Quotes about self
page 6

“Dealing with egotists is so corrupting because we gradually fall into their mistakes out of self-defense.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Der Umgang mit einem Egoisten ist darum so verderblich, weil die Notwehr uns allmählich zwingt, in seine Fehler zu verfallen.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 45.

“Sancho Panza by name, is my own self, if I was not changed in my cradle.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 30.

Change

“I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book IV, Ch. 3, sec. 18
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Mathematics

“It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Self-directedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 96

Love

“What is called mind is a wondrous power existing in Self. It projects all thoughts. If we set aside all thoughts and see, there will be no such thing as mind remaining separate; therefore, thought itself is the form of the mind. Other than thoughts, there is no such thing as the mind.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nan Yar = Who am I?

“And so if any one would suppose that Æther (like our Air) may contain Particles which endeavour to recede from one another (for I do not know what this Æther is) and that its Particles are exceedingly smaller than those of Air, or even than those of Light: The exceeding smallness of its Particles may contribute to the greatness of the force by which those Particles may recede from one another, and thereby make that Medium exceedingly more rare and elastick than Air, and by consequence exceedingly less able to resist the motions of projectiles, and exceedingly more able to press upon gross Bodies, by endeavouring to expand it self.”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 21
Opticks (1704)

Light

“Self-pity is not as sterile as we suppose. Once we feel its mere onset, we assume a thinker's attitude, and come to think of it, we come to think!”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Feeling, Thinking

“Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

[N]ur die Höllenfahrt des Selbsterkenntnisses bahnt den Weg zur Vergötterung ...
Ak 6:441
Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

Way, Hell, Knowledge

“There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn’t know what his contemporaries are.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Es giebt keine Selbstkenntniss als die historische. Niemand weiss was er ist, wer nicht weiss was seine Genossen sind.

“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 139

Knowledge

“What happens in the story of Adam and Eve is that when people become self-conscious, they get thrown out of Paradise and then they're in history. And history is a place where there's pain in child birth, and where you're dominated by your mate, and where you have to toil like mad like no other animal because you're aware of your future. You have to work, and sacrifice the joys of the present for the future, constantly, and you know that you're going to die. And you have all that weight on you. How could anything be more true than that? Unless you're naive beyond comprehension. There's something that's echoed about your life in that representation. We're such strange creatures, because we don't really fit into being in some sense, and that's what's expressed in the notion of The Fall.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrLQ7DpiWs "Biblical Series II: Genesis 1: Chaos & Order"

Life, Pain, People, History

“One cannot love anybody without turning away from oneself. However, the crucial question is whether this movement is prompted by the desire to turn toward a positive value, or whether the intention is a radical escape from oneself. “Love” of the second variety is inspired by self-hatred, by hatred of one’s own weakness and misery. The mind is always on the point of departing for distant places. Afraid of seeing itself and its inferiority, it is driven to give itself to the other—not because of his worth, but merely for the sake of his “otherness.” Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”— the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems. Looking away from oneself is here mistaken for love! Isn’t it abundantly clear that “altruism,” the interest in “others” and their lives, has nothing at all to do with love? The malicious or envious person also forgets his own interest, even his “preservation.” He only thinks about the other man’s feelings, about the harm and the suffering he inflicts on him. Conversely, there is a form of genuine “self-love” which has nothing at all to do with “egoism.” It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Selfdirectedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Love, People, Feeling, Question

“While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. Debt and the accumulation of interest also make it difficult for countries to realize the potential of their own economies and keep citizens from enjoying their real purchasing power. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 56
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Happiness, Law, Way, Exercises

“And finally, rising inequality and declining mobility are bad for our democracy. Ordinary folks can’t write massive campaign checks or hire high-priced lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field in their favor at everyone else’s expense. And so people get the bad taste that the system is rigged, and that increases cynicism and polarization, and it decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of self-government.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)

