Quotes about outside (2162 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“…the walls of his house were full of images of a happy past, which in his mind seemed like a constant outside of time.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

Time , Housing , Past , Happiness

“He cannot stop imagining his bloody hands or himself lying mortally at the bottom of that bathtub, which, for now, serves as his refuge, as his escape from the World, from that which is outside, but which, Any day now, I could decide to go in.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

Imagination , Lying , World

“As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The First Notebook
No Longer Human

“Bodies have their own light which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from the outside.”

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) austrian painter

Light

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Success

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Dreams , Heart

“In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Reichstag, 30 January 1939, as quoted at The History Place http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/threat.htm.
1930s

Life , War , World , Problem

“I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self.”

Arthur Miller After the Fall

After the Fall (1964)
Context: I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self. One day the house smells of fresh bread, the next of smoke and blood. One day you faint because the gardener cuts his finger off, within a week you're climbing over corpses of children bombed in a subway. What hope can there be if that is so? I tried to die near the end of the war. The same dream returned each night until I dared not to go to sleep and grew quite ill. I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream I saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away. But it always crept onto my lap again, clutched at my clothes. Until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible … but I kissed it. I think one must finally take one's life in one's arms.

Hope , Hope , Thinking

“It’s the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

People , Self-confidence , Relation ships , World

“When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Variant: If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

Change

“But to live outside the law, you must be honest.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Absolutely Sweet Marie
Variant: But to live outside the law, you must be honest.
Source: da Absolutely Sweet Marie, n.° 11

Law

“If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Source: The Imitation of Christ

God

“This knotted dilemma lies at the center of women's development. How can girls both enter and stay outside of, be educated in and then try to change, what for millennia has been a man's world?”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: Joining the Resistance

Women , World , Education , Girl

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Faith , Relationship , Love , Faith

“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nature , Happiness

“I object to being called a chess genius because I consider myself to be an all around genius who just happens to play chess, which is rather different. A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he's like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, July 6 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_18_1.MP3
2000s

“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech to Chamber of Deputies (9 December 1928), quoted in Propaganda and Dictatorship (2007) by Marx Fritz Morstein, p. 48
1920s

“When travel outside the city is desired, computer-guided vehicles for land, sea, air, space and beyond can transport passengers and freight. For rapid movement of passengers on land across via ducts, bridges, and tunnels, high-speed mag-lev trains span great distances and will efficiently replace most aircraft transportation.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Designing the Future (2007)

Training , Travel , Sea , Speed

“Every seed goes through the tremendous struggle of losing itself – losing its safety and integrity and becoming vulnerable to every outside force that’s around. But without that vulnerability, without the breaking, without the shedding of the shell, life won’t sprout.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Pebbles Of Wisdom

Life

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

Source: White Teeth

History

“There's much more in any given moment than we usually perceive, and that we ourselves are much more than we usually perceive. When you know that, part of you can stand outside the drama of your life.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Life , Parting

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

First attributed to Lincoln in 2002, this seems a paraphrase of a statement in the Lyceum address of 1838, while incorporating language used by Thomas E. Dewey (c. 1944), who said "By the same token labor unions can never be destroyed from the outside. They can only fail if they fail to lend their united support to full production in a free society".
Misattributed

Freedom

“I will always carry you, inside, outside, on my fingertips, and at brain edges.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

love

“Whatever happiness and peace that one knows in one's life is generally so fragile that it is always subservient to the external situation. So most of your lives go in trying to manage a perfect external situation which is just impossible to do. No human being is ever capable of creating a perfect external situation because the outside situation will never be hundred percent in your control, no matter how powerful a human being you are. So yoga focuses on the inner situation. If you can create a perfect inward situation, no matter what the external situation, you can be in perfect bliss and peace.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Life , Peace , Perfection , Happiness

“Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

Loneliness

“The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

“Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves.”

Nikola Tesla book My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla

My Inventions (1919)
Source: My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
Context: From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness through all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves. The premature death of millions is primarily traceable to this cause. Even among those who exercise care, it is a common mistake to avoid imaginary, and ignore the real dangers. And what is true of an individual also applies, more or less, to a people as a whole.

World , Personality

“Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Time

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Dreams

“It is inevitable that the mind which does not have a place to turn to or any stable base will undergo change from hour to hour and from minute to minute due to the variety of its distractions, and by the things that come to it from outside it will be continually transformed into whatever occurs to it at any given moment.”

