Quotes about self (5409 quotes, page 25)

“I am a writer an a singer of the words I write I am no speaker nor any politician an my songs speak for me because I write them in the confinement of my own mind an have t cope with no one except my own self.”

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

Letter sent to the ECLC after Dylan received the Tom Paine Award at the Bill of Rights dinner on December 13, 1963, as reported in "Mr. Dylan Regrets" http://www.hotpress.com/Bob-Dylan/music/interviews/Mr-Dylan-Regrets/2836632.html by Niall Stokes, Hot Press (11 November 2005)

“There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

What is Enlightenment? (1784)

People , Thinking

“But now we come upon another objection, which I judge will be the last you can raise. You will say, I suspect, that this world of freedom, self-equipped for sin, is indeed a world which "lieth in wickedness," that in truth there is no real hope of good in it: it is a world of inherent and inexpugnable wrong, and not only damnable, but in fact already damned.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.372

Truth , World , Hope , Freedom

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

taken from Adbusters magazine
Other sources

Hate , People , Art , History

“A perfectly evil human society is unthinkable: it would be self-destructive. We therefore deny that any society of absolutely evil spirits could be permanent. Evil in short, cannot be a unifying spiritual principle: to put it colloquially, there must be some good in the Devil or he must ultimately destroy himself. It is certain that the Devil cannot be the creative source of evil in the same way that God is the creative source of good.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

p, 125
Spiritualism and the Christian Faith (1918)

God , Way , Evil

“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), p. 66

Men , Success , Parting

“But she’s your daughter!” “You think I don’t know that?” Donna Mitchell’s dark eyes, so like Allison’t own, drilled into her. “But I don’t do her any favors if I keep enabling her. I’m not going to rescue Lindsay from the consequences of her own self-destructive behavior anymore. The last time she was here, I told her if she left that was it. And she still did.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 102

Behavior , Thinking , Time , Daughters

“All Marie was earth before it became marle, it is a kinde of clay ground, and chalke it selfe was marle before it became chalke. And that which is more, that which is yet chalke within the Matrix of the earth, wil in time harden into a white stone, And last of all, wheresoever there bee any stones that be subiect to calcination, they were first marle before they were stones, for otherwise by their calcination they could not possibly amend any barren grounds … Also chalke and lime, after the frostes have taken them, whereby they crumble into powder, do become good marle, and serve in stead thereof.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

Source: Diverse new Sorts of Soylenot yet brought into any publique Use, 1594, p. 23-24; Cited in: Malcolm Thick (1994)

Bee , Time

“I am upset I am very much disappointed when I see within myself a wrong image of myself…. A man can live without fingers, but he cannot live without self-respect…. That is why I took up leprosy work. Not to help anyone but to overcome that fear in my life. That it worked out good for others is a byproduct. But the fact is I did it to overcome fear.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On his motivation to treat leprosy patients, Page=9
Baba Amte: A Vision of New India

Life , Fear , Disappointment , Help

“Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give,
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 8.
Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

Truth , Confidence , Light

“The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 51
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Feeling , Intelligence

“And, having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Source: How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day (1910), Chapter 12.

Confidence , Self-confidence

“Lord Milner had, in the forced Peace of Vereeniging ensured that there was to be no franchise for black people after the introduction of self-government – which was never intended. It was only after half a century that an Afrikaner government started doing something about black rights.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As state president, unveiling a monument to Boer War victims at Delareyville, 10 October 1985, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 34

People , Peace

“I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating-machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice, he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Tribune Rally, 29 September 1954, in response to Clement Attlee's wish for a non-emotional response to German rearmament. The remark 'desiccated calculating-machine' is often taken as a Bevan jibe against Hugh Gaitskell who became Labour Party leader the following year.
1950s

Education , Way , Suffering

“The philosophy of self-denial also taught the brotherhood of man, based on the Stoical belief that every human being without distinction possesses a spark of divinity that is in communion with God, who in the Stoical system is called Logos (Word, Reason, Meaning)—the word John's Gospel uses to describe Jesus.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

God

“I had now to select that mode of the primitive which is distinctive of your own species, a mode characterized by repressed sexuality, excessive self-regard, and an intelligence which is both rudimentary and in bondage to unruly cravings.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Last Men in London (1932)

