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True change is within; leave the outside as it is.
Identity is invariably false to facts.
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've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf.
Fear and trust cannot go together.
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
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!
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.
If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.
Don't cut what you can untie.
In our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.
Society is unity in diversity.
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.
Only an idiot could think there is a point to any of this.
When I'm right no one remembers, when I'm wrong no one forgets.
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.
When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
We find things that do not fit into familiar frameworks hard to understand – such things seem meaningless.
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.
...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 think therefore I seem to be.
We'll show you that you can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
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.
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"
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.
We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.
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.
In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me; in a work of criticism, only the quotations.
Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.
Education Is what remains after you have forgotten everything you learned in school.
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.
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.
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.
SUBURBIA: A place where the developers bulldoze all of the trees -- then name the streets after them.
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.
So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?
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.
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
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.
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
ON SONGWRITING
It's like glueing macaroni to a piece of cardboard and painting it gold
Never give up. No matter what is happening, no matter what is going on around you, never give up.
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.
Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
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.
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.
There is nothing I can't live without. I learned this attitude when I was a child.
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.
Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
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.
The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.
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.
To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle.
I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.
We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.
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.
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.
While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.
As our own peace of mind grows, so the atmosphere around us becomes more peaceful.
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.
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.
Dream big. Start small and then connect the dots.
A sense of concern for others gives our lives meaning; it is the root of all human happiness
Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.
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.
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 life, stress happens when you resist what arises.
The shadows: some hide, others reveal.
We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
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.
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
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.
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.
No very sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology.
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.
Nothing that is complete breathes.
As you breathe in, cherish yourself. As you breathe out, cherish all Beings.
Most people use social media not to open their horizons wider, but to lock themselves in a comfort zone.
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.
Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness.
Life is not a private affair. A story and its lessons are only made useful if shared.
A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.
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.
By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.
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.
A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal.
Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant.
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.
A great rock is not disturbed by the wind; the mind of a wise man is not disturbed by either honor or abuse.
The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
You're a prisoner of your own illusions - about yourself and about the world.
The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old.
The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emotions that are stronger and more powerful.
You are just an insecure little girl in desperate need of attention.
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals [is] a basic component of human nature.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Disagreement is something normal.
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.
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?
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.
Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts.
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.
Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.
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.
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.
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.
Wholeness [Ganzheit], Gestalt, is the primary attribute of life.
It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.
When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
Non arrenderti mai, perché quando pensi che sia tutto finito, è il momento in cui tutto ha inizio.
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.
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.
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
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.
You can't achieve anything without getting in someone's way.
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.
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.
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.
Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.
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.
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.
The more you are motivated by Love, The more Fearless & Free your action will be.
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.
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.
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...
In Buddhism, ignorance as the root cause of suffering refers to a fundamental misperception of the true nature of the self and all phenomena.
Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.
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.
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.
Through violence, you may ‘solve’ one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
Sleep is the best meditation.
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.
Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.
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."
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/
I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it.
It is your attitude more than your aptitude that will determine your altitude!
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.
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.
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!
Concern yourselves more with the needs of others, with the needs of all humanity, and you'll have peace of mind.
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.
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.
The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.
World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.
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.
Love and Compassion are the true religions to me. But to develop this, we do not need to believe in any religion.
The existentialist declares willingly that man is anguish.
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.
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.
Everyone tells you what's good for you. they don't want you to find your own answers. they want you to believe theirs.
Psycho-galvanic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
We do as we have been done by.
I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
Whenever you can, count.
Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.
The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.
World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.
The earth is my body, my head is in the stars. (From the film "Harold and Maude")
The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man's destiny, life, the world.
I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.
What we see depends mainly on what we look for
Man lives in a world of meaning.
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
If we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary.
Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors.
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.
If you ask for something you have to say "Please", if you want to get something you have to please.
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
Happiness doesn’t always come from a pursuit. Sometimes it comes when we least expect it.
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.
Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another.
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.
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!
My life is like an air-traffic controller's: moments of boredom broken up by moments of sheer terror.
If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
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 intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.
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.
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.
Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
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?
If you face just one opponent, and you doubt yourself, you're out-numbered.
Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere.
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.
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.
Neither a space station nor an enlightened mind can be realized in a day.
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.
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.
I think governments can't do much.
We need to learn how to want what we have NOT to have what we want in order to get steady and stable Happiness.
To be authentic literally means to be your own author.
Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me? And the voice says: "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up".
Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.
There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.
The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
What do you do from morning to night? I endure myself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
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.
Who rules our symbols, rules us.
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.
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.
It may be true that the unexamined life is not worth living-but neither is the unlived life worth examining.
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
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.
Life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance.
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.
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
Life is a series of moments. The quality of attention and action that we bring to each moment determines the quality of our lives.
The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
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.
Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
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.
For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
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.
"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.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
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.
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.
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
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 more we are concerned for the well being of others, the closer we will feel to each other.
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.
Take everything seriously, except yourselves
You don't have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you.
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.
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.
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 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.
It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.
The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred.
The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.
Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own...
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
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.
The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.
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...
Effort supposes resistance.
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
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.
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me. 
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.
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.
It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
One can live without ever having seen oneself, without knowing the color of one’s skin.
What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.
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.
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.
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.
Love is the absence of judgment.
Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
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.
Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.
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.
I do not want anything over again. Not even a mother.
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 ...
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."
The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.
The human psyche, like human bones, is strongly inclined towards self-healing.
A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
When you attach a label make sure it can come off because things can change.
Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry. This is an unjust stereotype.
There is direction but there is no destination.
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.
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.
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.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
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.
The hours of your life are the most valuable currency you will ever have. How will you spend them?
Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
We're only as needy as our unmet needs.