Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.
He soon recognized the fact that the stimulus proceeded from the idea to be in the power of a woman rather than from the act of violence itself.
Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior.
There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.
Running a school where the students all succeed, even if some students have to help others to make the grade, is good preparation for democracy.
Mental disorders don't really live 'out there' waiting to be explained. They are constructs we have made up - and often not very compelling ones.
In the 21st century, I think the heroes will be the people who will improve the quality of life, fight poverty and introduce more sustainability.
Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force
We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.
Mind training matters. It is not just a luxury, or a supplementary vitamin for the soul. It determines the quality of every instant of our lives.
...an effective psychotherapist or psychoanalyst is a "microsurgeon of the mind" who helps patients make needed alterations in neuronal networks.
In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal.
The stronger person is not the one making the most noise but the one who can quietly direct the conversation toward defining and solving problems.
Some split between the inner world and outer world is common to all behaviour, and the need to bridge the gap is the source of creative behaviour.
But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.
The self as the essence of individuality is unitemporal and unique; as an archetypal symbol it is a God-image and therefore universal and eternal.
It is also possible for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail
One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.
Death is a graduation. When we're taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we're allowed to graduate.
For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.
We need to meditate on what is peaceful. Once we have 'filled up' in this way, we once again have an abundance of love to send out into the world.
If we can revert to the truth, then a great deal of one's suffering can be erased, because a great deal of one's suffering is based on sheer lies.
I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in.
The language of science—and especially of a science of man—is, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity.
Since there will be no one left to talk peace after the next war, it makes good sense to break with tradition and hold the peace conference first.
It is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that have led to man's extraordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy him.
The separation of psychology from the premises of biology is purely artificial, because the human psyche lives in indissoluble union with the body.
Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe.
I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.
I have learned there is no joy without hardship. There is no pleasure without pain. Would we know the comfort of peace without the distress of war?
However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.
If you wish to discern either the presence or absence of integrity, you need to ask only one question. What is missing? Has anything been left out?
The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type.
There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain.
A person cannot make another happy, but he can make him unhappy. This is the main reason why there is more unhappiness than happiness in the world.
I think that one should view with philosophic admiration the strange paths of the libido and should investigate the purposes of its circuitous ways.
When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls.
If you truly want to grow as a person and learn, you should realize that the universe has enrolled you in the graduate program of life, called loss.
If you do not feel equal to the headaches that psychiatry induces, you are in the wrong business. It is work - work the like of which I do not know.
The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort.
We cannot let another person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.
The Work is something living in our hearts and minds. Follow the path, see what changes take place within you, and what light begins to dawn in you.
As long as acquiring knowledge is the educational goal of schools, educational opportunities will be limited, as they are now, to affluent families.
The heaping together of paintings by Old Masters in museums is a catastrophe; likewise, a collection of a hundred Great Brains makes one big fathead.
Even though I had a good income from my lectures, no one would give me a loan. The insanity almost drove me to sympathize with the feminist movement.
We are all much more simply human than otherwise, be we happy and successful, contented and detached, miserable and mentally disordered, or whatever.
When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it.
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.