Intelligence

“It may indeed be true that in order to act we need a certain amount of self-confidence and intellectual self-assurance. It may also be true that the very form of expression, in which we clothe our thoughts, tends to impose upon them an absolute tone.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Confidence , Self-confidence , Clothes

“To be preyed upon by those stronger than you is bad enough; but to allow your artists and children to be slaughtered and defiled by barely organized foreigners who could be kept out by simple acts of national self-respect is far more shameful.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Checking Iron Age Barbarian Prejudice http://takimag.com/article/checking_iron_age_barbarian_prejudice_steve_sailer/print#ixzz4A7r77jkG, Taki's Magazine, April 22, 2015

Children

“Life-flow of my natal hour, I will not weary of thy power,
Till in the changes of thy sound
A chord's three parts distinct are found.
I will faithful move with thee,
God-ordered, self-fed energy,
Nature in eternity.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sistrum

Life , God , Faith , Nature

“[Scripture], by which, “as in a glass, we may survey ourselves, and know what manner of persons we are,” (James 1. 23) discovers ourselves to us; pierces into the inmost recesses of the mind; strips off every disguise; lays open the inward part; makes a strict scrutiny into the very soul and spirit; and critically judges of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Heb. iv. 12) It shows us with what exactness and care we are to search and try our spirits, examine ourselves, and watch our ways, and keep our hearts, in order to acquire this important self-science; which it often calls us to do. “Examine yourselves; prove your own selves; know you not yourselves? Let a man examine himself.” (1 Cor. xi. 28) Our Saviour upbraids his disciples with their self-ignorance, in not “knowing what manner of spirits they were of.” (Luke ix. 55) And, saith the apostle, “If a man (through self-ignorance) thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself, and not another.” (Gal. vi. 3, 4) Here we are commanded, instead of judging others, to judge ourselves; and to avoid the. inexcusable rashness of condemning others for the very crimes we ourselves are guilty of, (Rom. ii. 1, 21, 22) which a self-ignorant man is very apt to do; nay, to be more offended at a small blemish in another's character, than at a greater in his own; which folly, self-ignorance, and hypocrisy, our Saviour, with just severity, animadverts upon. (Mat. vii. 3-5) And what stress was laid upon this under the Old Testament dispensation appears sufficiently from those expressions. "Keep thy heart with all diligence." (Prov. iv. 23) "Commune with your own heart." (Psal. iv. 4) "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts." (Psal. cxxxix. 23) "Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart." (Psal. xxvi. 2) "Let us search and try our ways." (Lam. iii. 4) "Recollect, recollect yourselves, O "nation not desired."”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

Zeph. ii. 1
A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

God , Way , Soul , Search

“Then are we ravished out of self by purified Love, even to the Face of God, freed and emptied of every event and illusion. This is the contemplative life of highest price.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 151

Love , Life , God

“For the Confucian, the specialistic expert could not be raised to truly positive dignity, no mater what his social usefulness. The decisive factor was that the "cultured man" (gentleman) was "not a tool"; that is, in his adjustment to the world and in his self-perfection he was an end unto himself, not a means for any functional end. This core of Confucian ethics rejected professional specialization, modern expert bureaucracy, and special training; above all, it rejected training in economics for the pursuit of profit.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Source: Religion of China (1915), p. 246

World , Decision , Perfection , Training

“Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope. In art it is not often possible to make direct use of your dreams of tomorrow and your excuses for yesterday.In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires — this is a benevolent form. The ideal self expressed in letters is not a crudely sugary affair except in dreary personalities; in any case the ideal is very much a part of the character, having its twenty-four hours a day to get through, and being no less unique in its combinations than one's fingerprints.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Anderson, Millay and Crane in Their Letters" (p. 133)
American Fictions (1999)

Dreams , Hope , Art , Communication

“Boys today hardly aspire to immortal honor, the honor of self-fulfilling achievement. It is highly disapproved of in the code of the organized system. Instead, they devote themselves to protecting their “personal honor” against insults; and conversely they dream of the transient notoriety which will prove that they are “somebody,” which they doubt. The personal honor that they protect does not include truthfulness, honesty, public usefulness, integrity, independence, or virtues like that. A reputation for these things does not win respect, it has no publicity value; it’s believed to be phony anyway, and if it’s true, the person is hard to get along with.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 150-151.

