Quotes about everything

page 72

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Useful Knowledge (1928)

Source: What is Political Philosophy (1959), p. 40
Context: Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace.

"Robert Anton Wilson on Wilhelm Reich" (March 1995)
Context: He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government.
Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned.
Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue.
When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation.

"Preface", as translated by Barbara Green and Reihhard Krauss (2001). <!-- Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey -->
Discipleship (1937)
Context: Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign of terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saved? Should the church's word bring new tyranny and violent abuse to human souls? It may be that some people yearn for such servitude. But could the church ever serve such a longing?
When holy scripture speaks of following Jesus, it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which presumes, burdens, or causes worry and torment of conscience. In following Jesus, people are released from the hard yoke of their own laws to be under the gentle yoke of Jesus Christ. … Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Context: Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know.

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Context: Fantastic, Phædrus thinks, that he should have remembered that. It just demolishes the whole dialectical position. That may just be the whole show right there. Of course it's an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the dialecticians don't know that.

Book I, 1099b.22: Quoted in Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:8.
Nicomachean Ethics
Context: Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.

Juno and the Peacock.

Elemental Evolution announcement, Muzic Magazine (July 25, 2016)
Context: Humans. Our world and everything in it, through direct and indirect actions, evolves to survive and adapt. We are peaceful, but we are also destructive. Elemental Evolution is about evolving into a form of ourselves that is conscious of peace and embraces love.

Edie : American Girl (1982)
Context: Everything that happened to me has been a paradox for life. The very things that I should have done would have been the trap. The very things I might have given into, that demanded, that said, this is your life. I mean, this is your only way to survive, are the things I found hardest to end. 'Cause I believed in something else. You have to work like mad to make people understand... Even if I don't make it, you know, I really insist on believing, and then I fall off the edge because there's nobody else to follow it. And I would just fall off the edge.

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)
Context: This man was a fool because he failed to realize his dependence on God... this man-centered foolishness is still alive today. In fact, it has gotten to the point today that some are even saying that God is dead. The thing that bothers me about it is that they didn't give me full information, because at least I would have wanted to attend God's funeral. And today I want to ask, who was the coroner that pronounced Him dead? I want to raise a question, how long had He been sick? I want to know whether He had a heart attack or died of chronic cancer. These questions haven't been answered for me, and I'm going on believing and knowing that God is alive. You see, as long as love is around, God is alive. As long as justice is around, God is alive. There are certain conceptions of God that needed to die, but not God. You see, God is the supreme noun of life; He's not an adjective. He is the supreme subject of life; He's not a verb. He's the supreme independent clause; He's not a dependent clause. Everything else is dependent on Him, but He is dependent on nothing.

Letter to Pope Pius XI (1933) as translated in Inside the Vatican (2003), p. 27
Context: As a child of the Jewish people who, by the grace of God, for the past eleven years has also been a child of the Catholic Church, I dare to speak to the Father of Christianity about that which oppresses millions of Germans. For weeks we have seen deeds perpetrated in Germany which mock any sense of justice and humanity, not to mention love of neighbor. For years the leaders of National Socialism have been preaching hatred of the Jews. But the responsibility must fall, after all, on those who brought them to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in the face of such happenings.
Everything that happened and continues to happen on a daily basis originates with a government that calls itself "Christian." For weeks not only Jews but also thousands of faithful Catholics in Germany, and, I believe, all over the world, have been waiting and hoping for the Church of Christ to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name.

Alternate translation: Then in the middle of all stands the sun. For who, in our most beautiful temple, could set this light in another or better place, than that from which it can at once illuminate the whole? Not to speak of the fact that not unfittingly do some call it the light of the world, others the soul, still others the governor. Tremigistus calls it the visible God; Sophocles' Electra, the All-seer. And in fact does the sun, seated on his royal throne, guide his family of planets as they circle round him.
Book 1, Ch. 10, Alternate translation as quoted in Edwin Arthur Burtt in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)
Context: At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For, in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. The Thrice Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing. Thus indeed, as though seated on a royal throne, the sun governs the family of planets revolving around it.

