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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
 
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
 
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.
 
God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
 
There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
 
I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.
 
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
 
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.
 
Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
 
SUBURBIA: A place where the developers bulldoze all of the trees -- then name the streets after them.
 
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.
 
If we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary.
 
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.
 
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.
 
By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.
 
Also the principle of stress, so often invoked in psychology, psychiatry, and psychosomatics, needs some reevaluation. As everything in the world, stress too is an ambivalent thing. Stress is not only a danger to life to be controlled and neutralized by adaptive mechanisms; it also creates higher life.
 
As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
 
There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
 
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, small people talk about other people.
 
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.
 
The topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is important to know it is human business, it is a question of human survival.
 
You must not hate those who do wrong or harmful things; but with compassion, you must do what you can to stop them — for they are harming themselves, as well as those who suffer from their actions.
 
If all people learned to think in the non Aristotelian manner of quantum mechanics, the world would change so radically that most of what we call "stupidity" and even a great deal of what we consider "insanity" might disappear, and the "intractable" problems of war, poverty and injustice would suddenly seem a great deal closer to solution.
 
The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.
 
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.
 
Most people use social media not to open their horizons wider, but to lock themselves in a comfort zone.
 
Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness.
 
When you attach a label make sure it can come off because things can change.
 
The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.
 
Dream big. Start small and then connect the dots.
 
My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.
 
If your heart has peace, nothing can disturb you.
 
Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
 
Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.
 
The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.
 
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.
 
Weather forecast for tonight: dark.
 
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
 
Because we all share this planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. This is not just a dream, but a necessity.
 
We need to learn how to want what we have NOT to have what we want in order to get steady and stable Happiness.
 
There is nothing I can't live without. I learned this attitude when I was a child.
 
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
 
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.
 
Concepts like those of organization, wholeness, directiveness, teleology, control, self-regulation, differentiation, and the like are alien to conventional science. However, they pop up everywhere in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences and are, in fact, indispensable for dealing with living organisms or social groups. Thus, a basic problem posed to modem science is a general theory of organization. General Systems Theory is, in principle, capable of giving exact definitions for such concepts.
 
History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.
 
The characteristic of the organism is first that it is more than the sum of its parts and second that the single processes are ordered for the maintenance of the whole.
 
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
 
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.
 
It is easier to stay out than get out.
 
A genuine, affectionate smile is very important in our day-to-day lives.
 
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
 
Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
 
The shadows: some hide, others reveal.
 
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!
 
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.
 
If there is no solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it.
 
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.
 
I have an almost religious zeal... not for technology per se, but for the Internet which is for me, the nervous system of mother Earth, which I see as a living creature, linking up.
 
Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.
 
Man lives in a world of Meaning. What he sees and hears means what he will or might handle.
 
We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.
 
Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Without technology humanity has no future, but we have to be careful that we don’t become so mechanised that we lose our human feelings.
 
STATISTICIAN: Someone who can put his head in the oven and his feet in the freezer and tell you, "on average, I feel just fine."
 
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.
 
In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
 
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!
 
If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.
 
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.
 
Love and Compassion are the true religions to me. But to develop this, we do not need to believe in any religion.
 
Wisdom is the use of knowledge
 
Wholeness [Ganzheit], Gestalt, is the primary attribute of life.
 
If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.
 
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
 
Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.
 
Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.
 
Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.
 
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.
 
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.
 
A sense of concern for others gives our lives meaning; it is the root of all human happiness
 
Concern yourselves more with the needs of others, with the needs of all humanity, and you'll have peace of mind.
 
Home is where you feel at home and are treated well.
 
Wisdom is the best guide and faith is the best companion.
 
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.
 
Follow the three R's: - Respect for self. - Respect for others. - Responsibility for all your actions.
 
Never give up. No matter what is happening, no matter what is going on around you, never give up.
 
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!
 
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.
 
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
 
At times I want to be found.
 
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.
 
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.
 
The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.
 
Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realised.
 
Effort supposes resistance.
 
Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf.
 
Man lives in a world of meaning.
 
Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
 
The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.
 