Truth , Dreams , Boy , Personality

“All this slowness, all this hardness,
The nearness that is waiting in my bed,
The gradual self-effacement of the dead.”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"The First Month of His Absence", line 33; p. 35.
Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1945)

Waiting , Dead

“All important things in art since Ur of the Chaldea's, since Tel Halaf and Crete, have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being. Self-realization is the urge of all objective spirits. It is this Ego for which I am searching in my life and in my art. Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement, for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our Ego that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

Life , Art , Feeling , Search

“Jingoistic rhetoric and puerile self-congratulatory nationalism.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 11 (p. 181)

“People naturally aspire to the symbols and the ideals of our nation. Yet whether it is a political party, a church, a charity - any institution built by man can fail and can fall. The key thing is to aspire to be better. And, for our political institutions, to understand that self sacrifice - just like forgiveness - is at the centre of the order of things.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)

People , Forgiveness , Understanding , Nature

“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Atwood H. Townsend, editor of Good Reading, various editions from at least 1960
Misattributed, Not Chinese

Business , Thinking , Time , Reading

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person who you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real--but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Love , Life , People , Feeling

“A foreign lady friend of mine once wrote and asked me whether it is true that we Chinese believe, like the Mohamedans, that a woman has no soul. I wrote back and told her that we Chinese do not hold that a woman has no soul, but that we hold that a woman,—a true Chinese woman has no self.”

Gu Hongming book The Spirit of the Chinese People

page 79
The Spirit of the Chinese People (1915), Chinese Woman

Soul

“The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) English composer

Letter to Lord Kennet, 1941; cited from Ursula Vaughan Williams RVW (1964) p. 243.

“Republicans didn't have anything going for them with respect to Latinos and with respect to Asians… The Democrats didn't have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren't mean-spirited about it… They didn't know what the policy was, but what they were is they were kind… He had a crazy policy of self deportation which was maniacal… It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote… He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country… Take care of this incredible problem that we have with respect to immigration, with respect to people wanting to be wonderful productive citizens of this country.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interview with Newsmax http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420996/trump-2008-bush-evil-talk-iran-obama-cannot-do-worse-bush-jim-geraghty (November 2012)
2010s, 2012

People , Problem , Country

“Fearing discovery of their “fraudulence,” they burden themselves with too much work to compensate for their lack of self-esteem and identity. Work/life balance is a meaningless concept to them.”

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries (1942) Dutch academic

The Dangers of Feeling Like a Fake, 2005

Life , Fear

“Praie and shifte eche one for him selfe, as he can.
Euery man for him selfe, and god for us all.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Pray and shift each one for himself, as he can.
Every man for himself, and God for us all.
Part II, chapter 9.
Proverbs (1546)

God

“World views, as related to the sciences, ethics, arts, politics and religions, are integral parts of all cultures. They have a strongly motivating and inspiring function. A socially shared view of the whole gives a culture a sense of direction, confidence and self-esteem. Moreover, interactions between cultures change constantly.”

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Source: World views. From Fragmentation to Integration (1994), p. 8

World , Religion , Art , Confidence

“Henceforth, there is to be no testing oneself against the best, with the possibility, even the likelihood, of failure: instead, one is perpetually to immerse oneself in the tepid bath of self-esteem, mutual congratulation, and benevolence toward all.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

The Rage of Virginia Woolf http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_3_oh_to_be.html (Summer 2002).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Failure

“I had looked forward
to old age as a time
of quietness, a time to draw
my horizons about me,
to watch memories ripening
in the sunlight of a walled garden.
But there is the void
over my head and the distance
within that the tireless signals
come from. And astronaut
on impossible journeys
to the far side of the self
I return with messages
I cannot decipher.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"The New Mariner", p. 99
Between Here and Now (1981)

Age , Memory , Time , Drawing

“Is it possible to understand what God's love means for the oppressed without making wrath an essential ingredient of that love? What could love possibly mean in a racist society except the righteous condemnation of everything racist? Most theological treatments of God's love fail to place the proper emphasis on God's wrath, suggesting that love is completely self-giving without any demand for obedience.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), p. 73