OSCON 2002
Context: Here's a story: There was a documentary filmmaker who was making a documentary film about education in America. And he's shooting across this classroom with lots of people, kids, who are completely distracted at the television in the back of the classroom. When they get back to the editing room, they realize that on the television, you can barely make out the show for two seconds; it's "The Simpsons," Homer Simpson on the screen. So they call up Matt Groening, who was a friend of the documentary filmmaker, and say, you know, Is this going to be a problem? It's only a couple seconds. Matt says, No, no, no, it's not going to be a problem, call so and so. So they called so and so, and so and so said call so and so.
Eventually, the so and so turns out to be the lawyers, so when they got to the lawyers, they said, Is this going to be a problem? It's a documentary film. It's about education. It's a couple seconds. The so and so said 25,000 bucks. 25,000 bucks?! It's a couple seconds! What do you mean 25,000 bucks? The so and so said, I don't give a goddamn what it is for. $25,000 bucks or change your movie. Now you look at this and you say this is insane. It's insane. And if it is only Hollywood that has to deal with this, OK, that's fine. Let them be insane. The problem is their insane rules are now being applied to the whole world. This insanity of control is expanding as everything you do touches copyrights.

A Message to Redistributionists (1997)

Quoted in the documentary The U.S. vs John Lennon (2006) — video excerpt at The Huffington Post (12 September 2006) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/09/12/video-john-lennon-was-_n_29293.html
2000s
Context: Lennon was somebody who was a born enemy of those who govern the United States. He was everything they hated. So I just say that he represented life, and is admirable; and Mr. Nixon and Mr. Bush represent death, and that is a bad thing.

The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ (1977)
Context: When we walk in the Lord's presence, everything we see, hear, touch, or taste reminds us of Him. This is what is meant by a prayerful life. It is not a life in which we say many prayers but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of Him who is the origin and purpose of our existence.

In "My Country 'tis of Thee", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)
Context: I am beginning to have a healthy dread of possessions, be it of a country, a house, a being or even an idea. If we are bothered by possessions we cannot really live either from without or from within; we are the possession of our possessions. All wars and most loves come from the possessive instinct. Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men: that you may belong to everything and everything be yours inclusive of yourself.
Could we, and we can, have the vital necessities for all, we should do away with this cry of class and begin to differentiate between individuals.
Individual superiority can alone feed the soul and give back through some materialisation of itself this individualised wealth of being.

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: An amalgamation of cultures is taking place. I see it as proof that something is happening, something is being born, that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding another, when everything is possible. Yes, everything is possible, because our civilization does not have its own unified style, its own spirit, its own aesthetic.

"Watch It Crash" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/05/

As quoted in The Fabulous Fanny : The Story of Fanny Brice (1953) by Norman Katkov, p. 71
Context: Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience. You step out on the stage and you can feel it is a nervous audience. So you calm them down. I come out before an audience and maybe my house burned down an hour ago, maybe my husband stayed out all night, but I stand there. I'm still. I don't move. I wait for the introduction. Maybe I cough. Maybe I touch myself. But before I do anything, I got them with me, right there in my hand and comfortable. That's my job, to make them comfortable, because if they wanted to be nervous they could have stayed home and added up their bills.

Endorsing Hillary Clinton for President over Donald Trump, May 7, 2016 http://www.npr.org/2016/05/09/477339063/conservative-author-pj-orourke-reluctantly-backs-clinton on NPR

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Context: For what democracy needs most of all is a party that will separate the good that is in it theoretically from the evils that beset it practically, and then try to erect that good into a workable system. What it needs beyond everything is a party of liberty. It produces, true enough, occasional libertarians, just as despotism produces occasional regicides, but it treats them in the same drum-head way. It will never have a party of them until it invents and installs a genuine aristocracy, to breed them and secure them.

The Captive Mind (1953)
Context: Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.

Lecture given in 1946 (Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989;) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm (1946)
Context: Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse.

