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Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
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.
Never give up. No matter what is happening, no matter what is going on around you, never give up.
Imagery is not past but present. It rests with what we call our mental processes to place these images in a temporal order.
Allow rather than resist what arises in the present moment-inside or out. Let it be interesting rather than good or bad.
What we see depends mainly on what we look for
People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines.
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.
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.
Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry. This is an unjust stereotype.
To be authentic literally means to be your own author.
By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.
The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.
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.
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.
Psycho-galvanic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
You're a prisoner of your own illusions - about yourself and about the world.
The hours of your life are the most valuable currency you will ever have. How will you spend them?
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.
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.
"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.
It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
You are just an insecure little girl in desperate need of attention.
Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf.
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
Freedom from mental distraction equals power.
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.
Here appear to exist general system laws which apply to any system of a particular type, irrespective of the particular properties of the systems and the elements involved. Compared to the analytical procedure of classical science with resolution into component elements and one-way or linear causality as basic category, the investigation of organized wholes of many variables requires new categories of interaction, transaction, organization, teleology.
I think governments can't do much.
Disagreement is something normal.
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.
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
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.
Concern yourselves more with the needs of others, with the needs of all humanity, and you'll have peace of mind.
You can't achieve anything without getting in someone's way.
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
Take everything seriously, except yourselves
There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
All things living are in search of a better world.
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.
Sleep is the best meditation.
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.
The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
As you breathe in, cherish yourself. As you breathe out, cherish all Beings.
The war, of course, furnished many examples of this pattern: the casual fact, the creative imagination, the will to believe, and out of these three elements, a counterfeit of reality to which there was a violent instinctive response. For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities, and that in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond.
To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle.
When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.
Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.
Life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.
We need to learn how to want what we have NOT to have what we want in order to get steady and stable Happiness.
Wisdom is the use of knowledge
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.
I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.
When I'm right no one remembers, when I'm wrong no one forgets.
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.
Non c'è dubbio che questo poveraccio [William Blake] fosse pazzo, ma c'è qualcosa nella sua pazzia che attira il mio interesse più dell'equilibrio di Lord Byron e Walter Scott.
I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.
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.
All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.
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.
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.
Happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors.
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
You have to lose your mind in order to regain your senses.
It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.
Wisdom is the best guide and faith is the best companion.
Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
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.
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.
Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me? And the voice says: "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up".
A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.
My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.
Man lives in a world of meaning.
The earth is not my home, I'm just passing by
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.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
An eye for an eye….we are all blind
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.
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.
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.
We do as we have been done by.
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.
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.
With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world.
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.
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.
The certainty of death and the uncertainty of the hour of death is a source of grief throughout our life.
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.
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 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.
We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.
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.
Energy follows thought; we move toward, but not beyond, what we can imagine. What we assume, expect, or believe creates and colors our experience. By expanding our deepest beliefs about what is possible, we change our experience of life.
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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.
Forget the failures. Keep the lessons.
We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
My words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one.
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.
Life is not a private affair. A story and its lessons are only made useful if shared.
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.
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.
Love and Compassion are the true religions to me. But to develop this, we do not need to believe in any religion.
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.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
The human psyche, like human bones, is strongly inclined towards self-healing.
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.
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!
Only the village idiot thinks they "belong",
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.
Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.
The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man's destiny, life, the world.
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
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.
The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.
When everything is done, the mornings are sad.
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.
Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete.
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.
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
It may be true that the unexamined life is not worth living-but neither is the unlived life worth examining.
In science, self-satisfaction is death. Personal self-satisfaction is the death of the scientist. Collective self-satisfaction is the death of the research. It is restlessness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, agony of mind that nourish science.
We 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.
Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.
Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts.
Quiet people have the loudest minds
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!
Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.
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.
Someone else’s action should not determine your response.
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.
We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can be practiced only when we come in contact with someone who creates unpleasant experiences. According to Shantideva, enemies are really good for us as we can learn a lot from them and build our inner strength.
Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.
In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me; in a work of criticism, only the quotations.
Don't ever mistake my silence for ignorance, my calmness for acceptance or my kindness for weakness. Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.
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.
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.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other's well-being, is source of happiness.
Choice means giving up something you want for something else you want more.
Management problems are not respecters of the company organization, nor of the talents of the people appointed to solve them.
Happiness doesn’t always come from a pursuit. Sometimes it comes when we least expect it.
When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
Nothing that is complete breathes.
Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that's very important for good health.
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.
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.
Effort supposes resistance.
The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.
We find things that do not fit into familiar frameworks hard to understand – such things seem meaningless.
Existence precedes and rules essence.
The Observer is the Observed.
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.
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.
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.
The means have murdered the end.
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.
ON SONGWRITING
It's like glueing macaroni to a piece of cardboard and painting it gold
Man lives in a world of Meaning. What he sees and hears means what he will or might handle.