People, Democracy, Parting

“Christianity is not satisfied with producing merely the specious guise of virtue. She requires the substantial reality, which may stand the scrutinizing eye of that Being “who searches the heart.” Meaning therefore that the Christian should live and breathe; in an atmosphere, as it were, of benevolence, she forbids whatever can tend to obstruct its diffusion or vitiate its purity. It is on this principle that Emulation is forbidden: for, besides that this passion almost insensibly degenerates into envy, and that it derives its origin chiefly from pride and a desire of self-exaltation; how can we easily love our neighbour as ourselves, if we consider him at the same time our rival, and are intent upon surpassing him in the pursuit of whatever is the subject of our competition?
Christianity, again, teaches us not to set our hearts on earthly possessions and earthly honours; and thereby provides for our really loving, or even cordially forgiving, those who have been more successful than ourselves in the attainment of them, or who have even designedly thwarted us in the pursuit. “Let the rich,” says the Apostle, “rejoice in that he is brought low.” How can he who means to attempt, in any degree, to obey this precept, be irreconcilably hostile towards any one who may have been instrumental in his depression?
Christianity also teaches us not to prize human estimation at a very high rate; and thereby provides for the practice of her injunction, to love from the heart those who, justly or unjustly, may have attacked our reputation, and wounded our character. She commands not the shew, but the reality of meekness and gentleness; and by thus taking away the aliment of anger and the fomenters of discord, she provides for the maintenance of peace, and the restoration of good temper among men, when it may have sustained a temporary interruption.
It is another capital excellence of Christianity, that she values moral attainments at a far higher rate than intellectual acquisitions, and proposes to conduct her followers to the heights of virtue rather than of knowledge. On the contrary, most of the false religious systems which have prevailed in the world, have proposed to reward the labour of their votary, by drawing aside the veil which concealed from the vulgar eye their hidden mysteries, and by introducing him to the knowledge of their deeper and more sacred doctrines.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 257.

Love, Men, Hostility, World

“Lord Caversham: No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex.
Lord Goring: Quite so. And we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it, do we, father?”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Act III
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Men, Sex, Sense

“The writer in me distrusts the good citizen, the "intellectual ambassador," the human rights activist — those roles which are mentioned in the citation for this prize, much as I am committed to them. The writer is more skeptical, more self-doubting, than the person who tries to do (and to support) the right thing.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)

Support, Personality

“Socialism is, essentially, the tendency inherent in an industrial civilization to transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society. It is the solution natural to the industrial workers who see no reason why production should not be regulated directly and why markets should be more than a useful but subordinate trait in a free society. From the point of view of the community as a whole, socialism is merely the continuation of that endeavor to make society a distinctively human relationship of persons which in Western Europe was always associated with Christian traditions.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 19 : Popular Government and Market Economy

Communication, Nature, Personality

“The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“Self-mastery is attained when the imagination has been directed and trained to conform with our desires-for although, in one sense, the imagination is inclined in the subconscious, yet it dominates the latter, and therefore, if we know how to guide it, our subconscious self will take charge of our material being and do its work just as we wish it to be done; or, in other words, exactly in conformity with our conscious suggestions.”

Emile Coué (1857–1926) French psychologist and pharmacist

Source: Autosuggestion : My method (2014), Chapter II. The role of imagination.

Imagination, Sense, Training

“A sort of egotistical self-evaluation is unavoidable in those joys in which erudition and art mingle and in which aesthetic pleasure may become more acute, but not remain as pure.”

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French novelist, critic, and essayist

Preface (1910) to The Bible of Amiens by John Ruskin, translated by Proust (1904); from Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin, trans. Jean Autret and Philip J. Wolfe (Yale University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-300-04503-4, p. 53

Pleasure, Art, Joy

“Nick Gillespie: So, um, how do you self-describe politically?
Krist Novoselic: I'm a, what, an anarcho-capitalist socialist…I don't know…I'm kinda a moderate, I think I'm moderate.
Nick Gillespie: So you're an anarcho-capitalist socialist moderate.
Krist Novoselic: I mean I'm a gun-owning pacifist, so there you go. I'm an anarcho-socialist—you know what I mean?
Nick Gillespie: Anarcho-socialist—
Krist Novoselic: —capitalist—
Nick Gillespie: —capitalist, gun-toting…
Krist Novoselic: Yeah, it's just like I, y'know, I just tryin'a, tryin'a make it work in this world and…basically I'm just a small-D democrat.”

