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I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.
 
If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
 
It is easier to stay out than get out.
 
I want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
 
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
 
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
 
Given the scale of life in the cosmos, one human life is no more than a tiny blip. Each one of us is a just visitor to this planet, a guest, who will only stay for a limited time. What greater folly could there be than to spend this short time alone, unhappy or in conflict with our companions? Far better, surely, to use our short time here in living a meaningful life, enriched by our sense of connection with others and being of service to them.
 
If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
 
The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation.
 
if you want to do something incredible, something that makes you stand out above the rest, then you have to become comfortable being different from the rest. People will think you’re weird, crazy, selfish, arrogant, irresponsible, obnoxious, stupid, disrespectful, fat, insecure, ugly, shallow, etc. Those closest to you will often become the harshest. If you have weak boundaries or are not confident with your own ideas and desires, then you’re not going to make it very far.
 
He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
 
There is a fundamental confusion between the notion of the older 'semantics' as connected with a theory of verbal 'meaning' and words defined by words, and the present theory of 'general semantics' where we deal only with neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic living reactions of Smith, Smith, etc., as their reactions to neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic environments as environments.
 
We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.
 
You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don't like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.
 
The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.
 
Any organism must be treated as-a-whole; in other words, that an organism is not an algebraic sum, a linear function of its elements, but always more than that. It is seemingly little realized, at present, that this simple and innocent-looking statement involves a full structural revision of our language...
 
A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
 
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
 
There is no path to Happiness. Happiness is the path. There is no path to Love. Love is the path. There is no path to Peace. Peace is the path.
 
They told Van Gogh he used too much paint, and Englebart that the mouse was pointless. Galileo and Copernicus were called heretics for seeing the world for what it was. Dylan and Guthrie were told they couldn’t sing and that they had nothing to say. DaVinci’s helicopters and Tesla’s radio waves stayed in notebooks for years, as the ideas were too weird for ordinary minds to understand.
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2011/why-you-should-be-weird/
 
No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
 
Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.
 
Inner peace is the key: if you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of peace and tranquility…without this inner peace, no matter how comfortable your life is materially, you may still be worried, disturbed, or unhappy because of circumstances.
 
In science, self-satisfaction is death. Personal self-satisfaction is the death of the scientist. Collective self-satisfaction is the death of the research. It is restlessness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, agony of mind that nourish science.
 
People easily understand that ‘primitives’ cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis.
 
The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.
 
We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can be practiced only when we come in contact with someone who creates unpleasant experiences. According to Shantideva, enemies are really good for us as we can learn a lot from them and build our inner strength.
 
Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts.
 
SUBURBIA: A place where the developers bulldoze all of the trees -- then name the streets after them.
 
I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tried to derive the 'ought' from the 'is.' My point of view is that this is impossible; this is a farce.
 
Intelligence is essentially the ability to solve the problems of present behavior in terms of its possible future consequences as implicated on the basis of past experience-the ability, that is, to solve the problems of present behavior in the light of, or by reference to, both the past and the future; it involves both memory and foresight.
 
It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
 
The more we think of others, the happier we are. The more we think of ourselves, the more suffering we feel.
 
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
 
False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
 
To regard human beings as tools — as instruments — for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker — they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.
 
The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.
 
It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.
 
Man lives in a world of meaning.
 
Life is not a private affair. A story and its lessons are only made useful if shared.
 
In our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.
 
The more we are concerned for the well being of others, the closer we will feel to each other.
 
Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
 
Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.
 
Forget the failures. Keep the lessons.
 
It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.
 
Only the village idiot thinks they "belong",
 
Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies.
 
We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide; we can do nothing but regret the surface.
 
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
 
The fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in 'hard' science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological grounds.
 
The certainty of death and the uncertainty of the hour of death is a source of grief throughout our life.
 
If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.
 
It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view.
 
If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever.
 
Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
 
It will happen but it will take time.
 
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
 
You wouldn't be normal if you didn't react in an abnormal way.
 
Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism. Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.
 
The aim of management science is to display the best course of action in a given set of circumstances, and this must include all the circumstances.
 
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
 
Imagery is not past but present. It rests with what we call our mental processes to place these images in a temporal order.
 
Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.
 
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
 
Quiet people have the loudest minds
 
Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me. 
 
Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.
 
Weather forecast for tonight: dark.
 
Nothing that is complete breathes.
 
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
 
... the fallacy of attributing to one cause what is due to many causes.
 
Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.
 
Irrespective of whether we are believers or agnostics, whether we believe in God or karma, moral ethics is a code which everyone is able to pursue.
 
The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old.
 
Anger is the ultimate destroyer of your own peace of mind.
 
We discover our character through decisions under pressure.
 
Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is... The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.
 
We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.
 
Mentality on our approach simply comes in when the organism is able to point out meanings to others and to himself. This is the point at which mind appears, or if you like, emerges…. It is absurd to look at the mind simply from the standpoint of the individual human organism; for, although it has its focus there, it is essentially a social phenomenon; even its biological functions are primarily social.
 
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.
 
All things living are in search of a better world.
 
Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.
 
Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
 
I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.
 
It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.
 
I'd always believed that a life of quality, enjoyment, and wisdom were my human birthright and would be automatically bestowed upon me as time passed. I never suspected that I would have to learn how to live - that there were specific disciplines and ways of seeing the world I had to master before I could awaken to a simple, happy, uncomplicated life.
 
It is better for you to take responsibility for your life as it is, instead of blaming others, or circumstances, for your predicament. As your eyes open, you'll see that your state of health, happiness, and every circumstance of your life has been, in large part, arranged by you - consciously or unconsciously.
 
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
 
Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.
 
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
 
If someone were to analyze current notions and fashionable catchwords, he would find "systems" high on the list. The concept has pervaded all fields of science and penetrated into popular thinking, jargon and mass media.
 
What I have tried to show is that the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity - that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe.
 
Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me? And the voice says: "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up".
 
Sports and sex and movies are not inherently bad - But for you they're addictions, not enjoyments. You use them to distract you from what you know you should do. Break free!
 
The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.
 
It is necessary to study not only parts and processes in isolation, but also to solve the decisive problems found in organization and order unifying them, resulting from dynamic interaction of parts, and making the the behavoir of the parts different when studied in isolation or within the whole...
 
When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.
 
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
 
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
 
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
 
Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
 
When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.
 
To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.
 
Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.
 
Whether you believe in God or not does not matter much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life.
 
I will act as if what i do makes a difference.
 
Allow rather than resist what arises in the present moment-inside or out. Let it be interesting rather than good or bad.
 
Young children, who for whatever reason are deprived of the continuous care and attention of a mother or a substitute-mother, are not only temporarily disturbed by such deprivation, but may in some cases suffer long-term effects which persist.
 
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
 
Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
 
Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
 
No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.
 
The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
 
It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.
 
When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.
 
I think therefore I seem to be.
 
Carry your groceries, garden, and do other activities that keep you moving. You will add more years to your life and more life to your years.
 
Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization.
 
If you want a real meaning, and you can’t find one, it’s all very well to make one up — but I don’t see how that solves any problems. ... Unless you say how God works, saying that God exists doesn’t explain anything.
 
In Buddhism, ignorance as the root cause of suffering refers to a fundamental misperception of the true nature of the self and all phenomena.
 
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
 
If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.
 
If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.
 
Mutual respect is the foundation of genuine harmony.
 
We find things that do not fit into familiar frameworks hard to understand – such things seem meaningless.
 
Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant.
 
Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.
 
With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world.
 
Our civilization seems to be suffering a second curse of Babel: Just as the human race builds a tower of knowledge that reaches to the heavens, we are stricken by a malady in which we find ourselves attempting to communicate with each other in countless tongues of scientific specialization... The only goal of science appeared to be analytical, i.e., the splitting up of reality into ever smaller units and the isolation of individual causal trains...We may state as characteristic of modern science that this scheme of isolable units acting in one-way causality has proven to be insufficient. Hence the appearance, in all fields of science, of notions like wholeness, holistic, organismic, gestalt, etc., which all signify that, in the last resort, we must think in terms of systems of elements in mutual interaction.
 
In the 300 years of the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians. In contrast, over the course, of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions, to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.
 
Such as contribute most to human progress and human enlightenment — men like Gutenberg, Copernicus, Newton, Leibnitz, Watts, Franklin, Mendeleieff, Pasteur, Sklodowska-Curie, Edison, Steinmetz, Loeb, Dewey, Keyser, Whitehead, Russell, Poincaré, William Benjamin Smith, Gibbs, Einstein, and many others — consume no more bread than the simplest of their fellow mortals. Indeed such men are often in want. How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile — in space-binding competition!
 
I defeat my enemies when I make them my friends.
 
While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.
 
