Quotes

[Mal7]

Searle begins by reciting Paul Grice’s four Maxims of Manner: be clear, be brief, be orderly, and avoid obscurity of expression. These are systematically violated in France, Searle says, partly due to the influence of German philosophy. Searle translates Foucault’s admission to him this way: “In France, you gotta have ten percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep – they won’t think you’re a profound thinker.”

- Mike Springer, _http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/jean_searle_on_foucault_and_the_obscurantism_in_french_philosophy.html

 

[SMM]

Well, I officially have too much spare 'time' & this may be noise.

Looking at the quote by Gurdjieff in a different way, curious about the pattern, notwithstanding that everything is subject to interpretation:

"Faith of consciousness is freedom
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.

Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of the body depends only on type and polarity.

Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease." Gurdjieff.

"Freedom...evokes the same in response...is strength.
Weakness...evokes the opposite...is slavery.
Stupidity...depends only on type and polarity...is disease."

Fwiw.

 

[Mal7]

The virtuous man does not partake of food or sex more than his need; reason predetermines this. However, the natural process seeks pleasure and desires sweets more than the body requires for its own good. Reason sees the undesirability and the corruption of this. In regard to both [pleasure and its excess], there is conversation, discussion, and conflict. The reasonable virtuous man is incapable of the mediocre but he has a counterpoint in a great power, an instrument which the exalted Creator brought into being for the conflict to aid the contestant. If reason uses it [i.e. the instrument] and asks its aid to fight nature, then he will master it, show its justice, and then it is possible to put things in their place. The sheikdom and master submit to it. Nature acts as its contrary. That instrument is the strength of anger which is as a sword to the fighter. He who prevails over his enemy must ask its aid in his fighting.

Since the wisdom of the exalted Creator is alone, there is no alternative to it. It is always the same. For this reason, theoretically, what is found in man is also found in the entire universe. Thus, the ancients said that man is a small universe. So, the reasonable person recognizes the power of the exalted Creator, His kindness to His creatures, and His generosity to them much more than the ignorant one sees. Thus, the intelligent one is in a permanent light, and has uninterrupted pleasure, and benefit does not take him away from the paradise of wisdom, but the ignorant one is in the dark and in distress. The reasonable person knows that the king is [concerned] with his kingdom, the chief with his chiefdom, and the learned one with knowledge. The exalted Creator distinguished them with power and happiness by His side which is made special for them. It is for the benefit of creatures and for all [just] as He distinguished reason from nature. Thus, it is necessary that people follow the learned man. Just as reason tries to strengthen nature, in the same way the king must prepare himself for the good of his subjects. And, just as reason asks the aid of the faculty of anger when nature will not submit to it, the king, likewise, asks the help of this faculty when people disobey his rule in the paths of justice. Just as it is not proper for the contestant to draw his sword except at the time of fear of the enemy, it is improper for the king to use anger except at the time of fear of corruption of his kingdom. He who has penetrative faculties, can operate without anger because of them. The most essential of what the king needs is to guard his kingdom and to ask for benefits for himself and his subjects. This cannot be accomplished by the king if he is not awake and enlightened with the ray of reason and that of the divine law asking the aid of his people’s opinion. In this manner, his nobility shows up, his kingdom is adorned, and he becomes a man of science and religion in his kingdom. The good ones are glad and the people of evil and ignorance disapprove.

- from "Adab al-tabib" (Practical Ethics of the Physician), by al-Ruhawi, (9th century Islamic treatise). In Medical Ethics of Medieval Islam with Special Reference to al-Ruhawi’s “Practical Ethics of the Physician”, by Martin Levey. (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Volume 57, Part 3, 1967.) Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1967. pages 86-87.

 

[Mal7]

Let me say this to you: such small things as diet, location, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of self-love, are by far more important than anything else that has been hitherto considered essential by us. Here in particular, we have to start to rethink. All those things mankind has until now thought about with such earnestness are not even realities; they are mere fancies, indeed lies, arising from the bad instincts of sick and in the truest sense harmful natures: such concepts as ‘god’, ‘soul’, ‘virtue’, ‘sin’, ‘the hereafter’, ‘truth’, ‘eternal life’. . . And yet we looked for the greatness of human nature, its ‘divinity’ in them. . . All questions of politics, of the social order, of education have been thoroughly falsified because the most harmful people were accepted by us as great men, by being taught to despise the so-called ‘trivial’ matters, which are really the fundamental concerns of life. . . Our current culture is highly ambiguous. . .

