Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture.
We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.
Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.
One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.
When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth.
By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.
The primary aim, object, and purpose of consciousness is control. Consciousness in a mere automaton is a useless and unnecessary epiphenomenon.
Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.
The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense of life.
I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.
He who is ashamed would like to force the world not to look at him, not to notice his exposure. He would like to destroy the eyes of the world.
The real test of friendship is can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?
The moment an individual can accept and forgive him or herself, even a little, is the moment in which he or she becomes to some degree lovable.
The world, more suffering than sinning, turns toward Pope Francis as in a conversation people turn to the person who is making sense of things.
Many business intuitions and expertise are going to be valuable; they are telling you something useful, and you want to take advantage of them.
Life is very difficult. One of the most ancient of religious ideas that emerges everywhere, I would say, is that life is essentially suffering.
If you're not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you're going to be punished for them, then what's your motivation to continue?
Grief is so human, and it hits everyone at one point or another, at least, in their lives. If you love, you will grieve, and that's just given.
My favorite definition of the mindful path is the one the reveals itself as you walk down it. You cannot find the path until you step on to it.
It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.
The nude does not simply represent the body, but relates it, by analogy, to all structures that have become part of our imaginative experience.
Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism.
Careers in virtually all academic disciplines are fostered by being a superstar who knows more about one subject than anyone else in the world.
Natural selection is not the only process that changes organisms over time. But is the only process that seemingly designs organisms over time.
I don't think aggression works like thirst or sleep. I think aggression is more elicited by particular situations. I think it can be mitigated.
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.
Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence, accident, or disease.
There is so much division in this world. So what is really the path of healing? It can begin in this moment, by embracing the life that`s here.
There is so much division in this world. So what is really the path of healing? It can begin in this moment, by embracing the life that's here.
The good or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted people's highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all their basic needs.
The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.
Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency. Had I not been a therapist, I would have been an efficiency expert.
The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.
What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.
Do you know that all great spurts in...progress came just after some unorthodox ideas or exotic impressions had penetrated into a closed system?
How one can live without being able to judge oneself, criticize what one has accomplished, and still enjoy what one does, is unimaginable to me.
Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them; in fact the family brings up baby by being brought up by him.
The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?
I’d rather see the United States as a beacon of Good Work and Good Citizenship, rather than as #1 on some international educational measurement.
I'd rather see the United States as a beacon of good work and good citizenship, rather than as #1 on some international educational measurement.
The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality.
Accommodation of mental structures to reality implies the existence of assimilatory schemata apart from which any structure would be impossible.
Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do: when neither innateness nor learning has prepared you for the particular situation.
It's in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It's not in happiness. It's not in impulsive pleasure.
I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that's true to some degree.
Never once, during any of my bouts of depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up a telephone and ask a friend for help. It wasn't in me.
I am by temperament an optimist, and I thought from the beginning that there was much to be written about suicide that was strangely heartening.
That's the way it is with firstborns. Mom and Dad may think they're in charge, but the firstborn knows better, and so does the youngest sibling.
Fix-it jackals can't wait to fix it, because they don't know how to enjoy pain. And until you learn how to enjoy pain, you can't enjoy intimacy.
Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism.