“It is frequently insufficient to identify the motives that guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various things we want. That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explanatory to say that there is something we care about.”

— Harry G. Frankfurt

The Reasons of Love (2004)

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Harry G. Frankfurt 4

Philosopher 1929

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“It is frequently insufficient to identify the motives that guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various things we want.”

Harry G. Frankfurt (1929) Philosopher

That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explanatory to say that there is something we care about.
The Reasons of Love (2004)

“Selfishness comes from too little self-love, not too much, as we compensate for our lack. There’s no such thing as caring for the self too much, just as there’s no such thing as too much genuine affection for others. Our world suffers from too little self-love and too much judgment, insecurity, fear, and mistrust. If we all cared about ourselves more, most of these ills would disappear.”

Anita Moorjani (1959) writer

“We have numerous, extremely naïve assumptions built into our thinking, and our most venerable explanatory engines, such as science, happen also to be our oldest explanatory engines, and therefore they have built into them the most naïve and unexamined assumptions.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Psychedelic Society (1984)

“As we disassociate ourselves more and more from result and expectations from our work and other selfish attitudes, we identify with our creative nature, with peace within and we attain serenity.”

Niranjanananda Saraswati (1960) Hindu guru, successor of Paramahamsa Satyananda

Source: Swami Sivananda's 18 ITITES and the practice of Prayahara, book by Swami Sivamurti – Yoga Publication Trust, Bihar, India (2013)

“We might more accurately think of nonattachment as nondependency. Much of our inner turbulence reflects the fear of loss: our dependence on people, circumstances, and things not really under our control. On some level we know that death, indifference, rejection, repossession, or high tide may leave us bereft in the morning. Still, we clutch desperately at things we cannot finally hold. Nonattachment is the most realistic of attitudes. It is freedom from wishful thinking, from always wanting things to be otherwise.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Four, People Changing

“The most common reason that relationships fall apart is because of safety. On a subconscious level, even though our relationships grant us a sense of safety, if we perceive that something about a relationship makes us unsafe, we care more about our own safety than we care about the other person’s experience and we care more about our own safety than we care about the health of the relationship itself.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in — the one that we think is reality.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05
Context: Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the “Aha.” Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in — the one that we think is reality.

“The more we rest on this fact, – that we do not know the way we are going, but that we have a GUIDE who does know; that we do not know how to accomplish our service, but that He never leaves us to devise our own service; – the more restful does our life become.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(J. Hudson Taylor. A Ribband of Blue and Other Bible Studies. London: China Inland Mission, n.d., 102).

“We need to talk about more than just the health care plan. We need to realize we have a sickness care rather than a health care system. We need to be the party talking about why so many of our chemical policies and our food policies and our agricultural policies and our environment policies and even our economic policies are leading to people sick to begin with.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Quoted in We Desperately Need Marianne Williamson’s Message, https://theintercept.com/2019/08/05/marianne-williamson-2020-presidential-campaign/ The Intercept, Jon Schwarz (5 August 2019)

“Often we want to stop thinking, even for a moment. To forget all the difficulties and burdens of life, the sorrows and sufferings. It is much easier to just say, not to worry about anything. But this is the essence of our human consciousness, man's greatest enemy is himself.”

Titon Rahmawan

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