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Why I Am So Wise; translated by Gerta Valentine. London: Arcturus, 2009. page 58. [Originally written by Nietzsche in 1888 (his last book), and first published in 1908 with the title Ecce Homo.]

 

[treesparrow]

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

 

[Mal7]

Christianity is the final defeat of the Greek Olympian gods.

- Vittorio D. Macchioro, From Orpheus to Paul: A History of Orphism. London: Constable & Company, 1930, page 220.

The book also argues that Heraclitus' philosophy was greatly indebted to Orphism:

It is not easy to exaggerate the influence exerted upon Heraclitus' thought by the mysteries. His whole philosophy is in the last analysis an outcome of the mystic experience. His amazing doctrine of the oneness of opposite states and of the eternal passing of things can be explained only in the light of the mysteries. Owing to his gigantic philosophic gifts, the crude, primitive myth of Zagreus became the starting point of the most modern of ancient philosophical theories, quite worthy of acceptance and admiration by Hegel, Schleiermacher and Lassalle. Due to his emphasis on intuition, Heraclitus stands out as an exception among Greek thinkers whose birthmark was rationalism. In the history of Greek thought Heraclitus stands alone; he had no followers. Atomists, Sophists, Academics, Stoics, all of them stand upon intellectual foundations; they assumed that the human mind is able to attain truth through a logical process. Heraclitus, on the other hand, asserted that the avenue to truth is emotion. For Greece he was an outsider. But for this very reason Christianity accorded him warm admiration. Noetus, who founded his heresy on the Heraclitean notion of the eternal triumph of life over death and transferred to Christ the doctrines suggested to Heraclitus by the myth of Zagreus and did justice to him and our modern thought, refusing to abide by a fixed truth and considering life and history as an eternal passing from one state to another, recognizes in Heraclitus the most modern of ancient thinkers.

- pages 175-176.

 

[Palinurus]

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. [...]

The life we receive is not short but we make it so;

we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.

SENECA (On The Shortness of Life - Chapter I).

More here: _http://iperceptive.com/authors/seneca_quotes.html

 

[Psalehesost]

"Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules.

1. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. Some pedants are poor fools; they never did understand the rule which they apply so conscientiously and so indiscriminately. Some pedants are quite successful; they understood their rule, at least in the beginning (before they became pedants), and chose a good one that fits in many cases and fails only occasionally.

To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. [...]"
- G. Polya, How to Solve It

 

[Scribblenauts]

What is in a word, nothing less than a spell?

Professor Albus Dumbledore ~ Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.

 

[Mikey]

Complete redemption from the sufferings of this world is and must remain an illusion.

- Carl G. Jung

 

[Joe]

"Being honest may not get you many friends, but it'll always get you the right ones" ~ John Lennon

 

[treesparrow]

“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

Mark Twain

 

[Muxel]

I'm looking for a quote where STO is defined, I think it goes like "STO is in the doing" or "STO is in the <result>".

The source may have been the C's or Ra. Does anyone know?

 

[Keit]

I'm looking for a quote where STO is defined, I think it goes like "STO is in the doing" or "STO is in the <result>".

The source may have been the C's or Ra. Does anyone know?

Well, there is this:

December 10, 1994

Q: (T) You talk about both STO and STS. Yet you tell us that we need to learn to be STO. Why is there a difference between what we have to do and what you are
doing?
A: STO is balance because you serve self through others.
Q: (T) You have said a couple of times that you are STS by being STO. Is this not true?
A: Yes. Already answered.
Q: (T) Kind of like: what goes around, comes around?
A: Yes.
Q: (T) Is STO a means to an end for STS?
A: No. STO is balance. STS is imbalance.
Q: (T) How can you be STS through STO if STS is imbalance?
A: STO flows outward and touches all including point of origin, STS flows inward and touches only origin point.
Q: (T) Well, they refer in the material that I am reading through, that they are STS through STO. (L) They serve self BY serving others. (T) Is that what they mean? (L)
Yeah. (T) Is that what we're supposed to do, serve ourselves by serving others? (T) Yeah! Because what goes around, comes around. If you serve others then you get
things back. (F) Because when you serve yourself, all there is is an infinite number of individuals serving self. (T) There is no energy exchange, no synergy within the group;
there is no exchange. (F) Everything moves inward. (T) There is no sharing, no growth, there is no nothing. (F) No interconnecting. (T) Right! There is no learning.

 

[Muxel]

Thanks Keit, but the quote I'm looking for says something like, STO comes about through the results of our actions, and not through "being STO" per se. (At least, that's the meaning I got from it.) My recollection of it is dim, but if you know of a quote that has the tone/spirit of "STO is in the doing/result," do tell me. Thanks!