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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.
 
If you want peace of mind I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
 
Effort supposes resistance.
 
Management problems are not respecters of the company organization, nor of the talents of the people appointed to solve them.
 
It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view.
 
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?
 
To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle.
 
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion..
 
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 are just an insecure little girl in desperate need of attention.
 
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.
 
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.
 
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
 
If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
 
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.
 
What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.
 
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.
 
History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself.
 
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
 
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.
 
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.
 
We discover our character through decisions under pressure.
 
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
 
Quiet people have the loudest minds
 
People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
 
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
 
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!
 
Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.
 
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.
 
The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old.
 
The more we think of others, the happier we are. The more we think of ourselves, the more suffering we feel.
 
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
 
The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man's destiny, life, the world.
 
Sleep is the best meditation.
 
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
 
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.
 
One can live without ever having seen oneself, without knowing the color of one’s skin.
 
All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.
 
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.
 
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
 
Whether you believe in God or not does not matter much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life.
 
I 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.
 
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 usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
 
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
 
Meditation is a valuable exercise, but eventually you have to open up your eyes and look around.
 
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
 
An open heart is an open mind.
 
Non arrenderti mai, perché quando pensi che sia tutto finito, è il momento in cui tutto ha inizio.
 
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.
 
Identity is invariably false to facts.
 
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.
 
Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
 
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.
 
You're a prisoner of your own illusions - about yourself and about the world.
 
Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
 
Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts.
 
The shadows: some hide, others reveal.
 
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
 
The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
 
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.
 
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
 
A great rock is not disturbed by the wind; the mind of a wise man is not disturbed by either honor or abuse.
 
Never give up. No matter what is happening, no matter what is going on around you, never give up.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness.
 
Each individual has a universal responsibility to shape institutions to serve human needs.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
 
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.
 
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.
 
No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.
 
Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies.
 
SUBURBIA: A place where the developers bulldoze all of the trees -- then name the streets after them.
 
Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant.
 
We'll show you that you can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.
 
At times I want to be found.
 
Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me? And the voice says: "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up".
 
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.
 
If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
 
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
 
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.
 
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.
 
The more you are motivated by Love, The more Fearless & Free your action will be.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
 
Who rules our symbols, rules us.
 
Wisdom is the use of knowledge
 
In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
 
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
 
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
 
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.
 
Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions.
 
Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.
 
I do not judge the universe.
 
Only the village idiot thinks they "belong",
 
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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
Whenever you can, count.
 
The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
 
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...
 
Nobody is always stupid, but everyone is stupid sometimes.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Happiness doesn’t always come from a pursuit. Sometimes it comes when we least expect it.
 
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.
 
Convince me, but without convictions. Convictions no longer convince me.
 
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.
 
The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emotions that are stronger and more powerful.
 
World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.
 
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.
 
As our own peace of mind grows, so the atmosphere around us becomes more peaceful.
 
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
 
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
 
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.
 
Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere.
 
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.
 
Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.
 
Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.
 
You wound and you will wound again. Because you wound and then you go away. You do not stay with the wound.
 
We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Wholeness [Ganzheit], Gestalt, is the primary attribute of life.
 
Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.
 
Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.
 
The earth is my body, my head is in the stars. (From the film "Harold and Maude")
 
The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
 
You have to lose your mind in order to regain your senses.
 
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.
 
Anger is the ultimate destroyer of your own peace of mind.
 
While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.
 
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
 
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 are a dynamic whole greater than the sum of your parts. By integrating your body, mind, and emotions through training, you reshape your life.
 
Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.
 
When you release your expectations that the world should fulfill you, your disappointments vanish.
 
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.
 
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.
 
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
 
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.
 
Through violence, you may ‘solve’ one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
 
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.
 
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 is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.
 
To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.
 
Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own...
 
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.
 
I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.
 
Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.
 
The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.
 
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.
 
Freedom from mental distraction equals power.
 
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.
 
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.
 
... the fallacy of attributing to one cause what is due to many causes.
 
My life is like an air-traffic controller's: moments of boredom broken up by moments of sheer terror.
 
The fundamental biological variant is DNA. That is why Mendel's definition of the gene as the unvarying bearer of hereditary traits, its chemical identification by Avery (confirmed by Hershey), and the elucidation by Watson and Crick of the structural basis of its replicative invariance, are without any doubt the most important discoveries ever made in biology. To this must be added the theory of natural selection, whose certainty and full significance were established only by those later theories.
 
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.
 
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 will act as if what i do makes a difference.
 
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.
 
It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.
 
We are confronted with problems of organized complexity... organization runs through all levels of reality and science.
 
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.
 
A genuine, affectionate smile is very important in our day-to-day lives.
 
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.
 
The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.
 
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.
 
Follow the three R's: - Respect for self. - Respect for others. - Responsibility for all your actions.
 
The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation.
 
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"
 
Home is where you feel at home and are treated well.
 
Weather forecast for tonight: dark.
 
Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
 
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
 
The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.
 
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.
 
You can't achieve anything without getting in someone's way.
 
Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
 
Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
 
Love is the absence of judgment.
 
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.
 
Dream big. Start small and then connect the dots.
 
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
 
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 ...
 
In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me; in a work of criticism, only the quotations.
 
Society is unity in diversity.
 
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.
 
We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.
 
Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.
 
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
 
Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
 
The hours of your life are the most valuable currency you will ever have. How will you spend them?
 
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
 
I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.
 
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 big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
 
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.
 
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.
 
The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred.
 
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.
 
With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world.
 
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
 
When you attach a label make sure it can come off because things can change.
 
There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
 
Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.
 
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.
 
Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.
 
The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
 
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.
 
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.
 
We have a responsibility to look after our planet. It is our only home.
 
Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another.
 
Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
 
It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent 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.
 
What do you do from morning to night? I endure myself.
 
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
 
The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals [is] a basic component of human nature.
 
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem in my opinion to characterize our age.
 
Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.
 
Allow rather than resist what arises in the present moment-inside or out. Let it be interesting rather than good or bad.
 
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
 
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.
 
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.
 
When everything is done, the mornings are sad.
 
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.
 
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.
 
I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it.
 
I think therefore I seem to be.
 
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.
 
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...
 
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.
 
The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.
 
Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization.
 
Happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors.
 
If we value our children, we must cherish their parents.
 
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.
 
I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.
 
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.
 
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.
 
A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
 
So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?
 
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
 
Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.
 
The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
 
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.
 
What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.
 
I do not want anything over again. Not even a mother.
 
In our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.
 
It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.
 
Love and Compassion are the true religions to me. But to develop this, we do not need to believe in any religion.
 
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.
 
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.
 
If we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary.
 
All things living are in search of a better world.
 
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
 
Your fears are not walls, but hurdles. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquering of it.
 
Choice means giving up something you want for something else you want more.
 
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.
 
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/
 
The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
 
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.
 
I defeat my enemies when I make them my friends.
 
Man lives in a world of Meaning. What he sees and hears means what he will or might handle.
 
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
 
I hate victims who respect their executioners.
 
Neither a space station nor an enlightened mind can be realized in a day.
 
Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
It is your attitude more than your aptitude that will determine your altitude!
 
The existentialist declares willingly that man is anguish.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
An eye for an eye….we are all blind
 
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
 
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance.
 
A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
 
As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
 
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.
 
The certainty of death and the uncertainty of the hour of death is a source of grief throughout our life.
 
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.