“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
– Noam Chomsky
“Metaphysics is an enquiry over and above what-is, with a view to winning back again as such and in totality for our understanding… In every question the being (Da-sein) that questions is himself caught up in the question… Once Nothing is somehow made a problem this contrast not only undergoes clearer definition but also arouses the true and authentic metaphysical question regarding the Being of what-is. Nothing ceases to be the vague opposite of what-is: it now reveals itself as integral to the Being of what-is… Hence no scientific discipline can hope to equal the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured with the yard-stick of the idea of science.”
“Due to the manner in which it thinks of beings, metaphysics almost seems to be, without knowing it, the barrier which keeps man from the original involvement of Being in human nature. What if the absence of this involvement and the oblivion of this absence determined the entire modern age? What if the absence of Being abandoned man more and more exclusively to beings, leaving him forsaken and far from any involvement of Being in his nature, while this forsakenness itself remained veiled? What if this were the case – and had been the case for a long time now? What if there were signs that this oblivion will become still more decisive in the future? … Would there still be occasion, if this should be our situation, to deceive ourselves with pleasant phantasms and to indulge, of all things, in an artificially induced elation? If the oblivion of Being which has been described here should be real, would there not be occasion enough for a thinker who recalls Being to experience a genuine horror? What more can his thinking do than to endure in dread this fateful withdrawal while first of all facing up to the oblivion of Being? But how could thought achieve this as long as its fatefully granted dread seems to it no more than a mood of depression? What does such dread, which is fated by Being, have to do with psychology or psychoanalysis? … Suppose that the overcoming of metaphysics involved the endeavor to commence with a regard for the oblivion of Being – the attempt to learn to develop such a regard, in order to experience this oblivion and to absorb this experience into the involvement of Being in man, and to preserve it there: then, in the distress of the oblivion of Being, the question, ‘What is metaphysics?’ might well become the most necessary necessity for thought.”
“Philosophy, then, is not a doctrine, not some simplistic scheme for orienting oneself in the world, certainly not an instrument or achievement of human Dasein. Rather, it is this Dasein itself insofar as it comes to be, in freedom, from out of its own ground. Whoever, by stint of research, arrives at this self-understanding of philosophy is granted the basic experience of all philosophizing, namely that the more fully and originally research comes into its own, the more surely is it “nothing but” the transformation of the same few simple questions. But those who wish to transform must bear within themselves the power of a fidelity that knows how to preserve. And one cannot feel this power growing within unless one is up in wonder. And no one can be caught up in wonder without travelling to the outermost limits of the possible. But no one will ever become the friend of the possible without remaining open to dialogue with the powers that operate in the whole of human existence. But that is the comportment of the philosopher: to listen attentively to what is already sung forth, which can still be perceived in each essential happening of the world. And in such comportment the philosopher enters the core of what is truly at stake in the task he has been given to do.”
“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.”
“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
– Martin Heidegger
“Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.”
“The powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
– Walt Whitman
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.”
– Robert Herrick
“And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
– Shakespeare
“Nobody sits like this rock sits. You rock, rock. The rock just sits and is. You show us how to just sit here and that’s what we need.”
– I Heart Huckabees (film)
“Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free.”
“Beneath this mask, there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask, there is an idea… And ideas are bulletproof.”
“Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.”
– V for Vendetta (film)
“Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”
– Philip K. Dick
“Esotericism is characterized by an interest in these different levels of consciousness and being. Mysticism is not quite so concerned with these intermediate states; it focuses on reaching God in the most direct and immediate way. The mystic wants to reach his destination as quickly as possible; the esotericist wants to learn something about the landscape on the way. Moreover, mysticism tends more toward passivity: a quiet “waiting upon God” rather than active investigation.”
– Richard Smoley
“The Aneristic Principle is that of apparent order; the Eristic Principle is that of apparent disorder. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of pure chaos, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making.”
“All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.”
– Principia Discordia
“To practice and confirm all things by conveying one’s self to them, is illusion: for all things [dharmas] to advance forward and practice and confirm the self, is enlightenment.”
“To learn the Buddha Way is to learn one’s self. To learn one’s self is to forget one’s self. To forget one’s self is to be confirmed by all things [dharmas]. To be confirmed by all dharmas is to effect the dropping off of one’s own body-and-mind and the mind-and-body of others as well.”
– Dōgen Zenji
“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”
– Mark Twain
“It is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.”