Krist Novoselic (1965) Croatian-American rock musician

11:30–12:03 "Nirvana's Krist Novoselic on Punk, Politics, & Why He Dumped the Dems" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4TPRH2uK9w

World, Thinking

“Soon after my arrival in Moscow I had an hour's conversation with Lenin in English, which he speaks fairly well… I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of self-seeking, an embodied theory. The materialist conception of history, one feels, is his life-blood. He resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding, I got the impression that he despises a great many people and is an intellectual aristocrat.
…When I suggested that whatever is possible in England can be achieved without bloodshed, he waved aside the suggestion as fantastic… He described the division between rich and poor peasants, and the Government propaganda among the latter against the former, leading to acts of violence which he seemed to find amusing.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part I, Ch. 3: Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

Love, Life, People, Fear

“The fact is, people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others. They close themselves off to new and important information.
It’s far more helpful to assume that you’re ignorant and don’t know a whole lot. This keeps you unattached to superstitious or poorly informed beliefs and promotes a constant state of learning and growth.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 4, “The Value of Suffering” (p. 83)

People, Learning, Help

“Wagner’s art is the most sensational self-portrayal and self-critique of German nature that it is possible to conceive.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Suffering and Greatness of Richard Wagner (1933)

Art, Nature

“Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Of Idolatry
A short Schem of the true Religion

God, Religion, Soul, Memory

“Self-sacrifice is not encouraged by the Satanic religion. Therefore, unless death comes as an indulgence because of extreme circumstances which make the termination of life a welcome relief from the unendurable earthly existence, suicide is frowned upon by the Satanic religion.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Life, Death, Religion, Suicide

“Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo: The Golden Echo, line 19
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

God, Beauty

“Act well and properly, less to please others, more to keep your own self-respect.”

Adolph Freiherr Knigge book Über den Umgang mit Menschen

Handle gut und anständig, weniger anderen zu gefallen, eher um deine eigene Achtung nicht zu verscherzen.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

“The heathen really make their self-invented notions and dreams of God and idol. Ultimately, they put their trust in that which is nothing. So it is with all idolatry. For it happens not merely by erecting an image and worshipping it, but rather it happens in the heart. For the heart seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils. It neither cares for God, nor looks to Him for anything better than to believe that He is willing to help.”

Martin Luther Luther's Large Catechism

"On Infant Baptism," Large Catechism (1529)

God, Dreams, Help, Heart

“No self can truly know itself and be ashamed.”

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

Self and World (1957)

“The self… is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

p 252; Cited in: Javier Trevino, Goffman's Legacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 55.
1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959

Fate

“Satanism does not encourage orgiastic activity or extramarital affairs for those to whom they do not come naturally. For many, it would be very unnatural and detrimental to be unfaithful to their chosen mates. To others, it would be frustrating to be bound sexually to just one person. Each person must decide for himself what form of sexual activity best suits his individual needs. Self deceitfully forcing yourself to be adulterous or to have sex partners when not married just for the sake of proving others (or worse yet, to yourself) that you are emancipated from sexual guilt is just as wrong, by Satanic standards, as leaving any sexual need unfulfilled because of ingrained feelings of guilt.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Unfaithfulness, Sex, Feeling, Nature

“The Satanist believes in complete gratification of his ego. Satanism, in fact, is the only religion which advocates the intensification or encouragement of the ego. Only if a person's own ego is sufficiently fulfilled, can he afford to be kind and complimentary to others, without robbing himself of his self-respect. We generally think of a braggart as a person with a large ego; in reality, his bragging results from a need to satisfy his impoverished ego.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Religion, Thinking, Reality, Personality

