Quotes

[Perceval]

that's whats on my mind, and the fact that there is no section of this forum dedicated to them. So, I just created one. So to start, here's one from Bertrand Russell:

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy -- ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness -- that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what -- at last -- I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

[Oxajil]

That one is beautiful, thanks for sharing. This one from Buddha was on my mind:

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

[Gandalf]

“When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do. “

[Jerry]

Oxajil,

Your quote from Buddha brought this to mind:

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Another favorite:

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

[Psalehesost]

Something I previously prepared and saved - some snippets (various quotes) from Kodo Sawaki (trimming the overly Buddhistic stuff and some other bits and pieces for signal/noise ratio - some [edit: more] bolded):

EDIT2: Honestly, in hindsight, some of my phrase-snipping amounts to shaving the corners of a square peg to make it fit a round hole. Not the best quotage to post, perhaps.

EDIT3: Replaced below quotage with further condensed version. Sacrificing much that isn't "off", but which isn't really significant, improving the horrid signal/noise ratio. Hopefully this action is of genuine benefit and not just a knee-jerk reaction to feeling embarrassed - if not, I can put in the previous revision.

It all begins when we say, "I". Everything that follows is illusion.

Everyone imagines that their ego is something unchangeable, some immovable center-point which everything revolves around. There once was a man who said, "Look, everyone is dying except me!" He's been dead for a long time now.

At some point you've got to slap yourself in the face and seriously ask yourself: is your personal gain or loss really worth this overwhelming joy and suffering?

Sooner or later everyone starts thinking of nothing besides themselves. You say, "That was good!" But what was good? It was only good for you personally, that's all.

[...] We all know the child whose tears suddenly turn into laughter when you give him a cookie. What we living beings call happiness isn't much more than that.

Isn't it evident that the greatest happiness consists in doing what you have to do?

You're worried about death? Don't worry - you'll die for sure.

[...] When you die, you recognize your dream. Someone who doesn't put an end to dreaming before then is an ordinary person.

There is a bad deed, called "doing good". For some, doing good is just a decoration.

However much good they do, everything that humans do is bad. If you give, all day long you think, "I gave!" If you do religious practice, you think "I practiced, I practiced!" If you do something good, you never forget, "I did good, I did good!" Does this mean that we should do something bad instead? No, even when we do good, it's bad. When we do something bad, it's even worse.

If you do good, you start to work yourself up about everything bad you suddenly see in others. When you have done something bad, you're quiet, because your own ass itches. People don't only calculate when it's a matter of money. In everything they do they try to bargain up or down. That's because their body and mind [or rather false personality] haven't dropped off. Only when body and mind have dropped off does this business not count any more. Dropping off body and mind means immeasurability, limitlessness.

You can't hold on to your self. The very moment you give your self up, you realize the self which is one with the universe.

Precisely that self which I haven't thought up is who I really am.

Many confuse faith with a type of intoxication. There's a type of intoxication similar to awe that's nothing but delusion. Faith means, however, just the opposite - complete sobriety from any form of intoxication.

Faith means being clear and pure. It means being at ease. But some people get confused about this as well and think faith is about getting worked up, so they try with all their might to do so. Until they realize that it's not so easy to get truly worked-up. Then they just act as if they were.

It isn't enough to hit the bull's eye once. Last year's perfect marks are useless. You've got to hit the bull's eye right now.

[Perceval]

[...] When people are talking about revolution and war, we think that something really special is going on, but what is it besides struggling inside a dream? When you die, you recognize your dream. Someone who doesn't put an end to dreaming before then is an ordinary person.

Hmm... I think this one should be modified to:

"When people are talking about revolution and war, we think that something really special is going on, but what is it besides struggling inside a dream? When you die, you recognize your dream. And then come back and live it all over again, and again, and again, until you realise that pretending that the negative sides to life are just a dream and none of it matters will ultimately make a dream of YOU"

[Psalehesost]

[...] When people are talking about revolution and war, we think that something really special is going on, but what is it besides struggling inside a dream? When you die, you recognize your dream. Someone who doesn't put an end to dreaming before then is an ordinary person.

Hmm... I think this one should be modified to:

"When people are talking about revolution and war, we think that something really special is going on, but what is it besides struggling inside a dream? When you die, you recognize your dream. And then come back and live it all over again, and again, and again, until you realise that pretending that the negative sides to life are just a dream and none of it matters will ultimately make a dream of YOU"

Good point. How I took it, however, was more in the sense of how people engage in it because of their sleep, and also all the subjective meaning people attach to it in the sense of exoteric value systems (culture, ideologies, societal systems, etc.)  - in the sense of the "mass hypnosis" of Gurdjieff, thinking it something "grand" or "special" other than the sheer madness it is. But that does not seem to be how it was originally intended. So good catch - didn't read carefully enough!

[Nomad]

a couple o' short ones:

The bible tells us to be like God, and then it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behaviour of Western Civilisation.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

and one more for luck...

Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness.

edit: one more, couldn't resist:

The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people

Source: 'Witches Abroad'

[Zadius Sky]

Here's my fave from Albert Einstein:

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

[Jerry]

Nomad,

That bush quote is priceless! 

[Ana]

Also from Albert Einstein:

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

[1984]

Another of my favs from Albert Einstein:

"In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep"

[Breton]

Faith is an openness and trusting attitude to truth and reality, whatever it may turn out to be.  This is a risky and adventurous state of mind. 

Belief, in the religious sense, is the opposite of faith - because it is a fervent wishing or hope, a compulsive clinging to the idea that the universe is arranged and governed in such and such a way. 

Belief is holding to a rock; faith is learning how to swim - and this whole universe swims in boundless space.

This was extremely powerful to me while I underwent my "deprogramming" from a christian religion.

[Heimdallr]

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."

“Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?
A: Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.”

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."

All by Groucho Marx

[Galahad]

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."

Ernie Kovacs, a comic on TV during the early years, had this to say:

"Television: A medium - so called because it is neither rare nor well done."

Never been truer.