Our best thoughts come from others.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Messiah's Handbook and Reminders for the Advanced Soul
by Richard Bach (1936 - ) from: "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" (1977)
Perspective - use it or lose it. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.
Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers.
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else
is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.
The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change.
You teach best what you most need to learn.
Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world - even if what is published is not true.
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."
You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.
Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.
You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts.
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect, then be sure of one thing:
the Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed.
It feel an impulsion...this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when
you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish.
You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.
The original sin is to limit the Is.
Don't.
If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.
Listen to it carefully.
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there.
What you choose to do with them is up to you.
The truth you speak has no past and no future.
It is, and that's all it needs to be.
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished.
If you're alive, it isn't.
In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom.
It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Don't be dismayed at good-byes.
A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.
And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Everything in this book may be wrong.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.”
“The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”
“You can't solve problems for someone
whose problem is that they don't want problems solved.”
("One," 1989)
“Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is illusion. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.”
("Jonathan Livingston Seagull," 1970)
“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.”
Bertrand Arthur William Russell Philosopher, Mathematician, Author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
One should have a general attitude of welcoming to everybody.
(From the "shot list" of the film, "The Life and Times of Bertrand Russell", BBC TV, 1964; ts., RA1 430 BBC])
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
(From "Introduction: On the Value of Scepticism", Sceptical Essays; London: Allen & Unwin, 1928)
Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say, "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment" and that is really what a scientific person would say about the universe.
(From "Why I Am Not a Christian"; London: Watts, 1927)
Probably in time physiologists will be able to make nerves connecting the bodies of different people; this will have the advantage that we shall be able to feel another man's tooth aching.
(From "Human Knowledge"; London: Allen & Unwin, 1948)
A personality is an aggregate, or an organization, like a cricket club. I can accept the dissolution of the MCC.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible....
I don't believe in meekness.
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
Hatred of some sort is quite necessary---it needn't be towards people.
But without some admixture of hatred one becomes soft and loses energy.
(All from Alan Wood, "Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic"; London: Allen & Unwin, 1957)
The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
(From "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization"; London: Allen & Unwin, 1923, p. 252; written in collaboration with Dora Russell)
Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.
(From "University Education", Fact and Fiction; London: Allen & Unwin, 1961)
Mathematics may be defined as the subject where we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
(CPBR 3: 366 : 31-3; "Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics", a.k.a. "Mathematics and the Metaphysicians")
... since one never knows what will be the line of advance, it is always most rash to condemn what is not quite in the fashion of the moment.
(Review of MacColl's "Symbolic Logic and Its Applications," Mind, 15; 1906, p. 260)
In very abstract studies such as philosophical logic, ...the subject-matter that you are supposed to be thinking of is so exceedingly difficult and elusive that any person who has ever tried to think about it knows you do not think about it except perhaps once in six months for half a minute. The rest of the time you think about the symbols, because they are tangible, for the thing you are supposed to be thinking about is fearfully difficult and one does not often manage to think about it. The really good philosopher is the one who does once in six months think about it for a minute. Bad philosophers never do.
("The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", Logic and Knowledge, ed. R.C. Marsh; London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, p. 185)
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty--a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.
("The Study of Mathematics")
... mathematics is only the art of saying the same thing in different words
(Autobiography, Vol. 3, penultimate par.)
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
("Education and the Social Order"; London: Allen & Unwin, 1932)
United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need, of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves.
("The Free Man's Worship" 1903)
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.&
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists --that is why they invented hell.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.
Worry is a form of fear, and all forms of fear produce fatigue.
A man who has learned not to feel fear will find the fatigue of daily life enormously diminished.
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Joseph Campbell (March 26, 1904 - October 31, 1987) "The Power of Myth"; Doubleday, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York City, NY, 10103; 1988. ISBN# 0-385-41886-8
“The wound is the wound of my passion and the agony of my love for this creature. The only one who can heal me is the one who delivered the blow.”
(P. 243)
“In marriage, every day you love and every day your forgive. It is an ongoing sacrament -- love and forgiveness.”
- Bill Moyers (P. 250)
Campbell: “That depends on how you understand marriage, The word "sym-bol" itself means two things put together. One person has one half, the other the other half, and then they come together. Recognition comes from putting the ring together, the completed circle. This is my marriage, this is the merging of my individual life in a larger life that is two, where the two are one. The ring indicates that we are one circle together.” (P. 270)
Moyers: “So joy and pain are in love.”
Campbell: “Yes. Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain.”
Moyers: “But love bears all things.”
Campbell: “Love itself is a pain, you might say — the pain of being truly alive.”