“Instead of defining the word, let us briefly characterize or describe the phenomenon. Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such, are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Revenge, Nature, Envy

“Since age twelve, I've felt like I'm someone else,'cause I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"My Name Is" (Track 2).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Age

“If you take the plea of the defence, that I am not responsible for my acts, acquit me completely, since I have been quarrelling with an insane and irresponsible Government. If you pronounce in favour of the Crown, which contends that I am responsible, acquit me all the same. You are perfectly justified in declaring that having my reason and sound mind I have acted reasonably and in self-defence, while the Government, my accuser, being irresponsible and consequently insane, cannot but have acted wrong, and if high treason there is, it must be on its side and not on my part.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address to Grand Jury (1885)

Parting

“Charity is really self-interest masquerading under the form of altruism.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

"The masquerade of charity," p. 19
Awareness (1992)

“That Descartes' Cartesian way of looking at animals, like they're machines… It is outdated, and quite frankly, 100% insane. Because, if we all understand that animals use their eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell, mouths to eat, legs to walk, feathers to fly, fins to swim, genitalia to procreate, bowels to defecate.. I'm always perplexed that most people don't believe that they can also use their brains to think, feel, be rational, be aware and be self-aware! Am I supposed to believe, that every body part of an animal functions just like it's supposed to, except the brain?”

Gary Yourofsky (1970) animal rights activist

Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology, On animal intelligence (Summer 2010)

People, Way, Feeling, Understanding

“Impenitence is a phenomenon of the will, and consists in the will's cleaving to self-indulgence under light. It consists in the will's pertinacious adherence to the gratification of self, in despite of all the light with which the sinner is surrounded. It is not, as has been said, a passive state nor a mere negation, nor the love of sin for its own sake; but it is an active and obstinate state of the will, a determined holding on to that course of self-seeking which constitutes sin, not from a love to sin, but for the sake of the gratification.”

Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) American writer

"Repentance and Impenitence" p. 368
Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878)

Love, Light

“Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop; I stared unthinkingly at his piled-up wares, neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen, while another man was just putting his hand in a cage, where he seized a live hen and tore its head off. The hideous scream of the animal, and the pitiful, weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered transfixed my soul with horror. Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of this impression, although I had experienced it often before. It is dreadful to see how our lives—which, on the whole, remain addicted to pleasure—rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruellest misery! This has been so self-evident to me from the very beginning, and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility has increased … I have observed the way in which I am drawn in the [direction of empathy for misery] with a force that inspires me with sympathy, and that everything touches me deeply only insofar as it arouses fellow-feeling in me, i. e. fellow-suffering. I see in this fellow-suffering the most salient feature of my moral being, and presumably it is this that is the well-spring of my art.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, translated by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 422-424 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/wagner02.htm

Pleasure, Art, Way, Feeling

“We'll buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need 'em/Things we buy to cover up what's inside/Cause they make us hate our-self and love they wealth.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

All Falls Down
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

Love, Hate, Clothes, Wealth

“The Ellipse is the most simple of the Conic Sections, most known, and nearest of Kin to a Circle, and easiest describ'd by the Hand in plano. Though many prefer the Parabola before it, for the Simplicity of the Æquation by which it is express'd. But by this Reason the Parabola ought to be preferr'd before the Circle it self, which it never is. Therefore the reasoning from the Simplicity of the Æquation will not hold. The modern Geometers are too fond of the Speculation of Æquations.”

Isaac Newton book Arithmetica Universalis

p, 125
Arithmetica Universalis (1707)

“As a first step, we should recognize that the Armenian people's fight for national self-determination is first and foremost the duty and task of the Armenian people themselves. We do not believe in benevolent friends, the inevitable triumph of justice, or covertly and cleverly manipulating the superpowers. If we are to achieve national self-determination, then we ourselves, the Armenian people, will have to fight for it. We believe in the power of organized masses and in the capacity of our people to determine their own future. We believe in revolution.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 60.

