“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
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Paulo Coelho844
Brazilian lyricist and novelist 1947Related quotes
Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death
"Human Character as a Vital Lie", p. 56
The Denial of Death (1973)
“Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher
No findable citation to Socrates. Found ascribed to Socrates in Stephen Covey (1992), Principle Centered Leadership (1990) p. 51 https://books.google.com/books?id=w4zCIPZrniQC&pg=PA51&dq=%22be+what+we+pretend+to+be%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyvZnCg5HKAhUU5mMKHQIIAIgQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22be%20what%20we%20pretend%20to%20be%22&f=false. <br class="br">Misattributed
Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor
Know Thyself (1881)
Context: Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about the invention of money and its enormous value as a civiliser, against such praises should be set the curse to which it has always been doomed in song and legend. If gold here figures as the demon strangling manhood's innocence, our greatest poet shews at last the goblin's game of paper money. The Nibelung's fateful ring become a pocket-book, might well complete the eerie picture of the spectral world-controller. By the advocates of our Progressive Civilisation this rulership is indeed regarded as a spiritual, nay, a moral power; for vanished Faith is now replaced by "Credit," that fiction of our mutual honesty kept upright by the most elaborate safeguards against loss and trickery. What comes to pass beneath the benedictions of this Credit we now are witnessing, and seem inclined to lay all blame upon the Jews. They certainly are virtuosi in an art which we but bungle: only, the coinage of money out of nil was invented by our Civilisation itself; or if the Jews are blamable for that, it is because our entire civilisation is a barbaro-judaic medley, in nowise a Christian creation.
“We can control our lives by controling our perceptions.”
Bruce H. Lipton (1944) US biologist
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.”
Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist
Quoted in History of Sikh Struggles (1989) by Gurmit Singh, p. 189.