Love , God , Understanding

“Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Pain , Knowledge

“I used my self, my body [in his art] as an instrument.... not only my body but also my spirit.... as an instrument to research something.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

n.p.
Tim Marlow joins Anselm Kiefer to discuss his work' - 2005

Art

“I was never able to understand how it was that here and there the welfare of the Fatherland had to be sacrificed to mere petty party interests, and from the point of view of political conviction felt myself most at home in the shade of that tree which was firmly rooted in the ethico-political soil of the epoch of our great and venerable Emperor. That epoch, with what I regarded as its wonderful glories, seemed to have become part of me, and I adhered firmly to its ideals and principles. The course of events in the present war have hardly been of a kind to make me particularly enthusiastic about the developments of later times. A powerful, self-contained State in Bismarck's sense was the world in which I preferred my thoughts to move. Discipline and hard work within the Fatherland seemed to me better than cosmopolitan imaginings. Moreover, I fail to see that any citizen has rights on whom equal duties are not imposed.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Out of My Life (London: Cassell, 1920), pp. 236-237
Retirement

War , World , Home , Imagination

“If you look at a tree and think of it as a design assignment, it would be like asking you to make something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides habitat for hundreds of species, accrues solar energy's fuel, makes complex sugars and food, changes colors with the seasons, creates microclimates, and self-replicates.”

William McDonough (1951) American architect

"William McDonough: Godfather of Green", WNYC Studio 360 (18 March 2008).

Food , Color , Thinking , Tree

“Discipline is the virtue that begins in obedience and flowers in self-control.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 32.

Flowers

“"Is it agreeable?" somebody asked.
"Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "it just is." Istigkeit - wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

page 4-5
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Life , Flowers , Mathematics , Idea

“First, what does truth require? It requires us to face the facts as they are, not to involve ourselves in self-deception; to refuse to think merely in slogans. If we are to work for the future of the city, let us deal with the realities as they actually are, not as they might have been, and not as we wish they were.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Address at the Free University of Berlin

Truth , Thinking , Reality , Future

“Let your self go. If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things. Keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centered, and engaged, you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will be a better person. That, I propose, is the secret to spirituality, and it has nothing at all to do with believing in an immortal soul, or in anything supernatural.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Secret , World , Beauty , Exercises

“All the synoptic gospels show Jesus in close relationship with the ‘outsiders’ and the unloved. Publicans and sinners, prostitutes and criminals are among his acquaintances and companions. If Jesus were homosexual in nature (and this is the true explanation of his celibate state) then this would be further evidence of God’s self-identification with those who are unacceptable to the upholders of ‘The Establishment’ and social conventions.”

Hugh Montefiore (1920–2005) British bishop

Source: Jesus, the Revelation of God, p. 110

God , Nature

“Even the deepest contemplation only recalls us to our unreality. Seeing that the self we take ourselves to be is illusory does not mean seeing through it to something else. It is more like surrendering to a dream. To see ourselves as figments is to awake, not to reality, but to a lucid dream, a false awakening that has no end.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: The Ultimate Dream (p. 79)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Dreams , Reality , Falseness

“We call ourselves a “capacity building” organization; self-motivated and self-initiated capacity building. For example, in 30 years, I don’t think I have signed a check for the company.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

December 2006, Interview with Jordan Business magazine entitled “The Grass is Greener … On Both Sides”.

Motivation , Thinking

“American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education. The student must go back, beyond Jean Jacques, to Benjamin Franklin, to find a model even of self-teaching. Except in the abandoned sphere of the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what not. This volume attempts to discuss it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education , Literature , Parting , Personality

“All things are hush'd, as Nature's self lay dead,
The Mountains seem to nod their drowsy head;
The little Birds in dreams their Songs repeat,
And sleeping Flowers, beneath the night-dew sweat;
Even Lust and Envy sleep.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

The Indian Emperor (1667), Act III, scene ii.