An open heart is an open mind.
The existentialist declares willingly that man is anguish.
World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.
In Buddhism, ignorance as the root cause of suffering refers to a fundamental misperception of the true nature of the self and all phenomena.
To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.
World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.
There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
In life, stress happens when you resist what arises.
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.
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.
If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.
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.
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.
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.
Education Is what remains after you have forgotten everything you learned in school.
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.
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.
Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted.
A great rock is not disturbed by the wind; the mind of a wise man is not disturbed by either honor or abuse.
The more we think of others, the happier we are. The more we think of ourselves, the more suffering we feel.
It is often asserted that discussion is only possible between people who have a common language and accept common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion will be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ.
The 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.
We have a responsibility to look after our planet. It is our only home.
Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
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.
...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.
The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
It is your attitude more than your aptitude that will determine your altitude!
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, small people talk about other people.
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
If we, who live outside asylums, act as if we lived in a fictitious world- that is to say, if we are consistent with our beliefs- we cannot adjust ourselves to actual conditions, and so fall into many avoidable semantic difficulties. But the so-called normal person practically never abides by his beliefs, and when his beliefs are building for him a fictitious world, he saves his neck by not abiding by them. A so-called "insane" person acts upon his beliefs, and so cannot adjust himself to a world which is quite different from his fancy.
If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
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.
Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another.
If your heart has peace, nothing can disturb you.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
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.
Fear and trust cannot go together.
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.
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.
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Only an idiot could think there is a point to any of this.
We are confronted with problems of organized complexity... organization runs through all levels of reality and science.
Each individual has a universal responsibility to shape institutions to serve human needs.
We discover our character through decisions under pressure.
Mutual respect is the foundation of genuine harmony.
Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
As our own peace of mind grows, so the atmosphere around us becomes more peaceful.
The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.
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.
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
I believe the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in that religion or this religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.
Identity is invariably false to facts.
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.
Most people use social media not to open their horizons wider, but to lock themselves in a comfort zone.
Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience. The point of approach which I wish to suggest is that of dealing with experience from the standpoint of society, at least from the standpoint of communication as essential to the social order. Social psychology, on this view, presupposes an approach to experience from the standpoint of the individual, but undertakes to determine in particular that which belongs to this experience because the individual himself belongs to a social structure, a social order.
Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me. 
Life is a series of moments. The quality of attention and action that we bring to each moment determines the quality of our lives.
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
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.
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 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.
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
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.
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
SUBURBIA: A place where the developers bulldoze all of the trees -- then name the streets after them.
No very sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology.
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.
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.
Everyone tells you what's good for you. they don't want you to find your own answers. they want you to believe theirs.
Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
You've got to have a map: to know where you came from, where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there.
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
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.
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.
When you talk you are only repeating something you already know. But, if you listen you may learn something new.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
I also know that one must do what one can do. No matter how little it is, it is nonetheless a human testimony and human testimonies, as long as they are not based on greed or personal ambition for power, can have unexpected positive effects. ...I believe in local action and in small dimensions. It is only in such environments that human creativity and meaningful identities can truly surface and flourish.
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.
If you want peace of mind I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
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.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Love is the absence of judgment.
Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization.
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.
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.
Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.
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.
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?
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.
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.
I hate victims who respect their executioners.
While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.
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.
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're only as needy as our unmet needs.
What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.
Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.
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.
It will happen but it will take time.
The more we are concerned for the well being of others, the closer we will feel to each other.
A genuine, affectionate smile is very important in our day-to-day lives.
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.
If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.
When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
Intelligence is essentially the ability to solve the problems of present behavior in terms of its possible future consequences as implicated on the basis of past experience-the ability, that is, to solve the problems of present behavior in the light of, or by reference to, both the past and the future; it involves both memory and foresight.
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.
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.
True change is within; leave the outside as it is.
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...
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.
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 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.
Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere.
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem in my opinion to characterize our age.
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.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
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...
If we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary.
Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.
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.
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.
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.
I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.
Don't cut what you can untie.
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.
I do not judge the universe.
In this century we have made remarkable material progress, but basically we are the same as we were thousands of years ago. Our spiritual needs are still very great.
At times I want to be found.
Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.
Words don't mean, people mean.
The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.
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.
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance.
Better to be disliked than pitied.
Society is unity in diversity.
A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
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.
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.
So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?
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!
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
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.
Ignorance is no excuse once we know that ignorance is the only possible excuse.
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
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.
The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.
One can live without ever having seen oneself, without knowing the color of one’s skin.
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.
Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.
Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions.
Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.
Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.
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.
The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.
My life is like an air-traffic controller's: moments of boredom broken up by moments of sheer terror.
When you attach a label make sure it can come off because things can change.
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
If you face just one opponent, and you doubt yourself, you're out-numbered.
Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.
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...
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.