Psycho-galvanic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
 
We do not become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon.
 
General Systems Theory... possibly the model of the world as a great organization can help to reinforce the sense of reverence for the living which we have almost lost.
 
Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central. Marginal because -- the living world constituting but a tiny and very "special" part of the universe -- it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position.
 
The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
 
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
 
Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts.
 
The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man's destiny, life, the world.
 
Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.
 
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
 
The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred.
 
It is your attitude more than your aptitude that will determine your altitude!
 
It is the 'zoomorphic' or 'rattomorphic' fallacy - the expressed or implicit contention that there is no essential difference between rat and man - which makes American psychology so profoundly disturbing.
 
In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
 
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
 
Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.
 
To be authentic literally means to be your own author.
 
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
 
It requires no great wisdom, it needs only a little reflection, to see that, if we humans radically misconceive the nature of man—if we regard man as being something which he is not, whether it be something higher than man or lower—we thereby commit an error so fundamental and far reaching as to produce every manner of confusion and disaster in individual life, in community life and in the life of the race.
 
The concept of man as mass robot was both an expression of and a powerful motive force in industrialized mass society. It was the basis for behavioural engineering in commercial, economic, political and other advertising and propaganda; the expanding economy of the 'affluent society' could not subsist without such manipulation. Only by manipulating humans ever more into Skinnerian rats, robots buying automata, homeostatically adjusted conformers and opportunists (or, bluntly speaking, into morons and zombies) can this great society follow its progress toward ever increasing gross national product.
 
If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.
 
We are seeking for another basic outlook - the world as organization. This would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive interdependencies.
 
A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections and rebukes evil is to be respected as if he reveals the secret of some hidden treasure.
 
It is often asserted that discussion is only possible between people who have a common language and accept common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion will be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ.
 
...the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity—that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product—predictable if not indispensable—of the evolution of the universe.
 
We know the meaning so long as no one asks us to define it.
 
The fundamental biological variant is DNA. That is why Mendel's definition of the gene as the unvarying bearer of hereditary traits, its chemical identification by Avery (confirmed by Hershey), and the elucidation by Watson and Crick of the structural basis of its replicative invariance, are without any doubt the most important discoveries ever made in biology. To this must be added the theory of natural selection, whose certainty and full significance were established only by those later theories.
 
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
 
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
 
The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.
 
Someone else’s action should not determine your response.
 
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
 
What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.
 
Nowadays, we are confronted by a huge gap between rich and poor. This is not only morally wrong, but practically a mistake. It leads to the rich living in anxiety and the poor living in frustration, which has the potential to lead to more violence. We have to work to reduce this gap. It's truly unfair that some people should have so much while others go hungry.
 
Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web allows humans alone to organise crusades, socialist revolutions and human rights movements.
 
The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.
 
The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world's problems.
 
You are a dynamic whole greater than the sum of your parts. By integrating your body, mind, and emotions through training, you reshape your life.
 
Non c'è dubbio che questo poveraccio [William Blake] fosse pazzo, ma c'è qualcosa nella sua pazzia che attira il mio interesse più dell'equilibrio di Lord Byron e Walter Scott.
 
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
 
What we see depends mainly on what we look for
 
Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.
 
What do you do from morning to night? I endure myself.
 
As our own peace of mind grows, so the atmosphere around us becomes more peaceful.
 
We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as an organization. This would profoundly change categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive inter-dependencies.
 
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
 
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
 
The characteristic of life does not lie in a distinctiveness of single life processes. [Lebensvorgänge], but rather in a certain order among all the processes.
 
If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
 
Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
 
No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.
 
There is nothing I can't live without. I learned this attitude when I was a child.
 
Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
 
Science in the past (and partly in the present), was dominated by one-sided empiricism. Only a collection of data and experiments were considered as being ‘scientific’ in biology (and psychology); forgetting that a mere accumulation of data, although steadily piling up, does not make a science.
 
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
 
Disagreement is something normal.
 
A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
 
Moderation? It's mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It's the devil's dilemma. It's neither doing nor not doing. It's the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It's for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation...is lukewarm tea, the devil's own brew.
 
We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.
 
Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions.
 
Ignorance is no excuse once we know that ignorance is the only possible excuse.
 
Unless we can explain the mind in terms of things that have no thoughts or feelings of their own, we'll only have gone around in a circle.
 
Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
 
Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed?
 
Convince me, but without convictions. Convictions no longer convince me.
 
Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf.
 