People, Justice, Future, Fight

“When we shut ourselves in any form of selfishness or self-complacency; when we allow ourselves to be seduced by worldly powers and by the things of this world, forgetting God and neighbour; when we place our hope in worldly vanities, in money, in success. Then the Word of God says to us: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”. Why are you searching there? That thing cannot give you life! Yes, perhaps it will cheer you up for a moment, for a day, for a week, for a month … and then?”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in General Audience of 23 April 2014, Saint Peter square in Rome (23 April 2014) http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140423_udienza-generale.html 2010s, 2014

Life, Money, God, World

“True simplicity regards God alone; it has its eye fixed upon Him, and is not drawn toward self; and it is as pleased to say humble as great things. All our uneasy feelings and reflections arise from self-love, whatever appearance of piety they may assume. The lack of simplicity inflicts many wounds. Go where we will, if we remain in ourselves, we shall carry everywhere our sins and our distresses. If we would live in peace, we must lose sight of self, and rest in the infinite and unchangeable God.”

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) French mystic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 544.

Love, God, Peace, Feeling

“While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

On the famous statue "Juno Ludovisi", Letter 15
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Love, God

“Faith in the Creator, who is mainly in his Godness and Godly in his man-ness, is like a human-self and can take him along.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

His counsel on Humanism in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 32

God, Faith

“The future belongs to the young. It is a young and new world which is now under process of development and it is the young who must create it. But it is also a world of truth, courage, justice, lofty aspiration and straightforward fulfilment which we seek to create. For the coward, for the self-seeker, for the talker who goes forward at the beginning and afterwards leaves his fellows in the lurch there is no place in the future of this movement. A brave, frank, clean-hearted, courageous and aspiring youth is the only foundation on which the future nation can be built….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August 7, 1909
India's Rebirth

Truth, Youth, World, Justice

“It logically follows that, in today's multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies — it must be rooted in self-transcendence:
Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe.
Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.
Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.”

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

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)

World, Peace, Communication, Understanding

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment."”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Die Bourgeoisie, wo sie zur Herrschaft gekommen, hat alle feudalen, patriarchalischen, idyllischen Verhältnisse zerstört. Sie hat die buntscheckigen Feudalbande, die den Menschen an seinen natürlichen Vorgesetzten knüpften, unbarmherzig zerrissen und kein anderes Band zwischen Mensch und Mensch übriggelassen als das nackte Interesse, als die gefühllose "bare Zahlung".
Section 1, paragraph 14, lines 1-5.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Nature

“The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines." And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Writing", p. 27
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

God, Dreams, Singing

“I do like clarity and exact thinking and I believe that very important to mankind because when you allow yourself to think inexactly your prejudices, your bias, your self interest comes in in ways you don't notice and you do bad things without knowing that you are doing them: self deception is very easy. So that I do think clear thinking immensely important.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Television interview ("On clarity and exact thinking" - available on youtube)
1960s

Way, Thinking

“If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such or so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj book I Am That

Self-identification
Source: "I Am That." P.316

Life, Feeling, Idea, Thinking

“India is industrially more developed than many less fortunate countries and is reckoned as the seventh or eighth among the world's industrial nations. But this arithmetical distinction cannot conceal the poverty of the great majority of our people. To remove this poverty by greater production, more equitable distribution, better education and better health, is the paramount need and the most pressing task before us and we are determined to accomplish this task. We realize that self-help is the first condition of success for a nation, no less than for an individual. We are conscious that ours must be the primary effort and we shall seek succour from none to escape from any part of our own responsibility. But though our economic potential is great, its conversion into finished wealth will need much mechanical and technological aid. We shall, therefore, gladly welcome such aid and co-operation on terms that are of mutual benefit. We believe that this may well help in the solution of the larger problems that confront the world. But we do not seek any material advantage in exchange for any part of our hard-won freedom.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Speech to the US Congress (13 October 1949)

People, Health, World, Education

“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

The Ayn Rand Column ‘Introducing Objectivism’