– David Herbert Lawrence
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”
“The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in-compatibility between man’s egotism and the divine purity, between man’s self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God.”
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”
“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. ‘Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.’ They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
“Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.”
– Aldous Huxley
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
– Sun Tzu
“A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.”
– Tacitus
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
“It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’ The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.”
“The gratification of desires never satisfies; it always leaves behind unrest and irritation that can never be allayed, and then, if the gratification of his desires is thwarted, it will often drive him insane.”
“In the spirit of these vows [the bodhisattva seeks to] cast away all worldly attachments and realize the impermanence of this world. And they devote their merits to the emancipation of all sentient life; they integrate their own lives with the lives of all others, sharing their illusions and sufferings but, at the same time, realizing their freedom from the bonds and attachments of this worldly life.
They know the hindrances and difficulties of worldly living but they know, also, the boundless potentialities of Buddha’s compassion. They are free to go or come, they are free to advance or to stop as they wish, but they choose to remain with those upon whom Buddha has compassion.”
“If there is no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done or ill done, then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction, and anxiety, and I shall live happily.”
– Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
“The whole problem of knowledge has constantly been that of bringing the one and the many together. When man looks about him and within him, he sees that there is a great variety of facts. The question that comes up at once is whether there is any unity in this variety, whether there is one principle in accordance with which all these many things appear and occur. All non-Christian thought, if it has utilized the idea of a supra-mundane existence at all, has used this supra-mundane existence as furnishing only the unity or the a priori aspect of knowledge, while it has maintained that the a posteriori aspect of knowledge is something that is furnished by the universe.”
– Cornelius Van Til
“The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”
“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
“Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it didn’t fall, for it was founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine, and doesn’t do them will be like a foolish man, who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
– Messiah Yeshua
“For in much wisdom is much grief,
And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?
One generation passes away, and another generation comes;
But the earth abides forever.
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And hastens to the place where it arose.
The wind goes toward the south,
And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit.
All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.
All things are full of labor;
Man cannot express it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor the ear filled with hearing.
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.”
“Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor.”
“For in the multitude of dreams and many words there is also vanity.”
“Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth.”
“Wisdom is better than strength. Nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. Words of the wise, spoken quietly, should be heard rather than the shout of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war.”
“The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him.”
“Two things I request of you: remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches.”
“Love covers all sin.”
– King Solomon
“What is man that you are mindful of him?”
“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.'”
“My God, My God, why have forsaken me? Awake! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Arise! Do not cast us off forever. Why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?”
“Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck!”
“The reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.”
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
“I will not fear. What can man do to me? All nations surround me, but in the name of YHWH I will destroy them.”
“If riches increase, do not set your heart on them.”
“The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
– King David
“Gilgamesh, whither are you wandering? Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Gilgamesh, fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let days be full of joy, dance and make music day and night. And wear fresh clothes. And wash your head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, and let your wife delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of men.”
– Siduri, Epic of Gilgamesh
“The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. Now, I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.”
– Primo Levi
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
“Your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become critical. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps, or perhaps rebellious. But don’t give in, insist on arguments and act this way, watchful and consistent, every single time, and the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers — perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
“So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
“I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
“The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”
“You actually wanted to know the question because you always wondered if there was more to life and now you’re crushed because you find out there really isn’t.”
“Just wait a sodding minute! You want a question that goes with the answer for 42? Well, how about what’s six times seven? Or how many Vogons does it take to change a light bulb? Here’s one! How many roads must a man walk down? My head is filled with questions and I can assure you no answer to any one of them has ever brought me one iota of happiness. Except for one. The one. The only question I’ve ever wanted an answer to – is she the one? The answer bloody well isn’t forty-two, it’s yes. Undoubtedly, unequivocally, unabashedly yes. And for one week, one week in my sad little blip of an existence, it made me happy.”
“Presidents don’t have power, their purpose is to draw attention away from it.”
“The Point of View gun conveniently does precisely what its name suggests. That is if you point it at someone and pull the trigger, they instantly see things from your point of view. It was designed by Deep Thought, but commissioned by a consortium of intergalactic angry housewives, who after countless arguments with their husbands were sick to the teeth of ending those arguments with the phrase ‘You just don’t get it, do you?'”
“What to do if you find yourself stuck with no hope of rescue: Consider yourself lucky that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which given your present circumstances seems more likely, consider yourself lucky that it won’t be troubling you much longer.”
“Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to take you to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction, ’cause I don’t.”
“A man who no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India company.”