Dreams , Mountain , Flowers , Nature

“The panic on the part of the State and Union governments could not but produce some more unsavoury results. Muslim mobs in India and elsewhere had been incited by all those who mattered in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They started taking to the streets and turning violent. The Statesman dated May 13 published the following news date-lined Dhaka, May 12: “At least 12 people were killed and 100 wounded when Bangladesh police fired on a demonstration yesterday in the border town of Chepal Nawabgunj, 320 km. from here. Some 1000 demonstrators, belonging to the fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami, were protesting against a case filed by two Indian civilians in Calcutta High Court calling for a ban on the Quran in India. The town chief administrator said today that the police opened fire in self-defence when the demonstrators went on a rampage throwing missiles and setting ablaze government property. Yesterday’s incident followed a demonstration by at least 20,000 Jamaat-i-Islami supporters in the capital on Friday {May 10}.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The demonstrators in Dhaka, according to other reports, were trying to storm the office of India’s High Commission when they were stopped by the police.
The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

People , Support , Parting

“It amazes me that anyone would dare point to Jesus Christ in moral judgement. You had better have clean hands and a pure heart before you point a finger at the Son of God… Jesus never sinned once, in thought, word, or in deed. He never lied, stole, hated, lusted, coveted, murdered, or dishonoured his parents. Let's now turn the mirror back on you. When was the last time you burned with unlawfully sexual fantasies? You don't need to reply to that. God knows the answer… So take a little advice from a fellow sinner - stop pointing your sin-stained finger at perfection, and instead look at your own self-righteous and duplicitous heart, before it's too late.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

God , Hate , Parent , Time

“From all eternity I have indeed recognized Thee and unto all eternity will ever do so through Thine Own Self and not through any one else besides Thee. Verily Thou art the Source of all knowledge, the Omniscient. From everlasting I have besought and unto everlasting will beseech forgiveness for my limited understanding of Thee, aware as I am that there is no God but Thee, the All-Glorious, the Almighty.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to ‘Him Who Will Be Made Manifest’

God , Art , Forgiveness , Understanding

“It may take either of two forms, according as the sinking into sense directly involves only the violation of the spirit's own self-reverence or the graver assault upon the sacredness of others. In either case it is dishonour of God. The risk of it lies in the nature of our being, goes back to the conditions of our existence, of our self-definition in freedom; is constituent in our freedom as this is defined against the freedom of God. This risk is therefore "original" in a sense even deeper than that in which traditional theology makes sin to be original,”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.368-9

God , Nature , Sense , Freedom

“Memetics appears to have a lot of implications that we humans are machines, which people have never liked. Of course we're machines, we're biological machines. But people don't like that. Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes. People don't like that. My view is that if these things are true it doesn't matter if we like them or not.”

Susan Blackmore (1951) British writer and academic

"Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes", Wired.com, 2/29/2008

People , Appearance

“Oh, If I had been able to realize you with my hand. If the painted canvas was able to give me your dear image. The labor was you ['The Unknown'] the work of art was me – I have kissed your head, I have looked elsewhere… You are neither good, nor charitable. You do not know how to love. – You are only great and beautiful. I sacrificed to tenderness and still, my self, you do not know how to love.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Love , Beauty , Art , Kiss

“I have learned that success in business, and perhaps in most aspects of life, requires both self-discipline and objectively imposed discipline from outside.”

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (1929–2013) Canadian-American businessman

Good Spirits.

Life , Business , Learning , Success

“In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 117.

Religion

“The Hokey Pokey. Think about it. At the end of the song, what do we learn? What is it all about?… You put your whole self in!”

Martin de Maat (1949–2001) American theatre director

As quoted in "Community Mourns the Death of Martin de Maat" by Lisa Lewis (2 March 2001)

Thinking , Learning

“Embarrassment is the greatest teacher, but since its lessons are exactly those we have tried hardest to conceal from ourselves, it may teach us, also, to perfect our self-deception.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#373
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Teachers , Perfection

“A person is separate from all other things and together with all other things. To understand opposites in a self, the meaning of together and separate must be seen (this meaning is like that of same and different).”

Eli Siegel (1902–1978) Latvian-American poet, philosopher

Self and World (1957)

Understanding , Personality

“Here he was, not quite twenty-five years old, and he was going to have to make a new life for himself. A host of options lay before him, but, tipsy with Chablis and sunshine, at the moment all he could truly feel was a powerful sense of loss and uncertainty. All the routes to his previous self—the self that had tried to survive as a loner in Fort Walton Beach—were blocked, and he did not know which new path to choose.
“Ciao,” he said again, and this time he was not talking to his mother.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 30 “Marakoi, Zarakal” (p. 315; closing words)

Life , Feeling , Sense , Loss

“It is my own personal psychosis that it is only by the background that you can see what is in front of you. Only be accepting all that surrounds you can you be totally self-visualized. And at the same time, your self-visualization is a reflection of your surroundings. Albers was right about that. That's why I like Cezanne so much. Matisse said, you have to read between the lines. When he would stop a line, say, at the ear, and beginning it again at the neck, he was really exercising the viewer's mind to fill in the blanks”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

parts
Quote from an interview with Barbara Rose, 1987, in Rauschenberg, Avedon Vintage, Random House, New York 1987, p. 72
1980's

Exercises , Time , Reading , Parting

“He who gives only what he would as readily throw away gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Money.
Notes from Life (1853)

“Ours, too, should be a declaration of difference and distance—"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created unequal." In the wake of the old world, this will be our proposition.”

Richard Bertrand Spencer (1978) American white supremacist

Men , Truth , World

“My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Bk. I, Ch. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=q4JKAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Whoever+wishes+to+keep+a+secret+must+hide+from+us+that+he+possesses+one%22&pg=PA73#v=onepage
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Secret

“I was talking earlier — about anarchy and fascism being the two poles of politics. On one hand you’ve got fascism, with the bound bundle of twigs, the idea that in unity and uniformity there is strength; on the other you have anarchy, which is completely determined by the individual, and where the individual determines his or her own life. Now if you move that into the spiritual domain, then in religion, I find very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. The word “religion” comes from the root word ligare, which is the same root word as ligature, and ligament, and basically means “bound together in one belief.” It’s basically the same as the idea behind fascism; there’s not even necessarily a spiritual component it. Everything from the Republican Party to the Girl Guides could be seen as a religion, in that they are bound together in one belief. So to me, like I said, religion becomes very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. And by the same token, magic becomes the spiritual equivalent of anarchy, in that it is purely about self-determination, with the magician simply a human being writ large, and in more dramatic terms, standing at the center of his or her own universe. Which I think is a kind of a spiritual statement of the basic anarchist position. I find an awful lot in common between anarchist politics and the pursuit of magic, that there’s a great sympathy there.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)

Life , Religion , Girl , Idea

“Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted—for the constraint of a definite “thing” cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw “evolution” or “social organization,” not to mention the more mundane “digestion” or “self-interest,” without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar's mind.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"A Tale of Three Pictures", p. 428
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Imagination , History , Idea , Reality

“Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 135

“We insist on self-roasting, by slow degrees, and at regular intervals, to show our contempt for experience, and to develop our chief virtue, which is obstinacy.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That a Burnt Child often Dreads the Fire".
Sketches from Life (1846)

“I hasten to add that I had already concluded that the ‘bad apple’ theory was a comforting self-delusion. Police forces throughout Australia only started to come to grips with systemic corruption when they came to the same realisation. Cultural problems are just that; they are systemic and ingrained, not the work of a few rogues.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Problem

“I besought Him to give me some work for Him, as an outlet for love and gratitude; some self-denying service, no matter what it might be, however trying or however trivial”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book One: Barbarians at the Gates. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1981, 354).

Love , Gratitude

““For the ultimate and real meaning of the argument is, that a soul or mind or person, purely as such, is itself the fountain of its percipient experience, and so possesses what has been happily named "life in itself." Proof of the presence in us of a priori or spontaneous cognition, then, is proof of just this self-causative life.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument

Life , Soul , Personality

“Propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lower passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 4 (p. 33)

God , Passion , Falseness

“I esteem the modern error, That all goes by self-interest and the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries, and that in short, there is nothing divine whatever in the association of men, a still more despicable error, natural as it is to an unbelieving century, than that of a "divine right" in people called Kings. I say, Find me the true Konning, King, or Able-man, and he has a divine right over me.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King

Men , People , Error , Nature

“When puzzled, it never hurts to read the primary documents—a rather simple and self-evident principle that has, nonetheless, completely disappeared from large sectors of the American experience.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Non-Overlapping Magisteria", p. 273
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Reading , Hurt

“Internal perception also fails as a method for scientific psychology. In the nature of the case, it must be casual and therefore unsystematic. It excludes all deliberate investigation, because as soon as it becomes aware of itself it turns into the self-observation that is open to all the well-known and valid criticisms. It is, indeed, the basis of a psychology of consciousness, in the sense that conscious processes must be perceived to be known, but for a science it is not enough.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "The history of introspection reconsidered." 1980, p. 245

Nature , Sense , Science

“Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

Confidence , Forgiveness , Sense , Personality

“Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 504, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: Everything that emancipates the spirit without giving us control over ourselves is harmful.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Time

“But the bilingualists simplistically scorn the value and necessity of assimilation. They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality. Supporters of bilingual education thus want it both ways. They propose bilingual schooling as a way of helping students acquire the skills of the classroom crucial for public success. But they likewise insist that bilingual instruction will give students a sense of their identity apart from the public. Behind this screen there gleams an astonishing promise: One can become a public person while still remaining a private person. At the very same time one can be both! There need be no tension between the self in the crowd and the self apart from the crowd! Who would not want to believe such an idea?”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Education , School , Way , Idea

““Consciousness,” according to current scientific thought, was something the higher mammals had evolved in order to help them reproduce, much the way a garden slug secretes slime. It had no special ontological status. The “self” was a genetically modulated and biologically useful illusion.”

Robert Charles Wilson (1953) author

Pearl Baby (p. 211)
The Perseids and Other Stories (2000)

Secret , Way , Help

“Knowing Yourself - The true in the false, gradually strips away all self-delusion until all that remains is pure being.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Falseness

“Inherent in human beings are possibilities which we now can't even entertain. Before the space launch, space travel to many of us was the stuff of fantasy, of science fiction. We know what it is to explore the limits of what we consider to be a human being, but if we were to transform our understanding of ourselves, if we were to transform what we knew a human being to be, new possibilities of expression would open. We could function in a more creative way. In a more humane way. In the past we were transformed by the thrust of evolution or by accidental forces. This time we should transform ourselves with a conscious, committed degree of self-awareness.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with USA Today, "Mankind Must Find a New Self Awareness", Dan Neuharth and Miles White, December 14, 1982

Way , Travel , Understanding , Science

“I was the worst, most sickly kid of all – 30 pounds underweight. The girls used to beat me up. Actually I was a mean kid, early on because I had no self-esteem.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness and Longevity", p. 10

Girl

“Last week, i… i extended a hand to the WWE Universe in a much needed intervention. You know, i don't know if you people know this or not, but i'm not the only one who knows that pills and cigarettes and alcohol are harmful. Medical science has proven this, so there's a surgeon general put in place to put warning labels on all of these products. I guess he's just there to warn the smart people that already know, huh? This is my crusade, and i will continue my crusade for as long as there are people who need help, as long as there are people out there who need change in their lives. One person in particular i've been helping for quite some time now, i'd like to introduce him to the world. Ladies and gentlemen, i give you… Luke Gallows. (Gallows raises his fist) That's right, some of you may recognize him as "Festus", but that was a lifetime ago. And it's a lifetime that he'd just as soon regret. It's a lifetime of torturous drug abuse and neglect, you see, it started just like it started for all of you people, one, one little pill. Just one little pill to take the edge off, one painkiller. And then one turns to two, two turns to four, four turns to eight, so on and so forth. And sure, his friends, his family were there, but they enabled him. They didn't help him, they thought they were but they were slowly rotting him from the inside out. But then i helped him, just like i could help all of you. Trust me, this is just the start, this doesn't end here, it begins here and now. I will continue to reach out and help those who can't help themselves. Holds up brown paper bag On December 1st, this is scary, people, pay attention. On December 1st, a very dangerous addictive new drug hits the streets. Now this scares me because it's a socially accepted over-the-counter drug and it's gonna be widely available all over the world. And it's scary because it's more dangerous than any prescribed medication, it's more harmful than chain smoking an entire carton of unfiltered cigarettes, it is more dangerous than corroding your liver with a fifth of gin or vodka and then chasing it with your Daddy's favorite beer. (Punk pulls a Jeff Hardy DVD out of the bag) "Jeff Hardy, My Life, My Rules" And what an appropriate title, for a loser who destroyed his life and his career living by his rules. And what makes me sick to my stomach is Jeff didn't just ruin his life, he didn't just end his career. (Crowd chants Hardy) He ruined the lives of all his fans because he's planted seeds of destruction in all of the people, all of the drug addicts like yourself who actually looked up to the Charismatic Enabler like he was some sort of a prophet. Well, if you people have any brain-cells left, if there's anything left of your memory that's not burnt out, all you need to know is that the last chapter of this DVD is the most important one you need to watch because it tells the whole story. It's a cage match between myself and Jeff Hardy, where i ended Jeff's career in the WWE… FOREVER! I'm the reason he's not here! And I know how hard it is to deprogram your weak little brains from all the lies you've been fed all over the years, but you owe it to yourselves. Look yourself in the mirror, search inside yourself for that shred of self-respect that might be left, and when it comes to this, when it comes to this garbage, (Holds up DVD) just say no.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