John Cassian (360–435) Christian monk and theologian

The Conferences V.2 ( online http://books.google.com/books?id=k3CrvJJZkqEC&pg=PA44)

Change

“When you feel restless, sad, sorrowful and embittered, look for the cause, and if it is not worth being sorry about (and nothing that does not offend God is worth being sorry about), get rid of your anxiety; if you do not see the causes but feel restless and dissatisfied all the same, put up with it, arm yourself with patience, let the storm pass, and your inner peace will return.
This union, my sister, demands a heart at peace, calm, unalterable, like some place in heaven, and we can and must acquire it fighting hard whatever threatens if from outside ourselves.”

Francisco Palau (1811–1872) Beatified Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar and priest

Letter to Juana Gratia (1857)

God , Sadness , Peace , Feeling

“In the newspapers there is insulting and stirring up hatred. Those irresponsible daubers!
The people are on the streets -- rampaging and protesting. The magnates are sitting at the green table and calmly finish their game.
Old Europe is dying.
Well, it's a crazy world! Thrift, Horatio!
As if by a mysterious power one feels compelled to go out onto the streets. The thoughts wander outside to the stage which is portraying a drama of world history -- not an edifying one, but still a drama. It gives the earnest observer a lot to think about.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

In den Zeitungen wird gehetzt und geschimpft. Diese verantwortungslosen Schmieranten!
Das Volk ist auf der Straße, randaliert und demonstriert. Die Herren sitzen am grünen Tisch und spielen seelenruhig ihre Partie zu Ende.
Die alte Europa geht in die Binsen.
Ja, es ist eine tolle Welt! Wirtschaft, Horatio!
Man wird wie von einer geheimnisvollen Macht auf die Straße gezogen. Die Gedanken sind draußen, wo sich ein Stück Weltgeschichte abspielt -- kein erhebendes zwar, aber ein Stück. Der ernsthafte Zuschauer hat viel dabei nachzudenken.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

People , World , Feeling , History

“I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on equaliy, From a letter to General Du Preez, Commissioner of Prisons, Written on Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa (12 July 1976). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
1970s

Life

“I excused myself as soon as I finished eating, and boy did I stuff myself on that meal. I then walked outside onto the beach. The wine had long since gone to my head, making me feel a sense of dizzy invigoration. I started walking along the shore, taking in the magnificence of the gentle, moonlit ocean. It was so… romantic. I kept walking and walking with no destination in mind. The romance of it all filled me with despair and longing. I wanted a girlfriend to experience that moment with me, but no girl wanted to be my girlfriend. The only thing I could do was imagine how heavenly it would be to have a beautiful girl by my side. It is such a shameful tragedy.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

I ended up walking for two hours, and at the end of it I was crying to myself because I felt so sad.
My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Longing

Beauty , Feeling , Imagination , Girl

“If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Letter To Mme. N. D. Fonvisin (1854), as published in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends (1914), translated by Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letter XXI, p. 71 
Context: I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simple; here it is: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.

Truth , Christ

“This family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

"And God Smiles," sermon preached at All Saints Church, Pasadena, California (6 November 2005)
Context: This family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider. When Jesus said, "I, if I am lifted up, will draw..." Did he say, "I will draw some"? "I will draw some, and tough luck for the others"? He said, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all." All! All! All! – Black, white, yellow; rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful. All! All! It is radical. All! Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Bush – all! All! All are to be held in this incredible embrace. Gay, lesbian, so-called "straight;" all! All! All are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won’t let us go.

Family

“Your basic problem is that you don’t yet know yourself inside and simply want to know what’s outside. This will only make you agitated and confused, without serving any purpose.”

Ajahn Maha Bua (1913–2011) monk

Straight from the Heart

Problem , Making love

“I sat brooding intensely on the atrocities perpetrated on Hinduism and its dark and deadly future if left to face Islam outside and Gandhi inside, and (…) decided all of a sudden to take the extreme step against Gandhi.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Future

“When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Variant: What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.

Fate , Appearance

“We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time… detached.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

Source: La Dolce Vita: Federico Fellini's Masterpiece

Love , Art , Learning , Passion

“The only thing that stands between you and your wellbeing is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside. On”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Variant: The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside. On
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

“There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Life

“Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you — you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Letter to the Secretariat of the Soviet Writers’ Union (12 November 1969) as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz (1970) “Expulsion".

Time

“Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.”