I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.
 
What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.
 
Progress is only possible by passing from a state of undifferentiated wholeness to differentiation of parts.
 
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
 
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
 
We have a responsibility to look after our planet. It is our only home.
 
I think therefore I seem to be.
 
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.
 
The human psyche, like human bones, is strongly inclined towards self-healing.
 
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
 
Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
 
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.
 
It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.
 
Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future.
 
You've got to have a map: to know where you came from, where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there.
 
The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.
 
False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
 
Only an idiot could think there is a point to any of this.
 
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
 
Mutual respect is the foundation of genuine harmony.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.
 
Our rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own infantilism on our instituitions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn, they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic limitations. The vicious circle is completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our instituitions. And so it goes, on and on.
 
If you desire to dig a well to reach water, your efforts are more fruitful if you dig one 100-foot-deep hole than if you dig ten holes each 10 feet deep.
 
So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?
 
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.
 
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
 
Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
 
All things living are in search of a better world.
 
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.
 
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
 
... 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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
We find things that do not fit into familiar frameworks hard to understand – such things seem meaningless.
 
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
 
The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals [is] a basic component of human nature.
 
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
 
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
 
The Observer is the Observed.
 
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.
 
Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.
 
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.
 
Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
 
The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself.
 
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.
 
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.
 
My main hope is eventually, in modern education field, introduce education about warm-heartedness, not based on religion, but based on common experience and a common sort of sense, and then scientific finding.
 
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.
 
Psycho-galvanic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
 
If you want peace of mind I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
 
The behaviour of an individual can be understood only in terms of the behavior of the whole social group of which he is a member, since his individual acts are involved in larger, social acts which go beyond himself and which implicate the other members of that group.
 
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 best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.
 
We are confronted with problems of organized complexity... organization runs through all levels of reality and science.
 
The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation.
 
The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
 
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.
 
It's better to make a mistake with the full force of your being than to timidly avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit. Responsibility means recognizing both pleasure and price, action and consequence, then making a choice.
 
ON SONGWRITING
It's like glueing macaroni to a piece of cardboard and painting it gold
 
The earth is not my home, I'm just passing by
 
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
 
You have to lose your mind in order to regain your senses.
 
Let us imagine that the aboriginal-original human specimen was one of two brother apes, A and B; they were alike in every respect; both were animal space-binders; but something strange happened to B; he became the first time-binder, a human. … He had thus a new faculty, he belonged to a new dimension; but, of course, he did not realize it; and because he had this new capacity he was able to analyze his brother "A"; he observed "A is my brother; he is an animal; but he is my brother; therefore, I AM AN ANIMAL." This fatal first conclusion, reached by false analogy, by neglecting a fact, has been the chief source of human woe for half a million years and it still survives. … He [then] said to himself, "If I am an animal there is also in me something higher, a spark of some thing supernatural."
 
The way to change others’ minds is with affection, and not anger.
 
Happiness doesn’t always come from a pursuit. Sometimes it comes when we least expect it.
 
In our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.
 
You're a prisoner of your own illusions - about yourself and about the world.
 
In life, stress happens when you resist what arises.
 
The hours of your life are the most valuable currency you will ever have. How will you spend them?
 
In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me; in a work of criticism, only the quotations.
 
I do not want anything over again. Not even a mother.
 
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.
 
We discover our character through decisions under pressure.
 
Those who have little interest in spirituality shouldn’t think that human inner values don’t apply to you. The inner peace of an alert and calm mind are the source of real happiness and good health. Our human intelligence tells us which of our emotions are positive and helpful and which are damaging and to be restrained or avoided.
 
It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.
 
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
 
When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.
 
Sleep is the best meditation.
 
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.
 
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
 
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
 
Through violence, you may ‘solve’ one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
 
Biologically, life is not maintenance or restoration of equilibrium but is essentially maintenance of disequilibria, as the doctrine of the organism as open system reveals. Reaching equilibrium means death and consequent decay. Psychologically, behaviour not only tends to release tensions but also builds up tensions; if this stops, the patient is a decaying mental corpse in the same way a living organism becomes a body in decay when tensions and forces keeping it from equilibrium have stopped.
 
