Werner Erhard Quotes (40 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Werner Erhard: 40 quotes6 likes

Famous Werner Erhard Quotes

“Love for a person is acceptance of him or her the way he is and the way he is not.”

“Man keeps looking for a truth to fit his reality. Given our reality, the truth doesn't fit.”

[Adelaide Bry, 1976, est, 60 Hours that Transform Your Life, New York, Avon, 17]
Attributed

“The moment when you really experience that you have created yourself being whatever way you are, at that same moment you will never have to be that way again.”

Werner Erhard

“Happiness is a function of accepting what is.”

Werner Erhard

[Alan Aldridge, 2007, Religion in the Contemporary World: A Sociological Introduction, Cambridge, England, Polity, 53, 0745634044]
Attributed

“How do I know I'm not the reincarnation of Jesus Christ?”

Werner Erhard

[175, Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality, Bob Larson, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004, 084236417X]
Attributed

“We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our love for the world what our lives are really about. Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity and heart. It is much more radical than a revolution – it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet. What we create together is a relationship in which our work can show up as making a difference in people's lives. I welcome the unprecedented opportunity for us to work globally on that which concerns us all as human beings. If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where?”

Werner Erhard

Source: The Graduate Review (1980)

Werner Erhard Quotes about life

“If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to have a very loose relationship with this thing you call ‘I’ or ‘me’. Maybe that whole thing in me around which the universe revolves isn’t so central! Maybe life is not about the self but about self-transcendence.”

Werner Erhard

[Peter Haldeman, w:Peter Haldeman, The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help, The New York Times, November 28, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/fashion/the-return-of-werner-erhard-father-of-self-help.html?ref=fashion&_r=0]

“You and I want our lives to matter. We want our lives to make a real difference — to be of genuine consequence in the world. We know that there is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions in life, even if those motions make us successful or even if we have arranged to make those motions pleasant. We want to know we have had some impact on the world. In fact, you and I want to contribute to the quality of life. We want to make the world work.”

Werner Erhard

Source: The End of Starvation : Creating an Idea Whose Time Has Come, Werner Erhard, 1977, 3 http://www.wernererhard.net/thpsource.html, <br class="br">Source: Also published in — The end of starvation: creating an idea whose time has come, 3, 1982, Werner Erhard http://books.google.com/books?id=4o4wAAAAMAAJ&q=%22be+of+genuine+consequence+in+the+world%22&dq=%22be+of+genuine+consequence+in+the+world%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rpyFUvTMB6_MsQT0sYCwDQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ, <br class="br">Source: Also quoted in — [The Answer : What do you mean I have to figure it out for myself?, 2001, Quila H. Creig] and — [The Spartan Life 2, Scott Westerman, ‎2012]

“Until what is significant is created by you, you aren’t living your life, you are living some inherited life.”

Werner Erhard

Interview with The Financial Times — [Lucy Kellaway, w:Lucy Kellaway, Lunch with the FT: Werner Erhard, The Financial Times, April 28, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/feb214a8-8f88-11e1-98b1-00144feab49a.html#axzz1v4NTTdmJ]

“The essential difference between est and Scientology is two-fold. The first has to do with Scientology’s emphasis on survival and its idea that the purpose of life is survival. est sees the purpose of life as wholeness or completion – truth – not survival…The other main difference between est and Scientology lies in the treatment of knowing. Ron Hubbard seems to have no difficulty in codifying the truth and in urging people to believe it. But I suspect all codifications, particularly my own. In presenting my own ideas, I emphasize their epistemological context. I hold them as pointers to the truth, not as the truth itself. I don’t think anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.”

Werner Erhard

“… sometime around now, the rules for living successfully on earth shifted, and an opportunity, unseen before, began to reveal itself. This opportunity is a context-a particular space, or way of being-which unexpectedly creates the possibility for a person’s life to truly make a difference. In this context, the way each of us answers the question, ‘What is my life really going to be about?’ can literally alter the course of humanity.”