(P. 257)
“...the paramount object of experience is the beast. Killed and slaughtered, it yields to people its flesh to become our substance, teeth to become our ornaments, hides for clothing and tents, sinews for ropes, bones for tools. The animal life is translated into human life entirely, through the medium of death, slaughter, and the arts of cooking, tanning, sewing.”
("The Sexual Politics of Meat" by Adams; p 189)
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
“Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege!”
("Full Esteem Ahead" by Diane Loomans)
“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”
“One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.”
("A Joseph Campbell Companion," by Diane Osbon, ed.)
H.I.M. Haile Selassie I Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Emperor of Ethiopia
On Evil - “In order that the work of evil may not triumph again over this redeemed humanity, all Peace-loving peoples must rally together for the definite re-establishment of right and Peace.”
- Selassie I, 1937
On JAH Guide - “Just as we have done in the past, we will make available to you, through various experts, detectives which will serve as your guide in your work.”
- Selassie I
On Energy - “There is no energy in the world, including the atom, that can not be controlled. However, there is no scientist on earth who could control even for a second, the flow of time. For this reason, never idle away your time, however briefly.”
- Selassie I
On Education - “Humanity by nature is gifted to think freely, but in order that this free thought should lead him to the goal of liberty and independence, his way of thinking must be shaped be the process of education.”
- Selassie I, 1946
On Strength - “With the knowledge that unity and co-operation are in themselves strength, take advantage of the possibilities we have opened to you.”
- Selassie I, Sept. 18, 1959
On War - “Wars and rumors of wars are occupying the attention of governments and peoples, but the world is thirsting more than ever for Peace and justice.”
- Selassie I, 1936
“The historical religions of the world have separated mankind, but the mystic traditions confirm the brotherhood of Man.”
Vladimir Nabokov
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me.
Osho "Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic"; New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2K ISBN: 0312254571
Spiritual, to me, simply means finding oneself.
("Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic" p 3.)
That's how the whole of humanity lives in corruption, in a very slippery, thick mud of lies told to children for centuries. If we can do just one thing, a simple thing--not lie to children and to confess to them our ignorance--then we will be religious and we will put them on the path of religion. Children are only innocence; leave them not your so-called knowledge. But you yourself must first be innocent, unlying, true.
("Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic" p 13.)
Unless one is a born troublemaker one cannot become a Buddha.
("Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic" p 18.)
Only once in a while a man becomes a wild human being.
("Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic" p 33.)
Once you are ready to say, "I don't care about respectability," then the society is absolutely impotent to do anything against your will.
("Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic" p 97.)
This meeting [of all opposites] will create a new human being--Zorba the Buddha. That's my name for the new man.
("Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic" p 215.)
To transform life into celebration is the only authentic science of religion.
H.L. Mencken writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian -- and at once the world becomes understandable.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) essayist and novelist
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.
Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.
I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic:
I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
It is always the secure who are humble.
[The will] is particularity reflected into itself and so brought back to universality, i.e. it is individuality.
- Hegel, Introduction to "Philosophy of Right"
The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth.
- "The Everlasting Man". New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1925. p 19.
The world will never starve for want of wonders.
At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spirited life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder.
- Chaucer
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
William James (1842-1910) Psychologist and philosopher
William James, who thought that no reasonable psychology could question the existence of "personal selves," and who believed that the worst a psychology might do is rob those selves of significance, might be pleased to discover that today there are plausible if not yet proven hypotheses for the neural basis of the self.
- Antonio R. Damasio, "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain"; New York: Avon Books, 1998. p 244.
Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect. ... The horrors make the fascination. ... Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponents.
(1907, Rollo May, "Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence", New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1972. p 173.)
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
Johrei Wisdom
“Only loving deeds, good deeds can ever bring forth the realization of a world completely filled with truth, virtue and beauty. Paradise on earth will be a world of beauty, where the inner hearts of all its inhabitants will be beautiful also. A person whose thoughts, words and deeds are always pure, always beautiful, can surely be considered one who lives in paradise.”
- Mokichi Okada (1882-1955) Japanese poet, artist, mystic, visionary, businessman, husband, father, and spiritual teacher founder of Johrei.
Nothing's as precious,
Priceless, as true makoto (love & integrity).
Nothing has its strength,
The power to penetrate
Even an iron-hard rock.
- Meishu-sama
Makoto, true love,
Is a most priceless treasure
Cherished in the hearts
Of sincere, honest persons
In whom there is no falsehood.
- Meishu-sama
Let us remember--
Even the gigantic tree
Which has grown so tall
It now seems to reach the sky
Was once a tiny seedling.
- Meishu-sama
The divine light plan
Is advancing day by day.
Let us help young people
To grow spiritually
And prepare for the future.
- Kyoshu-sama
Ah, how beautiful
It is to see young people
Giving of themselves,
Devoting their energies
To humanity's welfare!