Life, Happiness

“When a constant electric current flows along a cylindrical wire, its strength is the same at every part of the section of the wire. But if the current is variable, self-induction produces a deviation from this… induction opposes variations of the current in the centre of the wire more strongly than at the circumference, and consequently the current by preference flows along the outer portion of the wire. When the current changes its direction… this deviation increases rapidly with the rate of alternation; and when the current alternates many million times per second, almost the whole of the interior of the wire must, according to theory, appear free from current, and the flow must confine itself to the very skin of the wire. Now in such extreme cases… preference must be given to another conception of the matter which was first presented by Messrs. 0. Heaviside and J. H. Poynting, as the correct interpretation of Maxwell's equations as applied to this case. According to this view, the electric force which determines the current is not propagated in the wire itself, but under all circumstances penetrates from without into the wire, and spreads into the metal with comparative slowness and laws similar to those which govern changes of temperature in a conducting body.
…Inasmuch as I made use of electric waves in wires of exceedingly short period in my experiments on the propagation of electric force, it was natural to test by means of these the correctness of the conclusions deduced. As a matter of fact the theory was found to be confirmed by the experiments…”

Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) German physicist

"On the Propagation of Electric Waves by Means of Wires" (1889) Wiedemann's Annalen. 37 p. 395, & pp.160-161 of Electric Waves
Electric Waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action with Finite Velocity Through Space (1893)

Law, Nature, Appearance, Change

“Indifference of every kind is reprehensible, even indifference towards one’s self.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 82.

Indifference

“Said the self-righteous preacher, "What, in your judgment, is the greatest sin in the world?"
"That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners," said the Master.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 139

World, Personality

“Man, I promise I'm so self conscious/Thats why you always see me with at least one of my watches”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

All Falls Down
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

“The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man's real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man's search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Happiness, World, Search, Nature

“Man should not be held as an absolute standard for mankind, but the Godly, the infinite is his goal... Follow without hesitation the voice of your inner self; for it is the Godly in us and leads us not to astray..”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote from: Caspar David Friedrich, by Irma Emmerich; Herman Böhlaus, Weimar, 1964, p. 11; as cited & transl. by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 4
undated

“The feeling of self-assurance derived from physical achievement always transfers itself to the mental sphere.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Feeling

“The Self is only one. Do you feel hurt if you blame yourself or scorn yourself for your errors? If you hold the Self there is no second person to scorn you. When you see the world you have lost hold of the Self. On the contrary, hold the Self and the world will not appear.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

World, Error, Feeling, Appearance

“The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nan Yar = Who am I?

“A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred — the human law in himself, his own individual will.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 19

Law

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

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

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life, World, Penalty, Way

“The center of intellectual self-discipline as such is in the process of decomposition. The taboos that constitute a man’s intellectual stature, often sedimented experiences and unarticulated insights, always operate against inner impulses that he has learned to condemn, but which are so strong that only an unquestioning and unquestioned authority can hold them in check. What is true of the instinctual life is no less of the intellectual: the painter or composer forbidding himself as trite this or that combination of colors or chords, the writer wincing at banal or pedantic verbal configurations, reacts so violently because layers of himself are drawn to them. Repudiation of the present cultural morass presupposes sufficient involvement in it to feel it itching in one’s finger-tips, so to speak, but at the same time the strength, drawn from this involvement, to dismiss it. This strength, though manifesting itself as individual resistance, is by no means of a merely individual nature. In the intellectual conscience possessed of it, the social movement is no less present than the moral super-ego. Such conscience grows out of a conception of the good society and its citizens. If this conception dims—and who could still trust blindly in it—the downward urge of the intellect loses its inhibitions and all the detritus dumped in the individual by barbarous culture—half-learning, slackness, heavy familiarity, coarseness—comes to light. Usually it is rationalized as humanity, desire to be understood by others, worldly-wise responsibility. But the sacrifice of intellectual self-discipline comes much too easily to him who makes it for us to believe his assurance that it is one.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

