“It is almost impossible to become a pious person, without having any self-interest left within you.”

— Mwanandeke Kindembo

Last update Dec. 28, 2023. History

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Mwanandeke Kindembo 1044

Congolese author 1996

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Lo antes que yo y lo después que yo casi se han unido, casi son uno solo, casi se han quedado sin yo.
Voces (1943)

“It's impossible to become an inventor or a genius without self-talk. You just need to control it according to your needs. Explore your imagination.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) 'The Mechanical Activity of Thought" http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/the-impossible-question/1970-07-28-jiddu-krishnamurti-the-impossible-question-the-mechanical-activity-of-thought in The Impossible Question (1972) http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=9&chid=57009, Part I, Ch. 6], p. 63 J.Krishnamurti Online, Serial No. 330
1970s
Context: What does it mean to be compassionate? Not merely verbally, but actually to be compassionate? Is compassion a matter of habit, of thought, a matter of the mechanical repetition of being kind, polite, gentle, tender? Can the mind which is caught in the activity of thought with its conditioning, its mechanical repetition, be compassionate at all? It can talk about it, it can encourage social reform, be kind to the poor heathen and so on; but is that compassion? When thought dictates, when thought is active, can there be any place for compassion? Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.

“The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

“In a society such as ours, it is almost impossible for a person to be responsible.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)
Context: In a society such as ours, it is almost impossible for a person to be responsible. A simple example: a dam has been built somewhere, and it bursts. Who is responsible for that? Geologists worked out. They examined the terrain. Engineers drew up the construction plans. Workmen constructed it. And the politicians decided that the dam had to be in that spot. Who is responsible? No one. There is never anyone responsible. Anywhere. In the whole of our technological society the work is so fragmented and broken up into small pieces that no one is responsible. But no one is free either. Everyone has his own, specific task. And that's all he has to do.
Just consider, for example, that atrocious excuse… It was one of the most horrible things I have ever heard. The director of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was asked at the Nuremburg trials, “But didn’t you find it horrible? All those corpses?” He replied, “What could I do? I couldn’t process all those corpses. The capacity of the ovens was too small. It caused me many problems. I had no time to think about these people. I was too busy with the technical problem of my ovens.” That is the classic example of an irresponsible person. He carries out his technical task and isn’t interested in anything else.

“It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can't have capitalism without racism.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

May 29, 1964
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

“Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

“The ambiguity when the performance of self becomes self-destructive, or when performance of self becomes pathological. That gray area interests me as a poet because it’s so wrapped up in everyday life now that it’s almost mundane. So much of this performance is tied to feelings of worth and value; in essence, it becomes ongoing, an entire existence all on its own…”

Sally Wen Mao Chinese-born American poet

On the “self” as a spectacle in “Jenny Xie Interviews Sally Wen Mao” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2019/01/jenny-xie-interviews-sally-wen-mao (Poetry Foundation; Jan 2019)

“There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.”

Chanakya (-375–-283 BC) Ancient Indian statesman and philosopher

“It will become an immediate certainty to the meditator that mind is nothing beyond its cognizing function. Nowhere, behind or within the function, can any individual agent or abiding entity be detected. By way of one’s own direct experience, one will this have arrived at the great truth of No-soul or Impersonality (anatta; Sanskrit anatma), showing that all existence is void of an abiding personality (self, soul, over-self, etc.) or an abiding substance of any description.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 38

“It is almost impossible to become a pious person, without having any self-interest left within you.”

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Mwanandeke Kindembo 1044

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