- Kyoshu-sama
Dorothy Parker
The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
And it is that word "hummy," my darlings, that marks the first place in "The House at Pooh Corner" at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
(New Yorker, 1928; review by D.P. as "Constant Reader")
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.
Mark Twain (Samuel Longhorne Clemens) U.S. Author and Humorist (1835-1910)
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
The streets of hell are paved with good intentions.
Love: The irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Anyone with a new idea is a crank, until the idea succeeds.
The physician who knows only medicine, knows not even medicine.
Sing as if no one is listening, Dance as if no one is watching, And love as if you have never been hurt before.
Suppose you were an idiot...And suppose you were a member of Congress...But I repeat myself.
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
Be careful about reading health books.
You might die of a misprint.
“Eschew surplusage.”
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
- Charles Dudley Warner (Hartford [CN] Courant newspaper editor) (Twain's friend, colleague and co-author with him of, "The Guilded Age: A Tale of Today." Twain usually gets the credit for this quotation.)
Ralph Waldo Emerson American essayist, poet and philosopher (1803-1882, Gemini)
Emersonian Ideal
(1) the wish to be different; the wish to be unique; the wish to go off in one's own direction; the wish to experiment, to wander, to float;
(2) the wish to be let alone; the wish to be uninvolved in somebody else's game; the wish to be unobserved; the wish to be mysterious; to have secrets; the be thought undefined;
(3) the wish to be unbeholden; the wish to own oneself;
(4) the wish to think, judge, and interpret for oneself;
(5) the wish to feel real, not dazed; the wish to live, not play just one lifelong role or perform just one lifelong function;
(6) the wish to go to one's limit; the wish to score, to accumulate heterogeneous experiences;
(7) the wish to shape one's life, but not into a well-shaped story, or a well-made work of art; the wish to be fluid, not substantial;
(8) the wish to find oneself, to find the "real me"; to be oneself rather than somebody else's idea of that self; the wish to be reborn as oneself.
- Kateb, "Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights," in "Liberalism and the Moral Life" 183, 191 by Nancy L. Rosenblum, ed. 1989. Also quoted in "Overcoming Law." Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. p 27-28 by Posner, Richard A., Posner's note: Notice the resemblance to Mill's principle of individuality, on which see Alan Ryan, "The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill," ch. 13 (2nd ed 1990). Kateb's last clause ("the wish to be reborn as oneself") puts one in mind of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence.
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."”
Nothing can bring you Peace but yourself.
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
The ancestor of every action is thought.
Common sense is genius dressed up in work clothes.
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
Some blunders and absurdities crept in;
Forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
(Beverly Elaine Eanes, "Joy")
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.
(Molly Young Brown, "Lighting a Candle")
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting.
(Caesar Johnson, ed., "To See the World in a Grain of Sand")
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
("Self-Reliance," Essays, First Series 1841, repr. 1847).
He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Knowledge is the antidote to fear.
Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
I am become a transparent eyeball...
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
If a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
When the eyes say one thing and the tongue another, the practiced person relies on the language of the first.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely...
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The [One] who knows how will always have a job. The [One] who also knows why will always be their boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The [One] who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The [One] who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
(Essays: First Series, "Essay XII, Art")
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping themselves.
An individual has a healthy personality to the exact degree to which they have the propensity to look for the good in every situation.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great [One] is... who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
“Words are a mirror of their times. By looking at the areas in which the vocabulary of a language is expanding fastest in a given period, we can form a fairly accurate impression of the chief preoccupations of society at that time.”
- John Ayto, lexicographer
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) original gonzo journalist
Writing in 1970 to his editor at Random House, Thompson said that “...anything I write is going to be about the death of the American Dream.”
“There are a hundred or more people wandering around Washington today who have heard the ‘real stuff,’ as they put it - and despite their professional caution when the obvious question arises, there is one reaction they all feel free to agree on: that nobody who felt shocked, depressed or angry after reading the edited White House transcripts should ever be allowed to hear the actual tapes, except under heavy sedation or locked in the trunk of a car. Only a terminal cynic, they say, can listen for any length of time to the real stuff without feeling a compulsion to do something like drive down to the White House and throw a bag of live rats over the fence.”
(04JUL1973)
“If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past 10 years, about 600 people--including me--would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”
“I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.”
“Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.”
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
“For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.”
“We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.”
("Walden", "Economy")
“Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.”
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
“We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.”
“In the long run you hit only what you aim at.
Therefore, though you should fail immediately,
you had better aim at something high.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”
“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.”
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”
“One (who) advances confidently in the direction of (one's) dream, and endeavors to live the life which (one) has imagined... will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)
“Only begin and then the mind grows heated; only begin and the task will be completed.”