"Fads and Public Opinion" http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/10/
What I Saw in America (1922)
Context: A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable. I was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim that the sense of my own laughable position never left me. But when the native and the foreigner have finished with seeing the fun of each other in things that are meant to be serious, they both approach the far more delicate and dangerous ground of things that are meant to be funny. The sense of humour is generally very national; perhaps that is why the internationalists are so careful to purge themselves of it. I had occasion during the war to consider the rights and wrongs of certain differences alleged to have arisen between the English and American soldiers at the front. And, rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that they arose from the failure to understand when a foreigner is serious and when he is humorous. And it is in the very nature of the best sort of joke to be the worst sort of insult if it is not taken as a joke.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
Context: The electrical, the magnetic element in Woman has not been fairly brought out at any period. Everything might be expected from it; she has far more of it than Man. This is commonly expressed by saying that her intuitions are more rapid and more correct. You will often see men of high intellect absolutely stupid in regard to the atmospheric changes, the fine invisible links which connect the forms of life around them, while common women, if pure and modest, so that a vulgar self do not overshadow the mental eye, will seize and delineate these with unerring discrimination.
Women who combine this organization with creative genius are very commonly unhappy at present. They see too much to act in conformity with those around them, and their quick impulses seem folly to those who do not discern the motives. This is an usual effect of the apparition of genius, whether in Man or Woman, but is more frequent with regard to the latter, because a harmony, an obvious order and self-restraining decorum, is most expected from her.
Then women of genius, even more than men, are likely to be enslaved by an impassioned sensibility. The world repels them more rudely, and they are of weaker bodily frame.
Those who seem overladen with electricity frighten those around them.

Siddhartha (1922)
Context: Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real.

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete. The follies of youth have a basis in sound reason, just as much as the embarrassing questions put by babes and sucklings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects of our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory. Shelley, chafing at the Church of England, discovered the cure of all evils in universal atheism. Generous lads irritated at the injustices of society, see nothing for it but the abolishment of everything and Kingdom Come of anarchy. Shelley was a young fool; so are these cocksparrow revolutionaries. But it is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow larger, stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of an angel.

Part 2, Chapter 1 (pages 45-46)
Notes from Underground (1864)
Context: The characteristics of our "romantics" are absolutely and directly opposed to the transcendental European type, and no European standard can be applied to them. (Allow me to make use of this word "romantic" — an old-fashioned and much respected word which has done good service and is familiar to all.) The characteristics of our romantics are to understand everything, to see everything and to see it often incomparably more clearly than our most realistic minds see it; to refuse to accept anyone or anything, but at the same time not to despise anything; to give way, to yield, from policy; never to lose sight of a useful practical object (such as rent-free quarters at the government expense, pensions, decorations), to keep their eye on that object through all the enthusiasms and volumes of lyrical poems, and at the same time to preserve "the sublime and the beautiful" inviolate within them to the hour of their death, and to preserve themselves also, incidentally, like some precious jewel wrapped in cotton wool if only for the benefit of "the sublime and the beautiful." Our "romantic" is a man of great breadth and the greatest rogue of all our rogues, I assure you.... I can assure you from experience, indeed. Of course, that is, if he is intelligent. But what am I saying! The romantic is always intelligent, and I only meant to observe that although we have had foolish romantics they don't count, and they were only so because in the flower of their youth they degenerated into Germans, and to preserve their precious jewel more comfortably, settled somewhere out there — by preference in Weimar or the Black Forest.

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC30/Berry.htm in Farming: A Hand Book (1970).
Poems
Context: Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

As quoted in Martin Buber : An Intimate Portrait (1971), p. 56
Context: I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)
Context: That, on the whole, if you have got the intrinsic qualities, you have got everything, and the preliminaries will prove attainable; but that if you have got only the preliminaries, you have yet got nothing. A man of real dignity will not find it impossible to bear himself in a dignified manner; a man of real understanding and insight will get to know, as the fruit of his very first study, what the laws of his situation are, and will conform to these.

Interview by Adam Holdorf for Real Change News, (18 March 2004).

