and professor of journalism

160 thousand years of homo sapiens are
160 thousand years of naturist tradition.
Helmut Schultze

“The most effective protection of nature is the frailty of humans, their works, and their actions, the effects of which must sooner or later destroy them themselves, because a large part of their present actions is contrary to all sense of nature.”
Viktor Schauberger

“Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder, what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity.”
Dr Lee Salk, physician and psychiatrist

“And the weaver said, ‘Speak to us of Clothes.’
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Some of you say, ‘It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear.’
But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
– Poem “Clothes” (leb.net) by Khalil Gibran (en.wikipedia.org, 1883–1931), Lebanese writer, poet, and visual artist, member of the New York Pen League,
in his book The Prophet (en.wikipedia.org)

Photos: Public Domain via wikimedia commons


[1] Full cit.:
“The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex… It is good for children to see each other and their parents naked whenever it so happens naturally. There will be a short period, probably at about three years old, when the child is interested in the differences between his father and his mother, and compares them with the differences between himself and his sister, but this period is soon over, and after this he takes no more interest in nudity than in clothes. So long as parents are unwilling to be seen naked by their children, the children will necessarily have a sense that there is a mystery, and having that sense they will become prurient and indecent. There is only one way to avoid indecency, and that is to avoid mystery.”
 • Ch. 8, p. 116"

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