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.
 
It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.
 
The more you are motivated by Love, The more Fearless & Free your action will be.
 
We can also say: While we can conceive of a sum being composed gradually, as system as total of parts with its interrelations has to be conceived of as being composed instantly.
 
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?
 
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
 
Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.
 
In Buddhism, ignorance as the root cause of suffering refers to a fundamental misperception of the true nature of the self and all phenomena.
 
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.
 
A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.
 
We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.
 
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.
 
I will act as if what i do makes a difference.
 
Each part of the brain knows a little bit about what’s happening in some other [parts], but there’s no single place that knows everything. ... It’s like a big corporation.
 
The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred.
 
When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another.
 
Humans can be literally poisoned by false ideas and false teachings. Many people have a just horror at the thought of putting poison into tea or coffee, but seem unable to realize that, when they teach false ideas and false doctrines, they are poisoning the time-binding capacity of their fellow men and women. One has to stop and think! There is nothing mystical about the fact that ideas and words are energies which powerfully affect the physico-chemical base of our time-binding activities. Humans are thus made untrue to "human nature." … The conception of man as a mixture of animal and supernatural has for ages kept human beings under the deadly spell of the suggestion that, animal selfishness and animal greediness are their essential character, and the spell has operated to suppress their REAL HUMAN NATURE and to prevent it from expressing itself naturally and freely.
 
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
 
There are times to let things happen, and times to make things happen. Now is that time. You will either make things happen, watch what happens, or wonder what happened.
 
If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.
 
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
 
Better to be disliked than pitied.
 
Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the wealth they owe to science, our societies are still trying to practice and to teach systems of values already destroyed at the roots by that very science. Man knows at last that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe, whence which he has emerged by chance. His duty, like his fate, is written nowhere.
 
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.
 
I learned how to dig a hole in the ground and bury myself so the fire would burn over me. Never had to use it since, but I'm ready.
 
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.
 
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
 
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.
 
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
 
Whenever you can, count.
 
True change is within; leave the outside as it is.
 
When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
 
As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.
 
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere.
 
If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.
 
Ignorance is no excuse once we know that ignorance is the only possible excuse.
 
Life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.
 
Those who travel with the current will always feel they are good swimmers; those who swim against the current may never realize they are better swimmers than they imagine.
 
Do not go where the path may lead; instead go where there is no path and leave a trail.
 
If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
 
I am the same kind of moron as the rest of you, it's the method that does the work, for me as well as for you.
 
If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.
 
The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
 
Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant.
 
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.
 
There is direction but there is no destination.
 
I hate victims who respect their executioners.
 
A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal.
 
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.
 
All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.
 
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
 
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.
 
We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.
 
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 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.
 
You wound and you will wound again. Because you wound and then you go away. You do not stay with the wound.
 
I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.
 
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.
 
No very sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology.
 
What we see depends mainly on what we look for
 
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.
 
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
 
Fear and trust cannot go together.
 
Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
 
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...
 
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
 
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
 
Freedom from mental distraction equals power.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Education Is what remains after you have forgotten everything you learned in school.
 
Non arrenderti mai, perché quando pensi che sia tutto finito, è il momento in cui tutto ha inizio.
 
Meditation is a valuable exercise, but eventually you have to open up your eyes and look around.
 
You don't have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you.
 
The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.
 
Although you may not always be able to avoid difficult situations,you can modify the extent to which you can suffer by how you choose to respond to the situation.
 
Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
 
When you talk you are only repeating something you already know. But, if you listen you may learn something new.
 
Entities of an essentially new sort are entering the sphere of scientific thought. Classical science in its diverse disciplines, be it chemistry, biology, psychology or the social sciences, tried to isolate the elements of the observed universe - chemical compounds and enzymes, cells, elementary sensations, freely competing individuals, what not -- expecting that, by putting them together again, conceptually or experimentally, the whole or system - cell, mind, society - would result and be intelligible. Now we have learned that for an understanding not only the elements but their interrelations as well are required...
 