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to pull back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no (wo)man dreamed could have come (her)his way.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now.
Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if it were possible, speak a few reasonable words.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Before you can do something, you must first be something.
All truths are old, and all that we have to do is recognize and utter them anew.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where you stand as in what direction you are moving.
Is not the core of nature in the heart of man?
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
“Desire and hope will push us on toward the future.”
- Michel de Montaigne
Tenzin Gyatso His Holiness, The 14th Dalai Lama, (1935 - )
Whether listening or reading teachings, we are like a vase meant to collect wisdom.
The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one's life.
Without the human community one single human being cannot survive.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people's hearts. Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human “brain” with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human “heart” with compassion. This is what the real role of religion is.
Whether one believes in religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.
Compassion is what makes our lives meaningful. It is the source of all lasting happiness and joy. And it is the foundation of a good heart, the heart of one who acts out of desire to help others. Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice toward all others we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter for complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense. There is no denying that consideration of others is worthwhile. There is no denying that our happiness is inextricably bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if society suffers we ourselves suffer. Nor is there any denying that the more our hearts and minds are afflicted with ill-will, the more miserable we become. Thus we can reject everything else; religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.
(Back cover of "Ethics For The New Millennium")
The development of a kind heart (a feeling of closeness for all human beings) does not involve the religiosity we normally associate with conventional religious practice. It is not only for people who believe in religion, but is for everyone regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation. It is for anyone who considers himself or herself, above all, a member of the human family and who sees things from this larger and longer perspective.
(A Human Approach to World Peace)
May I become at all times, both now and forever:
A protector for those without protection,
A guide for those who have lost their way,
A ship for those with oceans to cross,
A bridge for those with rivers to cross,
A sanctuary for those in danger,
A lamp for those without light,
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter,
And a servant to all in need.
("Ethics For The New Millennium")
The essence of all religions is love, compassion, and tolerance. Kindness is my true religion. The clear proof of a person's love of God is if that person genuinely shows love to fellow human beings.
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
When unfortunate things happen in our lives there are two possible results. One possibility is mental unrest, anxiety, fear, doubt, frustration and eventually depression, and in the worst case, even suicide. That's one way. The other possibility is that because of that tragic experience you become more realistic, you become closer to reality. With the power of investigation, the tragic experience may make you stronger and increase your self-confidence and self-reliance. The unfortunate event can be a source of inner strength
("The Dalai Lama's Book of Wisdom," 1995)
It is important to energize our everyday practice and daily good works with enthusiasm, without anyone else telling us to, but doing it for our own sake.
“I was walking through the airport smiling and they were looking at me like ‘What are you smiling at!?’ ”
(from a lecture at the University of Minnesota, 08MAY2K1, as quoted by Dan Engebretson)
Jeddu Krishnamurti
“In oneself lies the whole world, and if you know how to look and learn, then the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either that key or the door to open, except yourself.”
“Understanding can never be made into a habit, a matter of routine; it demands constant watchfulness, alertness. To understand, there must be pliability, sensitivity, a warmth that has nothing to do with sentimentality.”
“To understand a problem obviously requires a certain intelligence, and that intelligence cannot be derived from or cultivated through specialization. It comes into being only when we are passively aware of the whole process of our consciousness, which is to be aware of ourselves without choice, without choosing what is right and what is wrong. When you are passively aware, you will see that out of that passivity - which is not idleness, which is not sleep, but extreme alertness - the problem has quite a different significance; which means there is no longer identification with the problem and therefore there is no judgment and hence the problem begins to reveal its content. If you are able to do that constantly, continuously, then every problem can be solved fundamentally, not superficially.”
“There is hope in men, not in society, not in systems, not in organized religious systems, but in you and in me.”
“Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection...”
“Relationship... is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence. You exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist; existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related; and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.”
“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
("Freedom from the Known")
“When you see something, just Look at it- don't categorize it, try to understand it, try to grasp it. Just Look. You have never seen it before ...and if you are looking at your anger, just looking at it, will make it go.”
Adolf Hitler Nazi Reich Chancellor
I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.
[Speech, Reichstag, 1936]
There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland.
[Message, signed Hitler, painted on walls of concentration camps; Life, August 21, 1939]
Woman's world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men.
[as quoted by Lucy Komisar, "The New Feminism"]
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people.
[Speech, April 26, 1933, made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]
I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it.
[Rauschning, "The Voice of Destruction," pp. 239-40]
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed.
[Speech, on April 12, 1922, "My New Order," in "Freethought Today," April 1990]
I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
[Mein Kampf, pp. 46]
What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator.
[Mein Kampf, pp. 125]
This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.
[Mein Kampf, pp.152]
And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.
[Mein Kampf, pp.174]
Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve.
