Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Cynics know the answers without having penetrated deeply enough to know the questions. When challenged by mysterious truths, they marshall 'facts.
We have new ways to be born, humane and symbolic ways to die, different ways to be rich... new ways to be human and to discover what we are to each other.
Before we choose our tools and technology, we must choose our dreams and values, for some technologies serve them, while others make them more unobtainable.
If we are to find our way across troubled waters, we are better served by the company of those who have built bridges, who have moved beyond despair and inertia.
We rarely think to mark the trail for others to follow. 'Live and learn,' we say, acknowledging the value of experience. We usually forget about 'Live and teach.'
The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
only that which is deeply felt can change us. Rational arguments alone cannot penetrate the layers of fear and conditioning that comprise our crippling belief system.
The chaos in our world may have brought you close to despair, but if you are willing to look at reasons for hope, perhaps you are ready for the 'Aquarian Conspiracy.'
The person and society are yoked, like mind and body. Arguing which is more important is like debating whether oxygen or hydrogen is the more essential property of water.
The most disturbing and wasteful emotions in modern life, next to fright, are those which are associated with the idea of blame, directed against the self or against others.
Risk always brings its own rewards: the exhilaration of breaking through, of getting to the other side; the relief of a conflict healed; the clarity when a paradox dissolves.
Making mental connections is our most crucial learning tool, the essence of human intelligence; to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationships, context.
We should not become so ashamed of the disappointments and travesties of democracy that we become ashamed of the idea itself. It is the outer reflection of our self-acceptance.
After a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light in the words of the popular song the 'Age of Aquarius,' the time of the mind's true liberation.
Public policy is designed by spin doctors who aim to keep our heads below the water. The public good is not a consideration, and their self-serving agendas prevail over common sense.
There is a better place, the hard but joyful work beyond struggle, beyond the shadow of a doubt. It is our real home, the long-remembered future when everything worked and things made sense.
No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.
No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by agreement or by emotional appeal.
Radical common sense is the wisdom gleaned from the past that recognizes the perishable opportunities of the moment. It is the willingness to admit error and the refusal to be deterred by failure.
Although most of us are complacent in our assumption that science is gaining on the unknown, scientists are acknowledging that man's own brain is complex beyond any hope of complete understanding.
'Aquarian Conspiracy' is the term I have coined for the network of people working for social transformation based on personal inner change. Such a notion is not at all alien to the American milieu.
The ferment and viability in any society is directly proportionate to the number of people actively living their ideas. This is not positive thinking - it is positive action: the spirit of experiment.
If we continue to believe as we have always believed, we will continue to act as we have always acted. If we continue to act as we have always acted, we will continue to get what we have always gotten.
Fear is a question What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
If you start thinking of stress as not a bad thing but inevitable, resulting in change that itself leads to transformation that leads to sharp and radical changes... it can be a very useful way of thinking.
Whatever the rationale, the suppression of unorthodox cancer therapies and the sustained persecution of their proponents by government and colleagues runs counter to freedom of thought, much less freedom of choice.
Martin Buber said he sensed a rising hunger for relatedness Men would no longer rise in rebellion merely against one oppressor or another but against the distortion of a great yearning, 'the effort towards community.'
Although focusing is best pursued as a deliberate strategy over a period of time, it is also valuable as a kind of psychological first-aid, as useful to a distressed, 'stuck' person as a tourniquet to an accident victim.
...As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new scientific theories in any field are regarded with skepticism because scientists become attached to the old perspective earlier in their careers.
The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.
Awakenings occur when we lose faith in the viability of our institutions and the authority of our leaders. Religious and spiritual awakening gives people a new vision of themselves, which is then transplanted into social action.
'Focusing' is no conventional repackaging of self-help wisdom. It is at once a manual and a philosophy. It talks about the body's wisdom, the steps of the focusing technique, how to discover the richness in others by learning to listen.
It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.
Never have so many been so high so often. When a Boston research group decided to compare the effects of marijuana on experienced and inexperienced users, it took them two months to line up nine student subjects who had never used marijuana.
Yes, an individual could be electronically stimulated to fear, anger, or euphoria from a distance. However, the procedure is complicated, not always accurate, and far too tedious and expensive as a method for taking over control of the world.
The difference between transformation by accident and transformation by a system is like the difference between lightning and a lamp. Both give illumination, but one is dangerous and unreliable, while the other is relatively safe, directed, available.
Sometimes in astronomy, a heavenly body has been virtually invisible until a single observer detects its presence and points it out to his colleagues, who then see it with increasing clarity. Perhaps a myriad of unknown senses are only awaiting our consciousness.
By definition, revolutions are not linear, one step at a time, event A leading to event B, and so on. Many causes operate on each other at once. Revolutions shift into place suddenly, like the pattern in a kaleidoscope. They do not so much proceed as crystallize.
We live what we know. If we believe the universe and ourselves to be mechanical, we will live mechanically. On the other hand, if we know that we are part of an open universe, and that our minds are a matrix of reality, we will live more creatively and powerfully.
We are constantly nothing but a bunch of energy being processed. Into this whirlpool, the more complex the system, the more energy it requires to hold it together. Therefore, the more complex - the scientists call it 'coherent' - the more fluctuations are possible.
War is unthinkable in a society of autonomous people who have discovered the connectedness of all humanity, who are unafraid of alien ideas and alien cultures, who know that all revolutions begin within and that you cannot impose your brand of enlightenment on anyone else.
New perspectives give birth to new historic ages. Humankind has had many dramatic revolutions of understanding - great uses of fire and the wheel, language and writing. We found that the earth only seems flat, the sun only seems to circle the earth, matter only seems solid.
Mystical experiences nearly always lead one to a belief that some aspect of consciousness is imperishable. In a Buddhist metaphor the consciousness of the individual is like a flame that burns through the night. It is not the same flame over time, yet neither is it another flame.
Health and disease don't just happen to us. They are active processes issuing from inner harmony or disharmony, profoundly affected by our states of consciousness, our ability or inability to flow with experience. This recognition carries with it implicit responsibility and opportunity.
Despair is a cop-out, the ultimate abdication of all responsibility, in which people feel justified in their feelings of impotence. But if, on the other hand, you feel that your work in the world does make a difference and that you do have the power to change things, the nay-sayers will turn a deaf ear.
The paradigm of the 'Aquarian Conspiracy' sees humankind embedded in nature. It promotes the autonomous individual in a decentralized society... The new perspective respects the ecology of everything: birth, death, learning, health, family, work, science, spirituality, the arts, the community, relationships, politics.
A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical changes in the United States. Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought, and they may even have broken continuity with history... this benign conspiracy for new human agenda has triggered the most rapid cultural realignment in history.
I believe that social change has almost reached critical mass. So many people have undergone personal transformation that their effect on society is having a geometric - not arithmetic - impact. This coalescence of energies brings about meeting, networking, and a sophistication in communications that is unprecedented in history.
Cultural transformation announces itself in sputtering fits and starts, sparked here and there by minor incidents, warmed by new ideas that may smolder for decades. In many different places, at different times, the kindling is laid for the real conflagration-the one that will consume the old landmarks and alter the landscape forever.