Take everything seriously, except yourselves
 
Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry. This is an unjust stereotype.
 
We know the meaning so long as no one asks us to define it.
 
The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
 
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
 
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.
 
We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
 
Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.
 
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.
 
A great rock is not disturbed by the wind; the mind of a wise man is not disturbed by either honor or abuse.
 
Conventional physics deals only with closed systems, i.e. systems which are considered to be isolated from their environment... However, we find systems which by their very nature and definition are not closed systems. Every living organism is essentially an open system. It maintains itself in a continuous inflow and outflow, a building up and breaking down of components, never being, so long as it is alive, in a state of chemical and thermodynamic equilibrium but maintained in a so-called steady state which is distinct from the latter.
 
Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.
 
Identity is invariably false to facts.
 
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.
 
The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we will never reach this level.
 
It will happen but it will take time.
 
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.
 
Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts.
 
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.
 
The important and the unimportant are the same only at the start.
 
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.
 
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.
 
In this century we have made remarkable material progress, but basically we are the same as we were thousands of years ago. Our spiritual needs are still very great.
 
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.
 
We'll show you that you can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.
 
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.
 
We begin from the recognition that all beings cherish happiness and do not want suffering. It then becomes both morally wrong and pragmatically unwise to pursue only one’s own happiness oblivious to the feelings and aspirations of all others who surround us as members of the same human family. The wiser course is to think of others when pursuing our own happiness.
 
Who rules our symbols, rules us.
 
If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
 
Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions.
 
My life is like an air-traffic controller's: moments of boredom broken up by moments of sheer terror.
 
Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that's very important for good health.
 
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
 
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
 
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.
 
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.
 
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
 
When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
 
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.
 
The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking this spell.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Scientists, operating in the various disciplines, are encapsulated in their private universe, and it is difficult to get word from one cocoon to the other.
 
It may be true that the unexamined life is not worth living-but neither is the unlived life worth examining.
 
...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.
 
I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter. Far more important is that they be a good human being.
 
To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.
 
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.
 
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
 
Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me. 
 
I have done one thing that I think is a contribution: I helped Buddhist science and modern science combine. No other Buddhist has done that. Other lamas, I don't think they ever pay attention to modern science. Since my childhood, I have a keen interest.
 
Each individual has a universal responsibility to shape institutions to serve human needs.
 
Only the village idiot thinks they "belong",
 
The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man's destiny, life, the world.
 
It is your attitude more than your aptitude that will determine your altitude!
 
Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.
 
To be authentic literally means to be your own author.
 
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.
 
What do you do from morning to night? I endure myself.
 
Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.
 
You wouldn't be normal if you didn't react in an abnormal way.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Disagreement is something normal.
 
More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other's well-being, is source of happiness.
 
It is a fallacy of the old schools to divide man into parcels, elements, thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc. All human faculties consist of an interconnected whole.
 
Once a year go somewhere you have never been before.
 
Society is unity in diversity.
 
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.
 
Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization.
 
If we value our children, we must cherish their parents.
 
Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.
 
My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.
 
Biological communities are systems of interacting components and thus display characteristic properties of systems, such as mutual interdependence, self-regulation, adaptation to disturbances, approach to states of equilibrium, etc.
 
As our own peace of mind grows, so the atmosphere around us becomes more peaceful.
 
What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.
 
No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.
 
These considerations lead to the postulate of a new scientific discipline which we call general system theory. It's subject matter is formulation of principles that are valid for "systems" in general, whatever the nature of the component elements and the relations or "forces" between them.
 
Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own...
 
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?
 
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
 
Thoughts naturally arise. The point of meditation is not to banish thoughts but to make peace with them by realizing their lack of substance.
 
Management problems are not respecters of the company organization, nor of the talents of the people appointed to solve them.
 
When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.
 
The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. "I am no such thing," it would say; "I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.
 
An eye for an eye….we are all blind
 
Everyone tells you what's good for you. they don't want you to find your own answers. they want you to believe theirs.
 