“The Encyclopedia Galactica, in its chapter on Love states that it is far too complicated to define. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: Avoid, if at all possible. Unfortunately, Arthur Dent has never read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
“‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
“They don’t think, they don’t imagine, most of them can’t even spell, they just run things.”
“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”
“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
“‘All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.’
‘No,’ said the old man, ‘that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.'”
“Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
‘Ah … ! What’s happening?’ it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation …
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was, ‘Oh no, not again.’ Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”
– Douglas Adams
“Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.”
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
– Voltaire
“Wherever and whenever the ego function began to form, it was akin to a cancerous tumor or a blockage in the energy of the psyche. The use of psychedelic plants in a context of shamanic initiation dissolved-as it dissolves today-the knotted structure of the ego into undifferentiated feeling, what Eastern philosophy calls the Tao.”
“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
– Terence McKenna
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
– Albert Camus
“On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.”
“They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn’t you say the same thing about life?”
“”You can’t fight city hall.” “Death and taxes.” “Don’t talk about politics or religion.” This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda, rolling across the picket line. “Lay down, GI! Lay down, GI!”. We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now on the 21st Century, it’s time to stand up and realize, that we should NOT allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not SUBMIT to dehumanization. I don’t know about you, but I’m concerned with what’s happening in this world. I’m concerned with the structure. I’m concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life, and those that seek to control it EVEN MORE! I want FREEDOM! That’s what I want, and that’s what YOU should want! It’s up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we’ll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have GOT to realize we’re being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century’s gonna be a new century! Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, of classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control… it’s gonna be the age of humankind, standing up for something PURE and something RIGHT! What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it’s all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! The TRUTH is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of LIES! I’m SICK of it, and I’M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YA GOT ME? Resistance is NOT futile, we’re gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, WE’RE NOT A BUNCH OF UNDERACHIEVERS, WE’RE GONNA STAND UP, AND WE’RE GONNA BE HUMAN BEINGS! WE’RE GONNA GET FIRED UP ABOUT THE REAL THINGS, THE THINGS THAT MATTER – CREATIVITY, AND THE DYNAMIC HUMAN SPIRIT THAT REFUSES TO SUBMIT! WELL THAT’S IT, that’s all I’ve got to say. It’s in your court now.”
“What you do makes a difference. We should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are.”
“A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny.”
– Waking Life (film)
“Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.”
“And, in fact, we find that the more a cultivated reason purposely occupies itself with the enjoyment of life and with happiness, so much the further does one get away from true satisfaction; and from this there arises in many… a certain degree of misology, that is, hatred of reason; for, after calculating all the advantages they draw… they find that they have in fact only brought more trouble upon themselves instead of gaining in happiness; and because of this they finally envy rather than despise the more common run of people, who are closer to the guidance of mere natural instinct and do not allow their reason much influence on their behavior.”
“Objective reality is known only insofar as it conforms to the essential structure of the knowing mind.”
“Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.”
“Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”
– Immanuel Kant
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.”
– Rumi
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
– Edgar Allan Poe
“I felt that if a man’s proposals met with approval, it should encourage him; if they met with opposition, it should make him fight back; but the real tragedy for him was to lift up his voice among the living and meet with no response neither approval nor opposition just as if he were left helpless in a boundless desert.”
“If there are still men who really want to live in this world, they should first dare to speak out, to laugh, to cry, to be angry, to accuse, to fight – that they may at least cleanse this accursed place of its accursed atmosphere!”
“Whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk.”
“Creation, even when it is a mere outpouring from the heart, wishes to find a public. By definition, creation is sociable. Yet it can be satisfied with merely one single reader: an old friend, a lover.”
– Lu Xun
“This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.”
“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it.”
“The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.”
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
“Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.”
– Albert Einstein
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake.”
“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
“A little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him back. Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”
“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
“It is impossible to love and be wise.”
“Ipsa scientia potestas est.”
– Sir Francis Bacon
“Nothing exists until it is measured.”
– Niels Bohr
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…'”
– Isaac Asimov
“If the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.”
– Maximilien de Robespierre
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
– George Orwell
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
“In India our religions will never take root. The ancient wisdom of the human race will not be displaced by what happened in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian philosophy streams back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.”
“The will does not die but manifests itself afresh in new individuals.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
“War is father of all, king of all. Some it makes gods, some it makes men, some it makes slaves, some free.”
“Time is a game played beautifully by children.”