If you ask, then, where directly in your own experience the “I” comes in, the answer is that it comes in as a historical figure. It is what you were a second ago that is the “I” of the “me.” It is another “me” that has to take that rôle. You cannot get the immediate response of the “I” in the process.
 
More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other's well-being, is source of happiness.
 
The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called “the generalized other.” The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community. Thus, for example, in the case of such a social group as a ball team, the team is the generalized other in so far as it enters—as an organized process or social activity—into the experience of any one of the individual members of it.
 
Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry. This is an unjust stereotype.
 
What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.
 
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
 
Sleep is the best meditation.
 
The greater the level of calmness of our mind, the greater our peace of mind, the greater our ability to enjoy a happy and joyful life.
 
How can we encourage other human beings to extend their moral sympathies beyond a narrow locus? How can we learn to become mere human beings, shorn of any more compelling national, ethnic, or religious identity? We can be reasonable. It is in the very nature of reason to fuse cognitive and moral horizons. Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love.
 
Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.
 
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
 
It rained last night heavily, and now the skies are beginning to clear; it is a new fresh day. Let us meet that fresh day as if it were the only day. Let us start on our journey together with all the remembrance of yesterday left behind—and begin to understand ourselves for the first time.
 
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.
 
Non-violence means dialogue, using our language, the human language. Dialogue means compromise; respecting each other’s rights; in the spirit of reconciliation there is a real solution to conflict and disagreement. There is no hundred percent winner, no hundred percent loser—not that way but half-and-half. That is the practical way, the only way.
 
I also know that one must do what one can do. No matter how little it is, it is nonetheless a human testimony and human testimonies, as long as they are not based on greed or personal ambition for power, can have unexpected positive effects. ...I believe in local action and in small dimensions. It is only in such environments that human creativity and meaningful identities can truly surface and flourish.
 
The war, of course, furnished many examples of this pattern: the casual fact, the creative imagination, the will to believe, and out of these three elements, a counterfeit of reality to which there was a violent instinctive response. For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities, and that in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond.
 
Wholeness [Ganzheit], Gestalt, is the primary attribute of life.
 
If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy when good things happen to other people, billions more chances to be happy!
 
The way to change others’ minds is with affection, and not anger.
 
Man lives in a world of Meaning. What he sees and hears means what he will or might handle.
 
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.
 
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.
 
If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.
 
Happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors.
 
Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another.
 
These 'philosophers', etc., seem unaware, to give a specific example, that by teaching and preaching 'identity', which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurologically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the 'mentally' ill or maladjusted.
 
Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.
 
Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving.
 
People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines.
 
Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted.
 
Do not go where the path may lead; instead go where there is no path and leave a trail.
 
Modern science is characterized by its ever-increasing specialization, necessitated by the enormous amount of data, the complexity of techniques and of theoretical structures within every field. Thus science is split into innumerable disciplines continually generating new subdisciplines. In consequence, the physicist, the biologist, the psychologist and the social scientist are, so to speak, encapusulated in their private universes, and it is difficult to get word from one cocoon to the other.
 
You're a prisoner of your own illusions - about yourself and about the world.
 
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
 
A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.
 
Take everything seriously, except yourselves
 
We need to learn how to want what we have NOT to have what we want in order to get steady and stable Happiness.
 
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
 
Follow the three R's: - Respect for self. - Respect for others. - Responsibility for all your actions.
 
Better never begin; once begun, better finish.
 
When something needs to be done in the world to rectify the wrongs, if one is really concerned with benefiting others, one needs to be engaged, involved. This is action out of compassion.
 
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem in my opinion to characterize our age.
 
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.
 
Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?
 
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
 
Meditation is a valuable exercise, but eventually you have to open up your eyes and look around.
 
The human psyche, like human bones, is strongly inclined towards self-healing.
 
Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.
 
Life is a series of moments. The quality of attention and action that we bring to each moment determines the quality of our lives.
 
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
 
Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.
 
There are living systems; there is no living "matter." No substance, no single molecule, extracted and isolated from a living being possess, of its own, the aforementioned paradoxical properties. They are present in living systems only; that is to say, nowhere below the level of the cell.
 
Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that's very important for good health.
 
When you release your expectations that the world should fulfill you, your disappointments vanish.
 
Your fears are not walls, but hurdles. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquering of it.
 
Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.
 
I will not propose to you that my way is best. The decision is up to you. If you find some point which may be suitable to you, then you can carry out experiments for yourself. If you find that it is of no use, then you can discard it.
 