The romantic contrast between modern industry that “destroys nature” and our ancestors who “lived in harmony with nature” is groundless. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of life.
 
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.
 
Anger is the ultimate destroyer of your own peace of mind.
 
The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emotions that are stronger and more powerful.
 
The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
 
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.
 
Life is a series of moments. The quality of attention and action that we bring to each moment determines the quality of our lives.
 
Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
 
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.
 
Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
 
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
 
The time is now, the place is here. Stay in the present. You can do nothing to change the past, and the future will never come exactly as you plan or hope for.
 
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.
 
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.
 
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.
 
It is also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for.
 
Today, the fundamental global objective of all education aspiring not only to progress but to the survival of humanity is to Civilize and Unify the Earth and Transform the human species into genuine humanity The education of the future should teach an ethics of planetary understanding.
 
We do as we have been done by.
 
When you release your expectations that the world should fulfill you, your disappointments vanish.
 
SWEATER: A garment worn by child when it's mother is feeling chilly.
 
I don’t know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness.
 
Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
 
Here appear to exist general system laws which apply to any system of a particular type, irrespective of the particular properties of the systems and the elements involved. Compared to the analytical procedure of classical science with resolution into component elements and one-way or linear causality as basic category, the investigation of organized wholes of many variables requires new categories of interaction, transaction, organization, teleology.
 
I believe the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in that religion or this religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.
 
Look at children. Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do. Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside? Children don’t usually act in such a manner. If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished. They can still play with that person the following day.
 
You are rich if you have enough money to satisfy all your desires. So there are two ways to be rich: you earn, inherit, borrow, beg, or steal enough money to meet all your desires; or you cultivate a simple lifestyle of few desires; that way you always have enough money.
 
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.
 
Convince me, but without convictions. Convictions no longer convince me.
 
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
 
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.
 
Happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors.
 
It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view.
 
To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle.
 
To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.
 
I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it.
 
World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.
 
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
 
Life is not a private affair. A story and its lessons are only made useful if shared.
 
With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world.
 
My words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one.
 
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.
 
The certainty of death and the uncertainty of the hour of death is a source of grief throughout our life.
 
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance.
 
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.
 
Allow rather than resist what arises in the present moment-inside or out. Let it be interesting rather than good or bad.
 
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 ...
 
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.
 
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.
 
For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.
 
You are just an insecure little girl in desperate need of attention.
 
Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
 
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
 
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.
 
If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
 
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.
 
If you ask for something you have to say "Please", if you want to get something you have to please.
 
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.
 
Neither a space station nor an enlightened mind can be realized in a day.
 
The more we are concerned for the well being of others, the closer we will feel to each other.
 
Your fears are not walls, but hurdles. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquering of it.
 
One of the great problems of philosophy is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and the realm of values. Knowledge is what is; values are what ought to be.
 
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.
 
Better never begin; once begun, better finish.
 
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 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.
 
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
 
Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.
 
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
 
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.
 
Words don't mean, people mean.
 
Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.
 
It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
 
I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.
 
Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete.
 
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.
 
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.
 
One would have to say "in the end everything is a gag, etc" because everything is infinitely more than just a gag. The same applies to other "is"-statements such as "Laughter is an instant vacation"
 
You can't achieve anything without getting in someone's way.
 
The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old.
 
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.
 
He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
 
Modern societies accepted the treasures and the power offered them by science. But they have not accepted - they have scarcely even heard - its profounder message: the defining of a new and unique source of truth, and the demand for a thorough revision of ethical premises, for a complete break with the animist tradition, the definitive abandonment of the 'old covenant', the necessity of forging a new one. Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the riches they owe to science, our societies are still trying to live by and to teach systems of values already blasted at the root by science itself.
 
What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.
 
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.
 
I do not judge the universe.
 
World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.
 
Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.
 
A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
 
We find systems which by their very nature and definition are not closed systems. Every living organism is essentially an open system. It maintains itself in a continuous inflow and outflow, a building up and breaking down of components, never being, so long as it is alive, in a state of chemical and thermodynamic equilibrium but maintained in a so-called steady state which is distinct from the latter.
 
