Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Spiritual superiority only sees the individual. But alas, ordinarily we human beings are sensual and, therefore, as soon as it is a gathering, the impression changes - we see something abstract, the crowd, and we become different. But in the eyes of God, the infinite spirit, all the millions that have lived and now live do not make a crowd, He only sees each individual.
Death is but a word to us. One's own experience alone can teach us the real meaning of the word. The sight of the dying does little. What one sees of them is merely what precedes death: dull unconsciousness is all we see. Whether this be so,--how and when the spirit wakes to life again,--this is what all wish to know, and what never can be known until it is experienced.
Feed the growing human being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural craving, and he will develop in adult life a sounder sort of mental tissue, even though he may seem to be 'wasting' a great deal of his growing time, in the eyes of those for whom the only channels of learning are books and verbally communicated information.
But if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back - fear lest their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be.
We are forced to choose, for the processes we have initiated in our lifetime cannot continue in the lifetime of our children. Whatever we do either creates the framework for continuing the supreme adventure of life and consciousness on this planet or sets the stage for its termination. The choice before us is urgent and important: it can neither be postponed nor ignored.
A high place of honor, although doubtless one to be obtained only after enduring the pangs of a prolonged crucifixion, awaits that philosophical biologist, or that philosopher sufficiently acquainted with scientific biology, who subjects the modern doctrine of evolution to a thoroughly critical analysis, with a view to detect and to estimate its metaphysical assumptions.
The technocrat is the natural friend of the dictator—computers and dictatorship; but the revolutionary lives in the gap which separates technical progress from social totality, and inscribed there his dream of permanent revolution. This dream, therefore, is itself action, reality, and an effective menace to all established order; it renders possible what it dreams about.
The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.
In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.
One thing, however, is sure: unless Christians fulfill their prophetic role, unless they become the advocates and defenders of the truly poor, witness to their misery, then, infallibly, violence will suddenly break out. In one way or another 'their blood cries to heaven,' and violence will seem the only way out. It will be too late to try to calm them and create harmony.
We cannot embrace His cross, and yet refuse our own. We cannot raise the cup of His remembrance to our lips, without a secret pledge to Him, to one another, to the great company of the faithful in every age that we, too, hold ourselves at God's disposal, that we will ask nothing on our own account, that we will pass simply into the Divine hand to take us whither it will.
A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.
The offence is what is improperly called the death of an infant, who has ceased to be, before knowing what existence is, a result of a nature not to give the slightest inquietude to the most timid imagination; and which can cause no regrets but to the very person who, through a sentiment of shame and pity, has refused to prolong a life begun under the auspices of misery.
The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the store on hand.
No matter what someone else has done, it still matters how we treat people. It matters to our humanity that we treat offenders according to standards that we recognize as just. Justice is not revenge - it's deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights.
If there is to be peace in the world, There must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, There must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, There must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, There must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, There must be peace in the heart.
Therefore the Sage embraces Unity, and is a model for all under Heaven. He is free from self-display, therefore he shines forth; from self-assertion, therefore he is distinguished; from self-glorification, therefore he has merit; from self-exaltation, therefore he rises superior to all. Inasmuch as he does not strive, there is no one in the world who can strive with him.
The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.
To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God I everything we do, and whatever the job or place, keep on with him, letting nothing stand in our way.
I don't think we are all irrational every time we fail to see through an argument in a book, but suppose it's true about you. You are still more rational than you think you are. You are irrational in a minor way - believing a misguided theory of the nature of rationality - but rational in a major way - you respond well to probabilistic evidence as you go through the day.
I spent on the Other Earth many "other years," wandering from mind to mind and country to country, but I did not gain any clear understanding of the psychology of the Other Men and the significance of their history till I encountered one of their philosophers, an aging but still vigorous man whose eccentric and unpalatable views had prevented him from attaining eminence.
A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like.
Ayahuasca is driven by sound, by song, by whistling. And its ability to transform sound, including vocal sound, into the visual spectrum indicates that some kind of information processing membrane or boundary is being overcome by the pharmacology of this stuff. And things normally experienced as acoustically experienced becomes visibly beheld, and it's quite spectacular.
The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks.
The powerful and prominent soar like dragons, the heroic and valiant fight like tigers: but if you look upon them with cool eyes, they are like ants gathering on rancid meet, like flies swarming on blood. Judgments of right and wrong bristle like porcupine quills: but if you meet them with cool feelings, that is like a forge melting metal, like hot water dissolving snow.
As the antagonism between those who possess, and those who do not, is becoming more acute day after day, we can already foresee a moment when it will bring about ("entraînera", Fr.) severe (big, high, intense, - "grands", Fr.) disasters, if we do turn (direct, aim, - "dirige", Fr.) life in time the social life in new directions (or ways, - "dans des voies nouvelles", Fr.)
Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen.
There is something feeble, and a little contemptible, about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought, and he therefore cannot carry his own reflection to any logical conclusion.
Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.
I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being.
Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme.
A particular place in the land is never, for an oral culture, just a passive or inert setting for the human events that occur there. It is an active participant in those occurrences. Indeed, by virtue of its underlying and enveloping presence, the place may even be felt to be the source, the primary power that expresses itself through the various events that unfold there.
It is not enough to ask, 'Will my act harm other people?' Even if the answer is No, my act may still be wrong, because of its effects on other people. I should ask, 'Will my act be one of a set of acts that will together harm other people?' The answer may be Yes. And the harm to others may be great. If this is so, I may be acting very wrongly, like the Harmless Torturers.
Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade...I live in great density...Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage...In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.
The law is not known, since there is nothing in it to know. We come across it only through its action, and it acts only through its sentence and its execution. It is not distinguishable from the application. We know it only through its imprint on our heart and our flesh: we are guilty, necessarily guilty. Guilt is like the moral thread which duplicates the thread of time.
Courage is worthy of respect when displayed in the maintenance of legitimate claims and in the repelling of aggressions, bodily or other. Courage is worthy of yet higher respect when danger is faced in defence of claims common to self and others, as in resistance to invasion. Courage is worthy of the highest respect when risk to life or limb is dared in defence of others.
It is not a nature cure, a system of faith healing, or a physical culture, or a medical treatment, or a semi-occult philosophy. As to what it is, Dewey's brief but striking description appeals most and has the least chance of being proved incorrect: 'It the Alexander Technique bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other human activities.'
Under private property, each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering.
A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist.
The best athlete wants his opponent at his best. The best general enters the mind of his enemy. The best businessman serves the communal good. The best leader follows the will of the people. All of the embody the virtue of non-competition. Not that they don't love to compete, but they do it in the spirit of play. In this they are like children and in harmony with the Tao.
Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.
I would not question the sincerity of vegetarians who take little interest in Animal Liberation because they give priority to other causes; but when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.
It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about this responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.
Contemporary poetry ... tries to transform the sign back into meaning: its ideal, ultimately, would be to reach not the meaning of words, but the meaning of things themselves. This is why it clouds the language, increases as much as it can the abstractness of the concept and the arbitrariness of the sign and stretches to the limit the link between signifier and signified.
It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.
It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.
Psychedelic drugs, especially psilocybin, allow a searchlight to be thrown on these deeper levels of the psyche, as Jung correctly stated. But it is not a museum of archetypes or psychic constructs, as he seemed to assume. It is a frontier of wholeness into which any person, so motivated and so courageous as to wish to do it, can go and leave the mundane plane far behind.
There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.
Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind, as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he.
In teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are.