[Mein Kampf, pp.309]
I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.
[To Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]
Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.
[Mein Kampf, p. 171]
I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 1]
I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 2]
...the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes!
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3, about the leader of the Christian Social movement]
Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]
I had so often sung "Deutschland u:ber Alles" and shouted "Heil" at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]
Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]
I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian- Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 6]
Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 7, reflecting on World War I]
The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings... If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 8]
To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 8]
The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles. The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the "image" of God.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10, echoing the Cultural Warfare rhetoric of the Religious Right]
But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11]
The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11]
...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11, precisely echoing Martin Luther's teachings of anti-Semitism]
Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the "remaking" of the Reich as they call it.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]
Of course, even the general designation "religious" includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]
Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]
A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
For the greatest revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 5]
For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 5]
The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10]
In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another.
[Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10]
For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: "Lord, make us free!" is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: "Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!"
[Adolf Hitler's prayer, Mein Kampf, Vol. 2 Chapter 13]
The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life
[Speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933]
I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.
[Speech, 15 March 1936, Munich, Germany.]
Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the "poison of immorality" which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of "liberal excess" during the past ... (few) years.
[The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872]
“All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself. The great masses of the people [...] will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. What luck for rulers that men do not think.”
“The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, because the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad.
The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them more easy victims of a big lie than a small one, because they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.
Such a form of lying would never enter their heads. They would never credit others with the possibility of such great impudence as the complete reversal of facts. Even explanations would long leave them in doubt and hesitation, and any trifling reason would dispose them to accept a thing as true.
Something therefore always remains and sticks from the most imprudent of lies, a fact which all bodies and individuals concerned in the art of lying in this world know only too well, and therefore they stop at nothing to achieve this end.”
[Mein Kampf]
Jalalu'l-Din Rumi AKA Jelaluddin AND Jalaluddin
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.
Ecstatic Love is an ocean, and the Milky Way is a flake of foam floating on it.
Behead yourself! Dissolve your whole body into Vision; become seeing, seeing, seeing!
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, he said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
(translated by Kabir Helminski)
Just as intellects are bewildered by my madness, I am bewildered by the frozen state of these intellects. Because in this path, anything other than confusion and madness is distance and alienation from God.
(translated by Coleman Barks)
Drumsound rises on the air, its throb, my heart.
A voice inside the beat says, “I know you're tired, but come. This is the way.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan Sufi master, founder of the Sufi order in the West
There are different ways of listening to music. There is a technical state when a person who has developed in technique and has learnt to appreciate better music, feels disturbed by a lower grade of music. But there is a spiritual way, which has nothing to do with technique. It is simply to tune oneself to the music; therefore the spiritual person does not worry about the grade of the music. No doubt, the better the music, the more helpful it is to a spiritual person; but at the same time one must not forget that there are lamas in Tibet who do their concentrations and meditations while moving a kind of rattle, the sound of which is not specially melodious. They cultivate thereby that sense which raises a person by the help of (sound) vibration to the higher planes. There is nothing better than music as a means for the upliftment of the soul.”
- as quoted by Eric Stuer
Send Thy Peace, O [Lady and] Lord, which is perfect and everlasting that our souls may radiate Peace.
Send Thy Peace, O Lord [and Lady], that amidst our worldly strife we may enjoy Thy Bliss.
Send Thy Peace, O [Lady and] Lord, that we may endure all, tolerate all in the thought of Thy Grace and Mercy.
Send Thy Peace, O Lord [and Lady], our Father and Mother, That we Thy children on Earth may all Unite in One family.
The true work of a mystical teacher is not to teach but to tune,
to tune the pupil so that he may become the instrument of God.
For the mystical teacher is not the player of the instrument;
he is the tuner. When he has tuned it,
he gives it into the hands of the Player
whose instrument it is to play.
("The Heart of Sufism" by H. J. Witteveen, ed.)
Mysticism without devotion is like uncooked food, it can never be assimilated.
("The Inner Life")
All things pertaining to spiritual progress in life depend upon Peace.
("The Heart of Sufism" by H. J. Witteveen, ed.)
“The only enemy is injustice.
The only death is death of the conscience.”
- "Guru Granth Sahib" (Sikh holy book)
Hafiz or Hafez AKA Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz-s Shirazi 13th century Sufi Master, poet (~1320 - 1389)
"Stay with Us"
You leave our company when you speak of shame and this makes everyone in the tavern sad.
Stay with us as we do the hardest work of rarely laying down that pick and shovel that will keep revealing our deeper kinship
with god, that will keep revealing our own divine worth.
You leave the company of the beloved's friends whenever you speak of guilt, and this makes everyone in the tavern very sad.
Stay with us tonight as we weave love and reveal ourselves, reveal ourselves as his precious garments.