Oscar Wilde book Intentions

Intentions (1891)

Art , Perfection

“I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises.
Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was,
I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat.
I was never convinced of what I believed in.
I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through.
Words were my only truth.
When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Truth , Unfaithfulness

“I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Universe

“Being brokenhearted is like having broken ribs. On the outside it looks like nothing's wrong, but every breath hurts.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy

Hurtful , Hurt

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

For Men

“All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Source: The Merchant of Venice

Life

“And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

People , World , Way , Heart

“I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider

Men

“Going outside is highly overrated.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

“My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates… that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"… it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable."”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Politics, society and humanity

Fate , People , Way , Idea

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days...
Harvard University address (1978)

Life , World , Courage , Support

“Chiefly I remember the horsy smells, the quavering bugle-calls (all our buglers were amateurs--I first learned the Spanish bugle-calls by listening to them outside the Fascist lines), the tramp-tramp of hobnailed boots in the barrack yard, the long morning parades in the wintry sunshine, the wild games of football, fifty a side, in the gravelled riding--school.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

School , Game , Learning , Football

“It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

Night , Country

“Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

I got my degree through E-mail http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0616/5912084a.html, Forbes (June 16, 1997)
1990s and later

Learning , Universe , Future

“The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for truth.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter one, The Country of the Blind

Women , Men , Truth , Religion

“Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

This is widely reported on many sites as coming from the Bilderberg Conference (1991) Evians, France, purportedly recorded by a Swiss diplomat, but no such recording has ever been provided.
Misattributed

People , World , Fear , Angels

“I have no sense of pleasure or pain, and I stay as I have always been. Sometimes He draws me outside, and sometimes He takes me inside and I am completely withdrawn. I am nobody, all of my actions are done by him and not by me.”

Sri Anandamoyi Ma (1896–1982) Hindu saint

Gopinath Kaviraj, Sri Sri Ma Anandamayi: Upadesa O Prasnottara, p. 1
By followers

Pain , Pleasure , Sense , Drawing

“My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds — what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.”

Andy Goldsworthy (1956) British sculptor and photographer

"Stone River Enters Stanford University's Outdoor Art Collection" (4 September 2001)

“It seems as though I've always been,
somebody outside looking in,
well, here I am for all of them to bleed,
but they can't take my heart from me,
and they can't bring me to my knees,
they'll never know the real me.”

Mariah Carey (1970) American singer-songwriter

"Looking In", Daydream, 1995
Lyrics

Heart

“It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

On FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as quoted in The New York Times (31 October 1971).
1970s

“There are no facts inside the building, so get the hell outside.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Forbes "Try 'Walking The Path' To Solve Your Startup Problems" http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2015/10/27/try-walking-the-path-to-solve-your-startup-problems/#6cb0ab3a5c64. October 27, 2015.

Hell

“The way the mathematics game is played, most variations lie outside the rules, while music can insist on perfect canon or tolerate a casual accompaniment.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

Lie , Music , Way , Game

“Long and tedious reflection cannot enable us to shape our decisions and attitudes properly; only that definite and clear instruction which we gain can form a direct inner link to God. This instruction alone is able to give us the inner firmness and lasting peace of mind which must be regarded as the highest boon in life. And if we ascribe to God, in addition to His omnipotence and omniscience, also the attributes of goodness and love, recourse to Him produces an increased feeling of safety and happiness in the human being thirsting for solace. Against this conception not even the slightest objection can be raised from the point of natural science, for as we pointed it out before, questions of ethics are entirely outside of its realm.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Religion and Natural Science (1937)

Love , Life , God , Peace

“A faith which we follow upon orders imposed from outside is no faith, and a community which puts its dependence upon such a pseudo-faith is ultimately bound to ruin itself because of the paralysis which the lack of a healthy growing science imposes upon it.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

XI. Language, Confusion, and Jam. p. 193
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Faith , Communication , Science , Dependency

“The Rock: I have so much love and respect for the fans. I'll never forget where I came from. I love the business. I grew up in the business. And everyone always asks me, from Letterman to Stone Phillips, what I miss about wrestling. Hands down, I miss the interaction with the fans. Outside of the ring I loved it, too. I mean, how hard is it to sign an autograph? Don't be an asshole to your fans. And there's many [in WWE] that won't, which is bullshit. But inside the ring, just that energy and feeding off that energy is great. There's something so special about it. And every night I would just have a blueprint of what I would say and rely so much on ad-libbing and waiting to see what happens when I get out there and let it materialize organically and see what happens. Every night was a different crowd and they gave me so much energy, and I'll always love that and always miss that for sure.”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

Interview with WWE.com (October 2005).

Love , Business , Waiting , Night

“The terrible situation of the country makes my mind restless and I cannot keep silent. Meaningless ritual keep the Hindus divided in hundred sects. Sop we are suffering from series of defeats. We are tired and worn-out by the fortunes by the internal external enemies. The Muslims are united in religion and rituals. The Bengali Muslims the South Indian Muslims and even the Muslims outside India-all are united. They always stand untied in face of danger. The broken and divided Hindus will not be able to combat them. Days are coming when the Hindus will be again humiliated by the Muslims. "You are a mother of children, one day you will die, passing the future of Hindus society on the weak shoulders of your children, but think about their future."”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

From the letter to Hemantabala Sarkar, written on 16the October, 1933, quoted in Bengali weekly `Swastika', 21-6-1999 http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html

Children , Religion , Thinking , Suffering

“Science is never finished because the human mind only uses a small portion of its capacity, and man's exploration of his world is also limited. If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an inscrutable distance—whatever name we give him—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 14

God , Books , World , Search

“The Russo-Japanese War now gives to all an awareness that even war and peace in Europe – its destiny – isn’t decided between the four walls of the European concert, but outside it, in the gigantic maelstrom of world and colonial politics.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

"In the Storm" in Le Socialiste http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/05/01.htm as translated by Mitch Abidor (1 - 8 May 1904)
Context: The Russo-Japanese War now gives to all an awareness that even war and peace in Europe – its destiny – isn’t decided between the four walls of the European concert, but outside it, in the gigantic maelstrom of world and colonial politics.
And its in this that the real meaning of the current war resides for social-democracy, even if we set aside its immediate effect: the collapse of Russian absolutism. This war brings the gaze of the international proletariat back to the great political and economic connectedness of the world, and violently dissipates in our ranks the particularism, the pettiness of ideas that form in any period of political calm.
The war completely rends all the veils which the bourgeois world – this world of economic, political and social fetishism – constantly wraps us in.
The war destroys the appearance which leads us to believe in peaceful social evolution; in the omnipotence and the untouchability of bourgeois legality; in national exclusivism; in the stability of political conditions; in the conscious direction of politics by these “statesmen” or parties; in the significance capable of shaking up the world of the squabbles in bourgeois parliaments; in parliamentarism as the so-called center of social existence.
War unleashes – at the same time as the reactionary forces of the capitalist world – the generating forces of social revolution which ferment in its depths.

War , World , Peace

“We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level—to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level—to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it’s civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. But the United Nations has what’s known as the charter of human rights; it has a committee that deals in human rights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have been committed in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the UN, and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep you wrapped up in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don’t even know there’s a human-rights tree on the same floor.

World , Country

“Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"A Community of the Spirit" in Ch. 1 : The Tavern, p. 2
The Essential Rumi (1995)
Context: Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence. Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

Fear , Thinking , Silence

“No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being — they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Source: "La Commune de Paris et la notion de l'état" (The Commune of Paris and the notion of the state) http://libcom.org/library/paris-commune-mikhail-bakunin as quoted in Noam Chomsky: Notes on Anarchism (1970) http://pbahq.smartcampaigns.com/node/222
Context: I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow; not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest; not the individualistic, egoistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty extolled by the School of J.-J. Rousseau and other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which limits the rights of each — an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero. No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being — they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom.

Law , Nature , Freedom , Personality

“This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time, and a new literary technique will have to be evolved to meet it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," The Tribune (17 January 1947)
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time, and a new literary technique will have to be evolved to meet it. Considering that the people of this country are not having a very comfortable time, you can't perhaps, blame them for being somewhat callous about suffering elsewhere, but the remarkable thing is the extent to which they manage to be unaware of it. Tales of starvation, ruined cities, concentration camps, mass deportations, homeless refugees, persecuted Jews — all this is received with a sort of incurious surprise, as though such things had never been heard of but at the same time were not particularly interesting. The now-familiar photographs of skeleton-like children make very little impression. As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses.

People , Business , Problem , Time

“The great disadvantage, and advantage, of the small urban bourgeois is his limited outlook. He sees the world as a middle-class world, and everything outside, these limits is either laughable or slightly wicked.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

A Collection of Essays, pp. 65-66
Charles Dickens (1939)

World

“We suppress, reject, deny and disown the aspects that make us vulnerable or get us disapproved of in the world. By doing this, they become subconscious. They are buried outside of our awareness and we don't know they even exist, even though they tend to be visible to other people around us.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

World , Making love , People

“We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Misattributed
Source: Frequently quoted on social media, but appears to be a misquote of Thomas Browne's "We carry within us the wonders we seek without us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us" in Religio Medici (1643) pt. 1, sect. 15.