I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
 
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
 
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
 
If you want peace of mind I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
 
One problem with our current society is that we have an attitude towards education as if it is there to simply make you more clever, make you more ingenious… Even though our society does not emphasize this, the most important use of knowledge and education is to help us understand the importance of engaging in more wholesome actions and bringing about discipline within our minds. The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge is to effect changes from within to develop a good heart.
 
The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.
 
History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.
 
Through violence, you may ‘solve’ one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
 
The word ‘consciousness’ is a clever trick that we use to keep from thinking about how thinking works. We take a lot of different phenomena and we give them all the same name, and then you think you’ve got it.
 
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
 
God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
 
What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.
 
Each individual has a universal responsibility to shape institutions to serve human needs.
 
Once a year go somewhere you have never been before.
 
A great rock is not disturbed by the wind; the mind of a wise man is not disturbed by either honor or abuse.
 
You can change your life with a simple shift of attention. But to make that simple shift, you have to find your heart. It's the only way. Accept yourself, then transcend yourself.
 
Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.
 
It seems evident that everything which exists in nature, is natural, no matter how simple or complicated a phenomenon it is; and on no occasion can the so-called 'supernatural' be anything else than a completely natural law, though it may, at the moment, be above and beyond the present understanding.
 
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion..
 
At times I want to be found.
 
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
 
Ultimately, fear of failure generates a vicious circle that creates what is most feared. To break this cycle, you need to make peace with failure. It isn't enough to merely tolerate it; you need to appreciate the failure and use it ...
 
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.
 
There was no doubt that this poor man [William Blake] was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.
 
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
 
I always tell people that religious institutions and political institutions should be separate. So while I'm telling people this, I myself continue with them combined. Hypocrisy!
 
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
 
Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere.
 
Like this gas tank, you are overflowing with preconceptions, full of useless knowledge. You hold many facts and opinions, yet know little of yourself. Before you can learn, you'll have to first empty your tank.
 
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
 
Let’s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress. Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born form the dark night. It’s in crisis that inventiveness is born, as well as discoveries made and big strategies.
He who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. He who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent and is more interested in problems than in solutions. Incompetence is the true crisis.
The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There’s no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It’s in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch.
To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead. Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.
 
Fear and trust cannot go together.
 
If we, who live outside asylums, act as if we lived in a fictitious world- that is to say, if we are consistent with our beliefs- we cannot adjust ourselves to actual conditions, and so fall into many avoidable semantic difficulties. But the so-called normal person practically never abides by his beliefs, and when his beliefs are building for him a fictitious world, he saves his neck by not abiding by them. A so-called "insane" person acts upon his beliefs, and so cannot adjust himself to a world which is quite different from his fancy.
 
An open heart is an open mind.
 
Society is unity in diversity.
 
When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways–either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.
 
I think governments can't do much.
 
Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
 
World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.
 
That faint light in each of us which dates back to before our birth, to before all births, is what must be protected if we want to rejoin that remote glory from which we shall never know why we were separated.
 
Therefore, general systems theory should be, methodologically, an important means of controlling and instigating the transfer of principles from one field to another, and it will no longer be necessary to duplicate or triplicate the discovery of the same principles in different fields isolated from the other.
 
Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.
 
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
 
What surprises me most is “Man”, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he doesn’t enjoy the present; The result being he doesn’t live in the present or the future; He lives as if he’s never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.
 
Only an idiot could think there is a point to any of this.
 
Thoughts naturally arise. The point of meditation is not to banish thoughts but to make peace with them by realizing their lack of substance.
 
The earth is not my home, I'm just passing by
 
Whatever we may say will not be the objective level, which remains fundamentally un-speakable. Thus, we can sit on the object called 'a chair', but we cannot sit on the noise we made or the name we applied to that object.
 
Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.
 
Existence precedes and rules essence.
 
The future of mankind is going to be decided within the next two generations, and there are two absolute requisites: We must aim at a stable-state society [with limited population growth] and the destruction of nuclear stockpiles. … Otherwise I don't see how we can survive much later than 2050.
 
I do not want anything over again. Not even a mother.
 
Better to be disliked than pitied.
 
I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.
 
We have a responsibility to look after our planet. It is our only home.
 
We are confronted with problems of organized complexity... organization runs through all levels of reality and science.
 
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
 
Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.
 
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
 
We do as we have been done by.
 
The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.