Saghi Nameh
O Bearer, bring the wine that brings joy
To increase generosity, & let perfection buoy
Give me some, for I have lost my heart
Both traits from me have kept apart
Bring the wine whose reflection in the cup
Signals to all the kings whose times are up
Give me wine, and with the reed-flute I will sing
When was Jamshid, and when Kavoos was king
Bring me the elixir whose grace and alchemy
Bestows treasures, from bonds of time sets free
Give me so they'll open the doors once again
Of long life and the bliss that will remain
Bearer give the wine that the Holy Grail
Will make claims of sight in the Void and thus fail
Give me so that I, with the help of the Grail
All secrets, like Jamshid, themselves avail
Speak of the tale of the wheel of fate
proclaim to the kings and heroes of late
This broken world is in the same state
As seen by Afrasiab, the mighty, the great
Whence his mobilizing army generals
Whence cunning heroes' war cries and calls
Not only his palace has gone to the dust
Even his tomb is destroyed and long lost
This barren desert is in the same stage
As the armies of Salm & Toor were lost in its rage
Bring the wine whose reflection in the cup
Signals to all the kings whose times are up
Well said Jamshid, the old majestic king
Worthless is this transient stage and ring
Come Bearer, that fire, radiant, bright
Zarathushtra, beneath the earth, seeks so right
Give me wine, in the creed of the drunk
Whether fire-worshipper or worldly monk
Come Bearer, that wholesome drunk
Who is forever in the tavern sunk
Give me, ill repute bring to my name
The cup and the wine I shall only blame
Bring Bearer, the water that burns the mind
If lion drinks, forest will burn and grind
Courageous, I'll go hunting lions of fate
Mess up this old wolf's trap and bait
Bring Bearer, that high heavenly wine
That angels with their scent would entwine
Give me wine, I'll burn it like sweet incense
Its wise aroma I will sense now and hence
Bearer, give me the wine that makes kings
Witnessing its virtues, my heart sings
Give me wine to wash away all my flaws
Joyous rise above this rut's deadly claws
When the spiritual garden is my abode
Why have me bound to a board on this road
Give me wine and then see the Ruler's face
Ruin me & see treasures of wisdom and grace
And when I hold the cup in my hand
In the mirror everything I understand
In my drunken state, kingship proclaim
A monarch, when I am drunken and lame
Drunken, pearls of wisdom unveil
In hiding secrets, the selfless fail
Hafiz, drunken, songs will compose
From its melody Venus' song flows
O singer, with the sound of the stream
Of that majestic song muse and dream
Till I make my work joy and ecstasy
I will dance and play with robe of piety
Given a crown and throne by his fate
The fruit of the kingly tree of this estate
Ruler of the land, and Lord of the time
The grand and fortunate King of the clime
He is the greatness vested in the Throne
comfort of bird and fish from Him alone
For the blessed, he is light of the eyes
Yet he is the gift of the soul of the wise
Behold, O, auspicious bird
The happy inspiration to be heard
The world has no pearls in its shells like Thee
Fereydoon and Jamshid had no heirs like Thee
Instead of Alexander, be here many a year
Know thy heart and discover joy is near
But seditious fate many plans may devise
Me and my drunkenness troubled by Beloved's eyes
One, for his work, may pick up the sword
Another's business only deals with the word
O Player, play the song of the new creed
To music of the stream tell to my rival breed
Finally with my enemy I have a chance
At victory, in the skies I can glance
O Player, play something pleasing to the ear
With a song and a Gahzal begin a story, dear
My sorrows have tied me to the ground
Raise me with my principles that are sound
O singer, with the sound of the stream
Play and sing that majestic song I dream
Make the great souls happy with you
Parviz and Barbad remember too
O Player, paint a picture of the veil
Listen, inside, they tell a tale
Sing a minstrel's song, such
That Venus' harp dances with her touch
Play so the Sufi goes into a trance
Drunken, in Union, leaves his stance
O Player, tambourine and harp play
With a lovely tune, sing and sway
Deceptions of the world make a vivid tale
The night is pregnant, what will it entail
O Player, I'm sad, play one or two
In his Oneness, as long as you can, play too
I am astounded by the revolving fate
I don't know who will next degenerate
And if the Magi set one on fire
Don't know whose light will then expire
In this bloody resurrection field
Let the cup and jug their blood yield
To the drunk, of a good song, give a sign
To friends bygone, a salutation divine
©20DEC2K1 Shahriar Shahriari; Los Angeles, CA, USA
“In his poetry Hafiz has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly ... Hafiz has no peer!”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Hafiz defies you to show him or put him in a condition inopportune or ignoble ... He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see or be.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“...you may remember the old Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whosoever snatches a delusion from a woman.' There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.”