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: To explain, however, everything relating to the nature of this deity, is beyond the power of man, even though the god himself should grant him the ability to understand it: in a case where it seems, to me at least, impossible even mentally to conceive all its extent. And now that we have discussed so much, we must put as it were a seal upon this subject; and to stay a while and pass on to other points no less requiring examination. What then is this seal; and what comprises everything, as it were in a summary of the conception concerning the nature of the god? May He Himself inspire our understanding when we attempt briefly to explain the source out of which he proceeded; and what he is himself; and with what effects he fills the visible world. It must therefore be laid down that the sovereign Sun proceeded from the One God, — One out of the one Intelligible world; he is stationed in the middle of the Intelligible Powers, according to the strictest sense of "middle position;" bringing the last with the first into a union both harmonious and loving, and which fastens together the things that were divided: containing within himself the means of perfecting, of cementing together, of generative life, and of the uniform existence, and to the world of Sense, the author of all kinds of good; not merely adorning and cheering it with the radiance wherewith he himself illumines the same, but also by making subordinate to himself the existence of the Solar Angels; and containing within himself the unbegotten Cause of things begotten; and moreover, prior to this, the unfading, unchanging source of things eternal.
All, therefore, that was fitting to be said touching the nature of this deity (although very much has been passed over in silence) has now been stated at some length.

Sparks
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
Context: Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 909
Context: There are three kinds of devotees: superior, mediocre, and inferior. The inferior devotee says, "God is out there." According to him God is different from His creation. The mediocre devotee says: "God is the Antaryami, the Inner Guide. God dwells in everyone's heart." The mediocre devotee sees God in the heart. But the superior devotee sees that God alone has become everything; He alone has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. He finds that everything, above and below, is filled with God.

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, The Threat to Intellectual Freedom
Context: A system of education under government control, separation of school and church, universal free education — all these are great achievements of social progress. But everything has a reverse side. In this case it is excessive standardization, extending to the teaching process itself, to the curriculum, especially in literature, history, civics, geography, and to the system of examinations.
One cannot but see a danger in excessive reference to authority and in the limitation of discussion and intellectual boldness at an age when personal convictions are beginning to be formed. In the old China, the systems of examinations for official positions led to mental stagnation and to the canonizing of the reactionary aspects of Confucianism. It is highly undesirable to have anything like that in a modern society.

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 60
Context: If it is impossible to induce fathers to abandon their families, how much more impossible would it be to induce mothers? When Tolstoy sought to live the truly Christian life, the immediate obstacle he found in his path was his own wife.... The next world had to take care of itself. She was burdened with dependents in this world, and like nearly every other mother-animal in creation, she insisted, in so far as she was able, upon feeding and protecting her young. She was as impervious as a tigress, concealing the lair of her young, to the teaching that a Christian must be willing to sacrifice everything and everybody in pursuit of truth.

From an interview given in 1894, as quoted in Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis, p. 220
Context: I see everything in a grotesque way. When I go to the theatre, for example, things shape themselves before my eyes just as a I draw them — the people on the stage, the footlights, the queer faces and garb of the audience in the boxes and stalls. They all seem weird and strange to me. Things have always impressed me in this way.

Letter to Albert Einstein (13 June 1946), as quoted by Walter Moore in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) ISBN 0521437679

Source: All Tomorrow's Parties‎ (2003), Ch. 38 : Vincent Black Lightning, p. 191
Context: If Skinner couldn't tell Fontaine a story about something, Fontaine would make up his own story, read function in the shape of something, read use in the way it was worn down. It seemed to comfort him.
Everything to Fontaine, had a story. Each object, each fragment comprising the built world. A chorus of voices, the past alive in everything, that sea upon which the present tossed and rode. When he'd built Skinner's funicular, the elevator that crawled like a small cable car up the angled iron of the tower, when they old man's hip had gotten too bad to allow him to easily climb, Fontaine had a story about the derivation of each piece. He wove their stories together, applied electricity: the thing rose, clicking, to the hatch in the floor of Skinner's room.