Werner Erhard

"The Context for Creating a Transformed World: A World That Works for Everyone." 'Article in 'The Graduate Review (April 1980) by Mary Earle & Neal Rogin.

“Mastering life is the process of moving from where you are to where you want to be.”

Werner Erhard

[Jerry Jerome, Instant Inspiration: Using Quotes to Guide You to Your Goals, Instant Wisdom Publishing, February 1, 2003, 62, 097261690X]
Attributed

Werner Erhard Quotes about the world

“Most of our notions about the world come from a set of assumptions which we take for granted, and which, for the most part, we don't examine or question. We bring these assumptions to the table with us as a given. They are so much a part of who we are that it is difficult for us to separate ourselves from them enough to be able to talk about them. We do not think these assumptions, we think from them.”

Werner Erhard

Source: Article, "Breaking Out of the Box -A Crash Course in Paradigm Thinking" Debra Feinstein, BENCHMARK Magazine, FALL 1989 p.3

“You are part of every atom in the world, and every atom is part of you.”

Werner Erhard

[176, Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality, Bob Larson, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004, 084236417X]
Attributed

“There are only two things in the world — nothing and semantics.”

Werner Erhard

[Prologue, The Program, Gregg Hurwitz, HarperCollins, 2004, 0060530405]
Attributed

“Transformation does not negate what has gone before; rather, it fulfills it. Creating the context of a world that works for everyone is not just another step forward in human history; it is the context out of which our history will begin to make sense.”

Werner Erhard

[Lynne Twist, 2003, The Soul of Money: Transforming your Relationship with Money and Life, New York, New York, W.W. Norton., 252, 039305097]
Attributed

“I am a sort of revolutionary. I have a strange ambition, though. I don’t want any statues. What I want is for the world to work. I want to create a context in which government, education, and families are nurturing. I want to enable, to empower, the institutions of man. Social transformation doesn’t argue against social change. Radicalism and resistance produce obvious values. But after a while, social change chases its own tail. Social change just produces social change. After most ordinary revolutions, after most social change, the world still doesn’t work. For the world to work you must have social transformation, which creates the space for effective social change.”

Werner Erhard

Werner Erhard Quotes

“At all times and under all circumstances, we have the power to transform the quality of our lives.”

Werner Erhard

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 247, 0-517-53502-5]
Variant: You and I possess within ourselves, at every moment of our lives and under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives.

“Something experienced is true; the same thing believed is a lie.”

Werner Erhard

[39, Psychobabble: The Failure of Modern Psychology - and the Biblical Alternative, Richard L. Ganz, 1993, Crossway Books, 0891077340]
Attributed

“I have a lot of respect for L. Ron Hubbard and I consider him to be a genius and perhaps less acknowledged than he ought to be.”

Werner Erhard

[James R. Lewis, 2001, w:James R. Lewis, Odd Gods: New Religions and the Cult Controversy, Amherst, New York, Prometheus Books, 382-387, 1573928429]
Attributed

“What I recognized is that you can't put it together. It's already together, and what you have to do is experience it being together.”

Werner Erhard

[Ruth Tucker, 2004, Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan, 367, 0310259371]
[Larry Chang, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, 527, Gnosophia Publishers, April 28, 2006, 0977339106]
Attributed
Variant: What isn't, isn't. You can't put it together... what you have to do is experience it being together.

“Belief in God is the single greatest barrier to God in the Universe. It is almost a total barrier to the experience of God. When you think you have experienced God, you haven't. Experiencing God is experiencing God, and that is true religion.”

Werner Erhard

[Ruth Tucker, 2004, Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan, 369, 0310259371]
Attributed

“Inherent in human beings are possibilities which we now can't even entertain. Before the space launch, space travel to many of us was the stuff of fantasy, of science fiction. We know what it is to explore the limits of what we consider to be a human being, but if we were to transform our understanding of ourselves, if we were to transform what we knew a human being to be, new possibilities of expression would open. We could function in a more creative way. In a more humane way. In the past we were transformed by the thrust of evolution or by accidental forces. This time we should transform ourselves with a conscious, committed degree of self-awareness.”