I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.
 
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...
 
While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.
 
People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines.
 
As you breathe in, cherish yourself. As you breathe out, cherish all Beings.
 
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
 
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
 
Existence precedes and rules essence.
 
A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.
 
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.
 
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.
 
I defeat my enemies when I make them my friends.
 
The existentialist declares willingly that man is anguish.
 
Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me? And the voice says: "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up".
 
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.
 
Forget the failures. Keep the lessons.
 
The earth is my body, my head is in the stars. (From the film "Harold and Maude")
 
We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.
 
When I'm right no one remembers, when I'm wrong no one forgets.
 
Choice means giving up something you want for something else you want more.
 
Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.
 
Don't cut what you can untie.
 
Nothing that is complete breathes.
 
People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
 
If our well-being depends upon the interaction between events in our brains and events in the world, and there are better and worse ways to secure it, then some cultures will tend to produce lives that are more worth living than others; some political persuasions will be more enlightened than others; and some world views will be mistaken in ways that cause needless human misery.
 
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.
 
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
 
Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.
 
Love is the absence of judgment.
 
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
 
Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
 
I think governments can't do much.
 
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
 
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.
 
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
 
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.
 
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
 
Nobody is always stupid, but everyone is stupid sometimes.
 
The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
 
"Say whatever you choose about the object, and whatever you might say is not it." Or, in other words? "Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not." This negative statement is final, because it is negative.
 
When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.
 
The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.
 
When everything is done, the mornings are sad.
 
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.
 
We're only as needy as our unmet needs.
 
Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
 
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.
 
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
 
The more we think of others, the happier we are. The more we think of ourselves, the more suffering we feel.
 
There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. … It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Imagery is not past but present. It rests with what we call our mental processes to place these images in a temporal order.
 
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.
 
The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
 
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.
 
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
 
Don't ever mistake my silence for ignorance, my calmness for acceptance or my kindness for weakness. Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
 
A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
 
Energy follows thought; we move toward, but not beyond, what we can imagine. What we assume, expect, or believe creates and colors our experience. By expanding our deepest beliefs about what is possible, we change our experience of life.
 
Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience. The point of approach which I wish to suggest is that of dealing with experience from the standpoint of society, at least from the standpoint of communication as essential to the social order. Social psychology, on this view, presupposes an approach to experience from the standpoint of the individual, but undertakes to determine in particular that which belongs to this experience because the individual himself belongs to a social structure, a social order.
 
A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.
 
A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.
 
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.
 
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.
 
One can live without ever having seen oneself, without knowing the color of one’s skin.
 
Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.
 
Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed?
 
The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.
 
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.
 
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
 
Someone else’s action should not determine your response.
 
Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
 
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.
 
The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.
 
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
 
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 least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
 
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
 
Quiet people have the loudest minds
 
Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.
 
If you face just one opponent, and you doubt yourself, you're out-numbered.
 
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.
 
In our considerations we started with a general definition of "systems" defined as a "set of elements standing in interrelations... No special hypothesis or statement were made about the nature of the system, of its elements or the relations between them. Nevertheless from this purely formal definition of "system" many properties follow which in part are expressed in laws well-known in various fields of science, and in part concern concepts previously regarded as anthropomorphic, vitalistic. or metaphysical. The parallelism of general conceptions or even special laws in different fields therefore is a consequence of the fact that those are concerned with "systems" and that certain general principles apply to systems irrespective of their nature.
 
Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.
 
An open heart is an open mind.
 
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion..
 
General system theory, therefore, is a general science of "wholeness...The meaning of the somewhat mystical expression, "The whole is more that the sum of its parts" is simply that constitutive characteristics are not explanable from the characteristics of the isolated parts. The characteristics of the complex, therefore, appear as "new" or "emergent.
 
Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies.
 
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.
 
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
 
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.
 
The means have murdered the end.
 
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
 
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem in my opinion to characterize our age.
 
Thus, when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce...in the same individual, we have the best possible conditions for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. Their ideas posses them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or their age.
 
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