Source: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964), p. 102 http://books.google.com/books?id=7RP-TggufEEC&pg=PA102
Context: The language of art is constituted precisely by the fact that it speaks to the self-understanding of every person, and it does this as ever present and by means of its own contemporaneousness. Indeed, precisely the contemporaneousness of the work allows it to come to expression in language. Everything depends on how something is said.

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: In the vast all of the Universe, must there be this unique anomaly — a consciousness that knows itself, loves itself and feels itself, joined to an organism which can only live within such and such degrees of heat, a merely transitory phenomenon? No, it is not mere curiosity that inspires the wish to know whether or not the stars are inhabited by living organisms, by consciousness akin to our own, and a profound longing enters into that dream that our souls shall pass from star to star through the vast spaces of the heavens, in an infinite series of transmigrations. The feeling of the divine makes us wish and believe that everything is animated, that consciousness, in a greater or less degree, extends through everything. We wish not only to save ourselves, but to save the world from nothingness. And therefore God. Such is his finality as we feel it.

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity
Context: Imagination, which is the social sense, animates the inanimate and anthropomorphizes everything; it humanizes everything and even makes everything identical with man. And the work of man is to supernaturalize Nature — that is to say, to make it divine by making it human, to help it to become conscious of itself, in short. The action of reason, on the other hand, is to mechanize or materialize.

E 59
Variant translation: There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible...
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)
Context: There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. … It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth … into a liar — that I call an achievement.

Introduction to Ward's English Poets (1880)
Context: For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.

Meher Baba’s Call (1954)
Context: I tell you all, with my Divine Authority, that you and I are not “WE,” but “ONE.” You unconsciously feel my Avatarhood within you; I consciously feel in you what each of you feel. Thus every one of us is Avatar, in the sense that everyone and everything is everyone and everything, at the same time, and for all time.
There is nothing but God. He is the only Reality, and we all are one in the indivisible Oneness of this absolute Reality. When the One who has realized God says, “I am God. You are God, and we are all one,” and also awakens this feeling of Oneness in his illusion-bound selves, then the question of the lowly and the great, the poor and the rich, the humble and the modest, the good and the bad, simply vanishes. It is his false awareness of duality that misleads man into making illusory distinctions and filing them into separate categories.

Source: All Tomorrow's Parties‎ (2003), Ch. 38 : Vincent Black Lightning, p. 191
Context: If Skinner couldn't tell Fontaine a story about something, Fontaine would make up his own story, read function in the shape of something, read use in the way it was worn down. It seemed to comfort him.
Everything to Fontaine, had a story. Each object, each fragment comprising the built world. A chorus of voices, the past alive in everything, that sea upon which the present tossed and rode. When he'd built Skinner's funicular, the elevator that crawled like a small cable car up the angled iron of the tower, when they old man's hip had gotten too bad to allow him to easily climb, Fontaine had a story about the derivation of each piece. He wove their stories together, applied electricity: the thing rose, clicking, to the hatch in the floor of Skinner's room.

Book VI, chapter 3: "Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima; Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds" (translated by Constance Garnett)
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)
Context: Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. So do not trouble it, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God's intent. Man, do not exhale yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you in your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it, and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you — alas, this is true of almost every one of us! Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts, and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child.
My young brother asked even the birds to forgive him. It may sound absurd, but it is right none the less, for everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now. Everything is like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy, and ask that they, too, should forgive your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.

The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739)
Context: Some People have an Idea, or Notion of the Christian Religion, as if God was thereby declared so full of Wrath against fallen Man, that nothing but the Blood of his only begotten Son could satisfy his Vengeance.
Nay, some have gone such Lengths of Wickedness, as to assert that God had by immutable Decrees reprobated, and rejected a great Part of the Race of Adam, to an inevitable Damnation, to show forth and magnify the Glory of his Justice.
But these are miserable Mistakers of the Divine Nature, and miserable Reproachers of his great Love, and Goodness in the Christian Dispensation.
For God is Love, yea, all Love, and so all Love, that nothing but Love can come from him; and the Christian Religion is nothing else but an open, full Manifestation of the universal Love towards all Mankind.
As the Light of the Sun has only one common Nature towards all Objects that can receive it, so God has only one common Nature of Goodness towards all created Nature, breaking forth in infinite Flames of Love, upon every Part of the Creation, and calling everything to the highest Happiness it is capable of.

