Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Beauty is self-defined, perceived and understood without ambiguity. It's the stuff that lies under the skins of our individual existences.
The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.
Transformation of language through psychedelic drugs is a central factor of the evolution of the social matrix of the rest of the century.
One has attained a very fortunate incarnation, I think, to be in a culture, in a place, in a time when psychedelic knowledge is available.
Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
What are your historical Facts still more your biographical Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts
The Ego is a transparent mental image: You, the physical person as a whole, look right through it. You do not see it. But you see with it.
Economics is like a church, and it fulfills the same function the church had fulfilled for centuries: the justification of the status quo.
I had abandoned Catholicism, but even during my short militant atheist period I maintained an interest in western religious art and music.
The practice of meditation is represented by the three monkeys, who cover their eyes, ears and mouths so as to avoid the phenomenal world.
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
I once tried standing up on my toes to see far out in the distance, but I found that I could see much farther by climbing to a high place.
If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.
Space seems broken and diverse because of the many forms in it. Remove the forms and pure space remains. So, too with the Omnipresent Self.
Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up.
When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n; coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.
[A]ny notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. Leisure became entertainment.
Openness, as currently conceived, is a way of making surrender to whatever is most powerful, or worship of vulgar success, look principled.
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.
It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.
That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine.
It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.
Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supply'd.
We have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.
A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.
In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
To be fond of learning is near to wisdom; to practice with vigor is near to benevolence; and to be conscious of shame is near to fortitude.
If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children.
He who keeps danger in mind, is he who will rest safe in his seat; he who keeps ruin in mind, is he who will preserve his interests secure.
Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)
Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.
What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.
Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.
I realize that I won't have quite enough time to understand everything - but that hasn't stopped me wanting to understand as much as I can.
Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
Whenever you trace the origin of a skill or practices which played a crucial role in the ascent of man, we usually reach the realm of play.
The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals.
To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.
Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.
Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.
Plasticity loves new moulds because it can fill them, but for a man of sluggish mind and bad manners there is decidedly no place like home.
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
Well, demonization itself can help ... to provide an alibi. You succumb to the Devil incarnate, and as a result you're not guilty yourself.
Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.
The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.
We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.