Werner Erhard

Interview with USA Today, "Mankind Must Find a New Self Awareness", Dan Neuharth and Miles White, December 14, 1982

“When my integrity is lacking, I am clear that I just got to be a bit smaller as a person. That keeps me working on my integrity. And the thing about integrity is it’s a mountain with no top.”

Werner Erhard

“The possibility to create the context in which people’s lives really matter is undoubtedly the most profound opportunity available to anyone, ever.”

Werner Erhard

The Graduate Review (April 1980)

“The greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.”

Werner Erhard

Werner Erhard on L. Ron Hubbard — quoted in [L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?, 1987, Bent Corydon and Ronald DeWolf, 15, 0818404442]
Attributed

“Here is where it is. Now is when it is. You are what it is.”

Werner Erhard

[Adelaide Bry, 1976, est, 60 Hours that Transform Your Life, New York, Avon, 216]
Attributed

“You are god in your own universe. There is no god unless it is self.”

Werner Erhard

[39, Psychobabble: The Failure of Modern Psychology - and the Biblical Alternative, Richard L. Ganz, 1993, Crossway Books, 0891077340]
Attributed

“Obviously the truth is what's so. Not so obviously, it is also so what.”

Werner Erhard

Quoted by Bernard Roth as the lead in to Chapter 2 "Reasons Are Bullshit", in his book, "The Achievement Habit".
Source: "The Achievement Habit" by Bernard Roth, Publisher - Harper Collins, pg. 39, ISBN: 978-0-06-235610-9

“You can either have reasons or results.”

Werner Erhard

[Jinny Ditzler, 2012: Your Best Year Yet -- Sticking With Your Plan, The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jinny-ditzler/new-years-resolutions_b_1269534.html, February 14, 2012]
Attributed

“Miracles occur in direct proportion to our willingness to have them.”

Werner Erhard

[Jerry Jerome, Instant Inspiration: Using Quotes to Guide You to Your Goals, Instant Wisdom Publishing, February 1, 2003, 35, 097261690X]
Attributed

“Does it really work for us to go through our lives as though there were no realizations beyond the grasp of our system-of-concepts, the awareness of which would transform the quality of our lives?”

Werner Erhard

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 302, 0-517-53502-5]

“I take responsibility for ending starvation within twenty years. The Hunger Project is not about solutions. It's not about fixing up the project. It's not about anybody's good idea. The Hunger Project is about creating a context - creating the end of hunger as an idea whose time has come.”

Werner Erhard

Quote from 1977, re: The Hunger Project
[178, Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality, Bob Larson, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004, 084236417X]
Attributed

“Obviously, the truth is what's so. Not so obviously, it's also so what.”

Werner Erhard

[175, Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality, Bob Larson, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004, 084236417X]
Attributed

“Here’s my definition of a hero. A hero is an ordinary person given being and action by something bigger than themselves. One thing I’m sure about is I’m real ordinary. Yet I’ve had the chance to touch the lives of a lotta people.”

Werner Erhard

“Of all the disciplines that I studied, practiced, learned, Zen was the essential one. It was not so much an influence on me, rather it created space. It allowed those things that were there to be there. It gave some form to my experience. And it built up in me the critical mass from which was kindled the experience that produced est.”

Werner Erhard

“I got a lot of benefit from auditing. It was the fastest and deepest way to handle situations that I had yet encountered. I immediately wanted to learn to do it. … With Scientology, I was able to characterize the Mind more accurately, and to cease justifying it. This greatly clarified what I was doing. … After my experience with Scientology, I saw what it means to see the Mind as a machine. I can now operate my Mind accordingly, with exactitude. I can do the familiar mind over matter experiments - the control of pain and bleeding, telepathy, those things. Many people can do such things, and they are well known in the yogic tradition.”

Werner Erhard

“[Alan] Watts did two main things for me. He opened up the connections between what I was doing and the traditional Oriental philosophies. And he pointed me toward the distinction between Self and Mind.”

Werner Erhard

“You and I possess within ourselves, at every moment of our lives and under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives.”