The Rickover Effect (1992)
Context: Everything new endangers something old. A new machine replaces human hands; a new source of power threatens old businesses; a new trade route wipes out the supremacy of old ports and brings prosperity to new ones. This is the price that must be paid for progress and it is worth it.

The Educational enterprise in the Light of the Gospel (13 November 1988).
Context: Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes. A savior undermines the foundations of any social doctrine of the Church. But that is what He does, whenever He is faced with money matters. According to Mark 12:13 there was a group of Herodians who wanted to catch Him in His own words. They ask "Must we pay tribute to Caesar?" You know His answer: "Give me a coin – tell me whose profile is on it!." Of course they answer "Caesar's."
The drachma is a weight of silver marked with Caesar's effigy.
A Roman coin was no impersonal silver dollar; there was none of that "trust in God" or adornment with a presidential portrait. A denarius was a piece of precious metal branded, as it were, like a heifer, with the sign of the personal owner. Not the Treasury, but Caesar coins and owns the currency. Only if this characteristic of Roman currency is understood, one grasps the analogy between the answer to the devil who tempted Him with power and to the Herodians who tempt Him with money. His response is clear: abandon all that which has been branded by Caesar; but then, enjoy the knowledge that everything, everything else is God's, and therefore is to be used by you.
The message is so simple: Jesus jokes about Caesar. He shrugs off his control. And not only at that one instance… Remember the occasion at the Lake of Capharnaum, when Peter is asked to pay a twopenny tax. Jesus sends him to throw a line into the lake and pick the coin he needs from the mouth of the first fish that bites. Oriental stories up to the time of Thousand Nights and One Night are full of beggars who catch the fish that has swallowed a piece of gold. His gesture is that of a clown; it shows that this miracle is not meant to prove him omnipotent but indifferent to matters of money. Who wants power submits to the Devil and who wants denarri submits to the Caesar.

Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)
Context: We find that everything that makes up difference and number is pure accident, pure show, pure constitution. Every production, of whatever kind, is an alteration, but the substance remains always the same, because it is only one, one divine immortal being.

New Theories of Everything (2007), Ch. 1, p. 6

Source: My Double Life (1907), Ch. 25
Context: Victor Hugo could not promise without keeping his word. He was not like me: I promise everything with the firm intention of keeping my promises, and two hours after I have forgotten all about them. If any one reminds me of what I have promised, I tear my hair, and to make up for my forgetfulness I say anything, I buy presents — in fact, I complicate my life with useless worries. It has always been thus, and always will be so.

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God
Context: Quantum theory is now discussing instantaneous connections between two entangled quantum objects such as electrons. This phenomenon has been observed in laboratory experiments and scientists believe they have proven it takes place. They’re not talking about faster than the speed of light. Speed has nothing to do with it. The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance. If that is true, distance has no meaning. Light-years have no meaning. Space has no meaning. In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the “quantum level” (and I don’t know what that means), everything may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one. If this is so, then Buddhism must have been a quantum theory all along. No, I am not a Buddhist. I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am more content with questions than answers.

As quoted in "Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj" at Sidi Muhammad Press http://www.sufimaster.org/teachings/husayn.htm
Context: In the Name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, Who manifests Himself through everything, the revelation of a clear knowing to whomsoever He wishes, peace be upon you, my son. This praise belongs to Allah Who manifests Himself on the head of a pin to whom He wishes, so that one testifies that He is not, and another testifies that there is none other than He. But the witnessing in the denying of Him is not rejected, and the witnessing in the affirming of Him is not praised.