November 27, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life , People , Alcohol , World

“Addition is the combination of any arbitrary repetitions of the above-mentioned simplest act into a single act; from it in a similar way arises multiplication. While the performance of these two operations is always possible, that of the inverse operations, subtraction and division, proves to be limited. Whatever the immediate occasion may have been, whatever comparisons or analogies with experience, or intuition, may have led thereto; it is certainly true that just this limitation in performing the indirect operations has in each case been the real motive for a new creative act; thus negative and fractional numbers have been created by the human mind; and in the system of all rational numbers there has been gained an instrument of infinitely greater perfection. This system, which I shall denote by R, possesses first of all a completeness and self-containedness which I have designated… as characteristic of a body of numbers [Zahlkőrper] and which consists in this, that the four fundamental operations are always performable with any two individuals in R, i. e., the result is always an individual of R, the single case of division by the number zero being excepted.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Way , Motivation , Perfection

“Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel
To self-reproach.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The Old Cumberland Beggar.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men , Feeling

“At that time, there was general agreement among everyone involved in women’s liberation that women should have a defined sexual self-interest.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

Women , Time

“Masculine process has at its foundation externalization. The young boy is focused away from his inner and personal self and into achievement, performance, competition, success, emotional control (being "cool"), autonomy (not being dependent or needy), fearlessness, action, and an ethic that only values time spent in doing. Anything else is suspect and viewed as lazy, worthless, time-wasting, or meaningless.Externalization, or the process of being pushed outside of oneself, amplifies and eventually becomes disconnection. Personal relationships are then objectified and founded on the role another can play in his life. Relationships are based on doing and are therefore fairly readily interchangeable with anyone else who can do.Disconnection leads men to the experience of being loners, where it's "lonely at the top," and freedom, space, and "doing one's thing," are the rationalized values. Disconnection transforms a man into someone who has everything he wanted externally, but has nothing that is bonded or connected on a personal level. He is "out of touch," so he doesn't know why he's unhappy, and may conclude that the cause of his malaise is that he needs "more." He sets out to get it, but when he gets it he feels deader and more isolated than ever.The end stage of this journey of masculine process is personal oblivion, which can occur early in his life or may not appear full blown until he's an older man, depending on how extreme his externalized process is. At this point, personal connection becomes impossible. He doesn't know he rationalizes his personal emptiness with cynical philosophies and escapes painful awareness through non-relationships he can control by buying. In the end state of oblivion, he is beyond personal reach and can only relate in abstract, depersonalized, intellectualized ways. The only way he is "loved" is in return for providing or taking care of others.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, pp. 10–11
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love , Life , Men , Pain

“It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects. [Footnote: ] If this axiom be denied for all temperatures, it would have to be admitted that a self-acting machine might be set to work and produce mechanical effect by cooling the sea or earth, with no limit but the total loss of heat from the earth and sea, or in reality, from the whole material world.”

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=nWMSAAAAIAAJ p. 179 (1882) "On the Dynamical Theory of Heat with Numerical Results Deduced from Mr Joule's Equivalent of a Thermal Unit and M. Regnault's Observations on Steam" originally from Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, March, 1851 and Philosophical Magazine iv, 1852
Thermodynamics quotes

World , Reality , Loss , Sea