“The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny – it is the light that guides your way.”
“Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.”
“Nothing endures but change.”
“Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeated all things.”
“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.”
“Man’s character is his fate.”
“Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.”
– Heraclitus
“Man is the measure of all things.”
– Protagoras
“I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.”
“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.”
“Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, “I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”
– Diogenes
“As a student of comparative religions, I believe that Buddhism is the most perfect one the world has even seen. The philosophy of the theory of evolution and the law of karma were far superior to any other creed. It was neither the history of religion nor the study of philosophy that first drew me to the world of Buddhist thought but my professional interest as a doctor. My task was to treat psychic suffering and it was this that impelled me to become acquainted with the views and methods of that great teacher of humanity, whose principal theme was the chain of suffering, old age, sickness and death.”
– Carl Jung
“‘I cannot live with myself any longer.’ This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. ‘Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.’ ‘Maybe,’ I thought, ‘only one of them is real.’
When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. Most people refer to this dimension as time.
The ego reduces the present to a means to an end. The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation. … Both are illusions.”
– Eckhart Tolle
“Whenever the cost of believing a false pattern is real is less than the cost of not believing a real pattern, natural selection will favor patternicity… ‘The inability of individuals—human or otherwise—to assign causal probabilities to all sets of events that occur around them will often force them to lump causal associations with non-causal ones. From here, the evolutionary rationale for superstition is clear: natural selection will favour strategies that make many incorrect causal associations in order to establish those that are essential for survival and reproduction.'”
– Michael Shermer
“Every model we make tells us how our mind works as much as it tells about the universe. These are just human symbolic games. The universe itself is bigger than any of our models.
According to Zen Buddhism, and most forms of Buddhism, and quantum mechanics, any description of the universe which leaves you out is inaccurate, because any description of the universe, and the description of the instrument that you use to take your reading of the universe — if the only instrument you use is your own nervous system, you gotta include your own nervous system in your description of the universe.
So, ergo, any model we make does not describe the universe, it describes what our brains are capable of seeing at this time.
Long before quantum mechanics, the German philosopher Husserl said that all perception is gamble. Every type of bigotry, every type of racism, sexism, prejudice, every dogmatic ideology that allows people to kill other people with a clear conscience, every stupid cult, every superstition-ridden religion, every kind of ignorance in the world, are all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see, and then we believe our interpretation of it, but we don’t even know we’re making an interpretation most of the time.”
“Well, my belief is I don’t believe in one big conspiracy that runs everything. I prefer to think that there’s at minimum, at any given time, there’s about 24 conspiracies afoot. And as far as I’ve been able to discover in all my years of being involved, more or less unwillingly, in this field, I cannot find any proof of any conspiracy that really existed, was really brought into court and convicted, that lasted more than ten years before everybody double-crossed everybody else and the conspiracy fell apart.
To redefine the power elite as somebody else, I regard that as a loser script. I define the power elite as myself and my friends. And that’s a winner script. And the way to accomplish things is with a winner script. I define myself as a winner. I define my program as winnable. And I count on the stupidity of whoever seems to be in power to undo them eventually because as I said, every conspiracy has a natural life span, every conspiracy collapses through double-crosses from within or by superior cleverness by rival conspiracies. And stupidity has a definite evolutionary function. I am all for abolishing stupidity, but before it goes, while there’s still a lot of it around, we should pay tribute to it.
The strongest conspiracy on the planet is the conspiracy of the stupid to prevent schools from educating their children, because they want their children to be as dumb as they are, to prevent television from putting anything intelligent on, as much as possible.”
– Robert Anton Wilson
“The ‘social contract’ is to the politician what ‘original sin’ is to the priest.”
– Don
“A rat race is for rats. We are not rats. We are human beings. Reject the insidious pressures of society that would blunt your critical faculties to all the happenings around you that would caution silence in the face of injustices lest you jeopardize your changes of promotions and self advancement. This is how it starts and before you know where you are you are a fully-paid up member of the rat pack. The price is too high. It entails a loss of your dignity and human spirit.”
– Jimmy Reid
“Christianity is a mythology with which I am perfectly familiar, so I naturally use it.”
– Samuel Beckett
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Numbing myself and shutting off my mind,
I walk a mile to work as another.”