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“The best musician of Words.”
- Edward Fitzgerald
“It is as if his mental eye; endowed with wonderful acuteness of vision, had penetrated into those provinces of thought which we of a later age were destined to inhabit.”
- Gertrude Bell
“...Hafiz is as highly esteemed by his countrymen as Shakespeare by us, and deserves as serious consideration.”
- A.J. Arberry
Kabir Helminski Author/translator of numerous books, including "Living Presence, The Knowing Heart," "The Pocket Rumi," and "The Rumi Collection."
Between the pillars of spirit and matter the mind has put up a swing.
There swings the bound soul and all the worlds with not even the slightest rest.
The sun and moon also swing, and there is no end to it.
The soul swings through millions of births like the endless circling of sun and moon.
Billions of ages have passed with no sigh of relief.
The earth and sky swing,
Wind and water swing,
Taking a body, God Himself swings.
("Teachings of the Hindu Mystics," ©2K1 by Andrew Harvey; Shambhala Publications, Boston)
On Connections
On Listening
On Josef
Albert Einstein 1879-1955, German-born American Physicist, Person of the 20th Century
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: "Am I or are the others crazy?"
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Information is not knowledge.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.
("Zen and the Art of Making a Living" by Laurence G. Boldt)
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater.
The hardest thing in the world to understand, is income tax.
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's "Relativity."
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
The only reason for Time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him a spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Or in more brief alternate... Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism? How passionately I hate them!
To my mind to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Alternatively... Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of Peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of War. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.
I don't know how World War III will be fought, but I do know that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornnessof an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
[alternate give]
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
[and yet another give]
The most beautiful experience is to meet the mysterious. This is the source of all true art and scholarly pursuit. He, who has never had this experience, is not capable of rapture and cannot stand motionless with amazement, is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
[alternate give]
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
("Holy Clues" by Stephen Kendrick)
I want to know God's thoughts,..... the rest are details...
Recapitulating: we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists Aether.
(1920)
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
We cannot solve the problems that we have created with the same thinking that created them.
[alternate give] The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather then rule.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.
I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.
Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
(H. Eves, "Return to Mathematical Circles," Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1988)
By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Out of Clutter, Find Simplicity.
From Discord, Find Harmony.
In the Middle of Difficulty Lies Opportunity.
Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
When a group of individuals becomes a "we", a harmonious whole, then the highest is reached that humans as creatures can reach.
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
(Jon Kabat-Zinn "The World As I See It,", p. 236)
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction.
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
God is subtle but he is not malicious.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
Alterntively... Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive without our frail and feeble mind.
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.
... one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking
if mankind is to survive.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)
Charles Stanley
We are either in the process of resisting God's truth or in the process of being shaped and molded by his truth.
Since God knows our future, our personalities, and our capacity to listen, He isn't every going to say more to us than we can deal with at the moment.
We can be tired, weary and emotionally distraught, but after spending time alone with God, we find that He injects into our bodies energy, power and strength.
An unschooled man who knows how to meditate upon the Lord has learned far more than the man with the highest education who does not know how to meditate.
Of all the things Christ wants for us, loving Him and focusing our attention on Him are the most important.
The amount of time we spend with Jesus - meditating on His Word and His majesty, seeking His face - establishes our fruitfulness in the kingdom.
I'm convinced that the man who has learned to meditate upon the Lord will be able to run on his feet and walk in his spirit. Although he may be hurried by his vocation, that's not the issue. The issue is how fast his spirit is going. To slow it down takes a period of time.
The essence of meditation is a period of time set aside to contemplate the Lord, listen to Him, and allow Him to permeate our spirits.
Often times God wants us to sit before Him in quietness. He doesn't want us to do all the talking. As Is. 30:15 says "In quiet and confidence will be your strength."
To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God's responses.
"Yieldedness" is vital in listening to what He has to say.
If we rationalize our problems when He points them out, we will spend less and less time meditating because we won't want to face God in that area of our lives.
He wants you all to Himself to put His loving, divine arms around you.
How can God speak to us if we don't take time to listen? Quietness is essential to listening. If we are too busy to listen, we won't hear. It takes time and quietness to prepare to listen to God. Ps. 62:5
God's voice is still and quiet and easily buried under an avalanche of clamour.
God will never tell us to do something that gratifies the flesh.
When God speaks, oftentimes His voice will call for an act of courage on our part.
His voice leads us not into timid discipleship but into bold witness.
The best way in the world to deceive believers is to cloak a message in religious language and declare that it conveys some new insight from God.
The greatest gift we can give to others is our prayers.
Sir Rabindranath Tagore Thakur poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.
When the universe is in harmony with man - the eternal, we know it as truth but we feel it as beauty.
“If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.”
- Emily Bronte (1818-1848)
“My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.”
- Indira Gandhi
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
- Harry S Truman
(Mahatma) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948 Hindu Indian nationalist leader)
Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins
Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice
My religion is Truth, my practice is non-cooperation with evil.
If you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
- Ben Kingsley as Gandhi in "Gandhi" Columbia, 1982
There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.
Force, violence, pressure, or compulsion with a view to conformity are both uncivilized and undemocratic.
I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.
I am part and parcel of the whole and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity.
If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further.
All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul...You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.
The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Fear has its use, but cowardice has none. I may not put my hand into the jaws of a snake, but the very sight of the snake need not strike terror into me. The trouble is that we often die many times before death overtakes us.
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
An eye for and eye and soon the whole world is blind.
Mahatma Gandhi, one of the busiest and most famous men in the world, used to set aside Monday as a Day of Silence. He needed the stillness, he said, in order to rest his vocal cords and to promote inner harmony in his soul amid the turmoil of life around him. I wonder what power would be released if all Christians devoted one day a week to listening to the voice of God to discern His coded message for our lives.. The Counselor can only lead us if we receive His voice.
(Paul Brand, "In His Image" page 211)
Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.
God speaks to us every day only we don't know how to listen.
(James W. Jones, "In the Middle of This Road We Call Life")
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not permit violence being inflicted upon ones opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy.
(from Defense Against Charge of Sedition)
The ally we must cultivate is the part of our enemy which knows the truth.
It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Hatred ever kills; love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality, for it increases hatred. The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred and to promote love.
The only safe way to overcome an enemy is to make of the enemy a friend.
It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation, and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be.
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
What you do is of little significance; but it is very important that you do it.
My life is my message.
Albert Camus Author, playwright, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
“I love my country too much to be a nationalist.”
“We suffocate among people who think they are absolutely right, whether in their machines or their ideas. And for all those who can live only in an atmosphere of human dialogue, the silence is the end of the world.”
“I found in myself an invincible sun.”
("De L'Envers et l'endroit")
“After a prolonged research on myself, I brought out the fundamental duplicity of the human being. Then I realized that modesty helped me to shine, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress.”
("The Fall")
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
“Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”
“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
“Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.”
Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – 1961) Swiss psychologist and theorist
Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul.
Once upon a time men were possessed by devils. Now they are not less obsessed by ideas.
Man cannot cast a shadow without standing in light.
Really--I don't know what the meaning or purpose of life is. But it looks exactly as if something were meant by it.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989)
The patient's treatment begins with the doctor, so to speak. Only if the doctor knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he be able to teach the patient to do the same.
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989; p. 132)
There are many cases which the doctor cannot cure without committing himself. When important matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether the doctor sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself in his authority.
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989; p. 133)
The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. "Only the wounded physician heals." But when the doctor wears his personality like a coat of armor, he has no effect.
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989; p. 134)
He wanted to be an analyst. I said to him, "Do you know what that means? It means that you must first learn to know yourself. You yourself are the instrument. If you are not right, how can the patient be made right? If you are not convinced, how can you convince him? You yourself must be the real stuff. If you are not, God help you! Then you will lead patients astray. Therefore you must first accept an analysis of yourself."
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989; p. 134)
For psychotherapy to be effective a close rapport is needed, so close that the doctor cannot shut his eyes to the heights and depths of human suffering. The rapport consists, after all, in a constant comparison and mutual comprehension, in the dialectical confrontation of two opposing psychic realities. If for some reason these mutual impressions do not impinge on each other, the psychotherapeutic process remains ineffective, and no change is produced. Unless both doctor and patient become a problem to each other, no solution is found.
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989; p. 143)
The doctor who does not know from his own experience the luminosity of the archetypes will scarcely be able to escape their negative effect when he encounters it in his practice.
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989; p. 144)
In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in my "underground," I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them, as it were. I felt not only violent resistance to this, but a distinct fear. For I was afraid of losing command of myself and becoming a prey to the fantasies--and as a psychiatrist I realized only too well what that meant. After prolonged hesitation, however, I saw that there was no other way out. I had to take the chance, had to try to gain power over them; for I realized that if I did not do so, I ran the risk of their gaining power over me. A cogent motive for my making the attempt was the conviction that I could not expect of my patients something I did not dare to do myself. The excuse that a helper stood at their side would not pass muster, for I was well aware that the so-called helper--that is, myself--could not help them unless he know their fantasy material from his own direct experience, and that at present all he possessed were a few theoretical prejudices of dubious value. This idea--that I was committing myself to a dangerous enterprise not for myself alone, but also for the sake of my patients--helped me over several critical phases.
("Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962; Vintage Books, 1989; p. 178-179)
The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greate