Message at Pickfair, Beverly Hills, California (1 June 1932), as quoted in Life Is A Jest (1974) edited by A. K. Hajra <!-- or 6 January? 1932 Me p100-101 -->
General sources
Context: Life becomes meaningful and all activities are purposeful only on the basis of faith in the enduring reality. … The greatest romance possible in life is to discover this Eternal Reality in the midst of infinite change. Once, one has experienced this, one sees oneself in everything that lives, one recognises all of life as his life, everybody's interests as his own. One is no longer bound by habits of the past, no longer swayed by the hopes of the future — One lives in and enjoys each present moment to the full. There is no greater romance in life than this adventure in realization.

"How Am I Different" (co-written with Jon Brion) · Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW7gUnN7yxo
Song lyrics, Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo (2000)
Context: I can't do it, I can't conceive
You're everything you're trying to make me believe 'Cause this show is too well designed
Too well to be held with only me in mind And how, how am I different?
How, how am I different?

Weaving the Web (1999)
Context: In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.

Angelus (24 September 1978)
Context: Pius X, in 1906, right here in Rome, had beatified the sixteen Carmelites of Compiègne, martyrs during the French revolution. During the trial they were condemned "to death for fanaticism". And one of them asked in her simplicity: "Your Honour, what does fanaticism mean?" And the judge: "It is your foolish membership of religion." "Oh, Sisters, she then said, did you hear, we are condemned for our attachment to faith. What happiness to die for Jesus Christ!"
They were brought out of the prison of the Conciergerie, and made to climb into the fatal cart. On the way they sang hymns; when they reached the guillotine, one after the other knelt before the Prioress and renewed the vow of obedience. Then they struck up "Veni Creator"; the song, however, became weaker and weaker, as the heads of the poor Sisters fell, one by one, under the guillotine. The Prioress, Sister Theresa of St Augustine, was the last, and her last words were the following: "Love will always be victorious, love can do everything." That was the right word, not violence, but love, can do everything. Let us ask the Lord for the grace that a new wave of love for our neighbour may sweep over this poor world.

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Everything that is destroyed is either destroyed by itself or by something else. If the world is destroyed by itself, fire must needs burn of itself and water dry itself. If by something else, it must be either by a body or by something incorporeal. By something incorporeal is impossible; for incorporeal things preserve bodies — nature, for instance, and soul — and nothing is destroyed by a cause whose nature is to preserve it. If it is destroyed by some body, it must be either by those which exist or by others. … But if the world is to be destroyed by other bodies than these it is impossible to say where such bodies are or whence they are to arise.

XIII. How things eternal are said to be made.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Everything made is made either by art or by a physical process or according to some power. Now in art or nature the maker must needs be prior to the made: but the maker, according to power, constitutes the made absolutely together with itself, since its power is inseparable from it; as the sun makes light, fire makes heat, snow makes cold.
Now if the Gods make the world by art, they do not make it be, they make it be such as it is. For all art makes the form of the object. What therefore makes it to be?

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

IX. On Providence, Fate, and Fortune.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

XVI. Concerning sacrifices and other worships, that we benefit man by them, but not the Gods.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

VII. On the Nature of the World and its Eternity.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: The cosmos itself must of necessity be indestructible and uncreated. Indestructible because, suppose it destroyed: the only possibility is to make one better than this or worse or the same or a chaos. If worse, the power which out of the better makes the worse must be bad. If better, the maker who did not make the better at first must be imperfect in power. If the same, there will be no use in making it; if a chaos... it is impious even to hear such a thing suggested. These reasons would suffice to show that the world is also uncreated: for if not destroyed, neither is it created. Everything that is created is subject to destruction.

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Everything destroyed is either resolved into the elements from which it came, or else vanishes into not-being. If things are resolved into the elements from which they came, then there will be others: else how did they come into being at all?

As quoted in Damien McElroy, Exiled Crown Prince campaigns to bring Arab Spring to Iran http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9117525/Exiled-Crown-Prince-campaigns-to-bring-Arab-Spring-to-Iran.html. The Telegraph. March 2, 2012.
Interviews, 2012

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

Diary of an unfinished journey (2012), Page 56, verse I-II.

Among the things (2012), Page 38, verse V, VI.

The Righteous Mind (2012)

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn