Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Nothing is worse than extreme affliction which destroys the "I" from the outside, because after that we can no longer destroy it ourselves.
The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on.
The same rightists who decades ago were shouting, 'Better dead than red!' are now often heard mumbling, 'Better red than eating hamburgers.
Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the NOW.
My idea of enlightenment is when ego and Tao are fused, and Tao is perceived as ego. Then everything happens with complete appropriateness.
I have a skeptical and cranky side, and I'm forever puzzled why people believe the, seeming to me, dumb things that they choose to believe.
One thing that these Buddhists have certainly gotten right is that attention to attention is the key to taking control of your mental life.
The terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is the giving up control.
Standing outside the cultural hysteria the trend is fairly clear. It is a trend toward temporal compression and the emergence of ambiguity.
What I like to talk about, and what I have very little competition in terms of talking about, is the content of the psychedelic experience.
The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.
Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.
To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.
Emancipatory politics always consists in making seem possible precisely that which, from within the situation, is declared to be impossible.
Self-interest is hostile to the common good, but enlightened self-interest is not. And this is the best key to the meaning of enlightenment.
A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave... The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities - a natural defectiveness.
for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use
For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name
One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.
The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.
Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.
It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be; without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.
There could be no justice, unless there were also injustice; no courage, unless there were cowardice; no truth, unless there were falsehood.
I used to take on trust a man's deeds after having listened to his words. Now having listened to a man's words I go on to observe his deeds.
Whenever you have taken up work in hand, you must see it to the finish. That is the ultimate secret of success. Never, never, never give up!
The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.
My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing -- by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.
A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
To become more conscious is the greatest gift anyone can give to the world; moreover, in a ripple effect, the gift comes back to its source.
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.
Bury me on my face," said Diogenes; and when he was asked why, he replied, "Because in a little while everything will be turned upside down.
We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job.
There is a time when the word "eventually" has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.
To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed.
To learn a new language is, therefore, always a sort of spiritual adventure; it is like a journey of discovery in which we find a new world.
We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.
All knowledge is in response to a question. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself.