Quotes tagged “philosophy”
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
— Native American Proverb
Anxiety changes to excitement when you smile.
— Judy Raiten
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
— Unknown
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing
— George Bernard Shaw
If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. To be born means that something which did not exist comes into existence. But the day we are born is not our beginning. It is a day of continuation....
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
— Albert Einstein
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
— Paulo Freire
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
If you have time to chatter,
Read a book.
If you have time to read,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.
If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance.
If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot.
— Nanao Sakaki
Anything is possible, if you don't care who gets the credit.
— Harry Truman
Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.
Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:
- A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
- An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
- A loss of interest in judging other people.
- A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
- A loss of interest in conflict.
- A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom).
- Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
- Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
- Frequent attacks of smiling.
- An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
- An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.
—
How to fix people (listening for engineers :-)
- People have really good built in diagnostics.
- If you listen well the will tell you what is wrong.
- If you listen really well they will hear what is wrong.
- If you're an expert listener they will hear what is wrong and realize they no longer need fixing.
— John Pettitt
Womanist: Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. LOVES the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. LOVES the Folk. Loves herself. REGARDLESS.
— Alice Walker
There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney and pass on their way. Now, you must tend that inward fire, wait patiently for the hour when somebody will come and sit down near it -- to stay there maybe?
— Van Gogh
Ego is convinced that Love is dangerous.
— A Course in Miracles
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.
— Joseph Campbell
For what we are beginning to wake up to today ...is that we have for millenia structured our social institutions and our systems of values precisely in ways that serve to block, distort, and pervert our enormous human yearning for loving connections.
— Riane Eisler
- Love is trust
- Love is smell
- Love is how you treat someone well under pressure.
— someone on the WELL
- When you hold back your Love
- Hoping to find more elsewhere,
- You learn how to wait,
- Not how to Love.
— Peter Rengel
When true giving occurs, you have more afterwards than when you started.
— Peter Rengel
I know you, you're just like me.
— Stan Dale
ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
—
We all enter this world in the same way: naked; screaming; soaked in blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn't have to stop there.
— Dana Gould
Man plans, God laughs.
— John Perry Barlow
You can believe anything you want. The universe is not obliged to keep a straight face.
— Solomon Short
Trust in Allah,
and tie your camel!
— Sufi saying
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
— Woody Allen
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.
— Han Solo
You gave your life to become the person you are right now. Was it worth it?
— Richard Bach
It is possible to commit no mistakes, and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.
— Jean-Luc Picard
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
— George Bernard Shaw
Be ashamed to die till you have won some victory for humanity.
— Horace Mann
Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
— Robert F. Kennedy
Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.
— George Bernard Shaw
If science always insists that a new order must be immediately fruitful, or that it has some new predictive power, then creativity will be blocked. New thoughts generally arise with a play of the mind, and the failure to appreciate this is actually one of the major blocks to creativity. Thought is generally considered to be a sober and weighty business. But here it is being suggested that creative play is an essential element in forming new hypotheses and ideas. Indeed, thought which tries to avoid play is in fact playing false with itself. Play, it appears, is the very essence of thought.
This notion of falseness that can creep into play of thought is shown in the etymology of the words illusion, delusion, and collusion, all of which have as their Latin root ludere, "to play." So illusion implies playing false with perception; delusion, playing false with thought; collusion, playing false together in order to support each other's illusions and delusions. When thought plays false, the thinker may occasionally recognize this fact, and express it in the above words. Unfortunately, however, our English language does not have a word for thought which plays true. Perhaps this is a reflection of a work ethic which does not consider the importance of play and suggests that work itself is noble while play is, at best, recreational and, at worst, frivolous and nonserious. However, to observe children at play is to realize the serious intensity of their energy and concentration.
— David Bohm and F. David Peat
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
— Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler!
— Albert Einstein
If only I had known, I would have been a locksmith.
— Albert Einstein
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
— Albert Einstein
Music is the timeless experience of constant change.
— Jerry Garcia
- Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
- Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors.
- Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits.
- Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
- Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Mathematics is the music of the mind. Music is the mathematics of the soul.
— Moe Zimmerberg
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
— Introduction to A Course In Miracles
Transcend, Motherfucker, Transcend!
— Cindy Lou Cosgrove
That the birds of worry and care fly above your head,
This you cannot change;
But that they build nests in your hair,
This you can prevent.
— Chinese proverb
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
— Santayana
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use.
— Galileo
We are four dimensional beings in three dimensional bodies, looking out two-dimensional windshields.
— Cowboy Neal at the Wheel
Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother and are not all living things with feet and roots their children?
— Black Elk
Heaven is exactly like where you are now, only much, much better.
— Laurie Anderson
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
— Maslow
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Robert A. Heinlein
You can observe a lot by just watching.
— Yogi Berra
Second from the right and straight on 'til morning.
— Peter Pan
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
— Bertrand Russell
You'll see it when you believe it.
— Wayne Dyer
When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything in the universe.
— John Muir
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
— Abraham Lincoln
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
— Anonymous
To really be free, You need to be free in the mind.
— Alexander Loutsis
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.
— Frater Ravus
“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes.
— James Morrow
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
— William Drummond
A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it.
— David Stevens
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
— Edward Abbey
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
— Anonymous