“Human existence may be likened to a modern movie. Knowing fully well that the movie that captivates us consists of many individually meaningless scenes that are arranged in such an order as to produce the illusion of a continuum; knowing fully well that the characters portrayed are not real, but mere actors; we tend to mentally make connections and fill gaps to create order, consistency, and meaning. Likewise, we willingly submit to deluding ourselves into believing that the characters are real people, forgetting all about any notion of actors. So it is that there are two truths involved in the act of watching a movie. Likewise, there are two truths involved in the act of human existence.”
“Life is the game in which the sole objective is to not remember that you are playing it. As soon as you remember that it exists, you have lost and must start again.”
“As a culture develops a language, so too does a language develop a culture.”
“The best thing we can do is to stop saying things to ourselves and others like, ‘I want to do this or that,’ or ‘I should do this or that,’ or even ‘I’m going to do this or that.’ To quote Nike’s tagline, ‘Just do it!”
“When it comes to the religion of gaming, the Holy Trinity consists of Final Fantasy III, Tibia, and Terraria. Here we have the mythical, the political, and the spiritual.”
“Let’s create a second life within Second Life. We’ll call it Third Life. Or maybe The Matrix. It’s the natural evolution of the internet, right?”
“If EVE Online is the one greatest digitally controlled social experiment in human nature and free market capitalism, then Tibia is the one greatest digitally controlled social experiment in human nature and man as a political animal. Wait, wait… are we including here the Alien who created man out of boredom?”
“How can I talk to strangers like I’ve known them for a lifetime? I may not know you personally, but I do know something about human nature, and the thing about human nature is that it’s universal. In my personal experience it’s the poorest folk that understand this most of all. I believe there is an element of agape to be found here.”
“To be religious is to be infinitely interested in existing. Even nihilism implies caring.”
“I think life would be most fulfilling if I could become a space pirate.”
– Joshua Synon
“What is holding you back & why are you allowing it to? Kick fear in the teeth & take a leap of faith. Miracles happen when you allow them to.”
“Writing a book. Don’t know how to. DOING IT ANYWAY.”
– Taylor Marie
“You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”
– Oscar Wilde
“Often, people work long hard hours at jobs they hate to earn money to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like.”
– Nigel Marsh
“Disillusionment is an important part of the spiritual path. It is a powerful and fiery gate, one of purest teachers of awakening, independence, and letting go that we will ever encounter. To be disillusioned is to be stripped of our hopes, imaginings, and expectations. But while it opens our eyes, the resulting pain all too often closes our hearts. The great challenge of disillusionment is to keep our eyes open and still remain connected with the great heart of compassion…
For some people, disillusionment and difficulty, though very hard, are what they most needed before they could come back to themselves…Even if students feel like they have lost their faith, the truth is we can never lose our faith – we just give it away for a while… The crucible of our relationship with spiritual communities and teachers can transform our initial idealism into wisdom and compassion. We will shift from seeking perfection to expressing our wisdom and love. Then we may come to understand the remarkable statement of Suzuki Roshi, when he said: ‘Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an enlightened person. There is only enlightened activity’.”
– Jack Kornfield
“Pain truly is weakness leaving the body, provided that the pain inflicted is small enough that you can handle it and grow from it, emotionally or physically.”
– USMC
“[Man] sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.”
“This is my simple religion:
There is no need for temples,
there is no need for complicated philosophy.
Our own brain, our own heart is the temple;
the philosophy is loving kindness and compassion.”
– Dalai Lama
“An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.”
– Toynbee
“The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.”
– Hegel
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
– Gandhi
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time.”
– Reinhold Niebuhr
“Dying in general, or dying from drugs, I’ve thought about dying all my life like any normal person. I’ve thought about killing myself for so long because of my stomach thing that I didn’t give a fuck if I was gonna die or not. If i was gonna blow my head off with a gun I may as well take the risk of dying from drugs.”
“I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I’m not. Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are.”
“I’m so happy because today I found my friends – they’re in my head.”
– Kurt Cobain
“Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the next.”
– Horace
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
– Dr. Seuss (Bernard Baruch)
“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
“When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.”
– Alan Watts
“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.”
– Norman Cousins
“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor—such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps – what can more the heart of man desire?”
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.”
“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.”
– Leo Tolstoy
“Disciples of a great philosopher, however, who lack a sure feeling for truth are often misled into relying on the consistency of the system alone. The discovery of inconsistencies in the master’s system and the endeavor to eliminate them easily leads these disciples to a world-view quite opposed to that of their teacher.”
– Human Nature
“No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.”
– Christopher McCandless
“Fuck everything that you think I should be.”
– Aaron Lewis