Das Zentrum der geistigen Selbstdisziplin als solcher ist in Zersetzung begriffen. Die Tabus, die den geistigen Rang eines Menschen ausmachen, oftmals sedimentierte Erfahrungen und unartikulierte Erkenntnisse, richten sich stets gegen eigene Regungen, die er verdammen lernte, die aber so stark sind, daß nur eine fraglose und unbefragte Instanz ihnen Einhalt gebieten kann. Was fürs Triebleben gilt, gilt fürs geistige nicht minder: der Maler und Komponist, der diese und jene Farbenzusammenstellung oder Akkordverbindung als kitschig sich untersagt, der Schriftsteller, dem sprachliche Konfigurationen als banal oder pedantisch auf die Nerven gehen, reagiert so heftig gegen sie, weil in ihm selber Schichten sind, die es dorthin lockt. Die Absage ans herrschende Unwesen der Kultur setzt voraus, daß man an diesem selber genug teilhat, um es gleichsam in den eigenen Fingern zucken zu fühlen, daß man aber zugleich aus dieser Teilhabe Kräfte zog, sie zu kündigen. Diese Kräfte, die als solche des individuellen Widerstands in Erscheinung treten, sind darum doch keineswegs selber bloß individueller Art. Das intellektuelle Gewissen, in dem sie sich zusammenfassen, hat ein gesellschaftliches Moment so gut wie das moralische Überich. Es bildet sich an einer Vorstellung von der richtigen Gesellschaft und deren Bürgern. Läßt einmal diese Vorstellung nach—und wer könnte noch blind vertrauend ihr sich überlassen—, so verliert der intellektuelle Drang nach unten seine Hemmung, und aller Unrat, den die barbarische Kultur im Individuum zurückgelassen hat, Halbbildung, sich Gehenlassen, plumpe Vertraulichkeit, Ungeschliffenheit, kommt zum Vorschein. Meist rationalisiert es sich auch noch als Humanität, als den Willen, anderen Menschen sich verständlich zu machen, als welterfahrene Verantwortlichkeit. Aber das Opfer der intellektuellen Selbstdisziplin fällt dem, der es auf sich nimmt, viel zu leicht, als daß man ihm glauben dürfte, daß es eines ist.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 8
Minima Moralia (1951)

Life, Color, Feeling, Nature

“I do not mean to manipulate others with the motivation of self-interest. But with good use of wisdom,
to benefit self and others while being empathetic to all sentient beings.”

Richard Gombrich (1937) British Indologist

"When I say I'm a Buddhist"[citation needed]

Wisdom, Motivation

“Instant acceptance of an idea is as self-defeating as instant rejection.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 163.

Idea

“I need say hardly anything in the Unintelligence of the Negroes, They show capacities of Providence and they are most likely always having low self-esteem But needless to say my Virtue, Power, And Strength have helped them to become strong most upcoming individuals in the nation they show pride and interest in education and learning new things And Just know What lies with you once lies with you more until change is done.”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

Education, Strong, Learning, Change

“Political economy … founds its theory of society upon the self-seeking of the isolated individual. Political economy, in this way, “incorporates private property into the very essence of man.””

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), p. 14 (Quote is from Marx, Early Writings (1964), p. 148).

Way

“"If only I had more money" is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment - now and not later.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

Life, Money, Way, Decision

“What would the Senate do with me, an inexperienced legislator who lacks the faculty of self-deception, essential requisite for anyone wanting to guide others.”

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa book The Leopard

Che cosa se ne farebbe il Senato di me, di un legislatore inesperto cui manca la facoltà d'ingannare sé stesso, questo requisito essenziale per chi voglia guidare gli altri?
Page 148
Il Gattopardo (1958)

“It is false to speak of realization. What is there to realize? The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long sanskaras which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self will shine alone.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Books, Age, Falseness

“The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 14.

Appearance

“Young people in the audience today, young people like Laura, were born in a place and a time where there is less conflict, more prosperity and more freedom than any time in human history. But that’s not because man’s darkest impulses have vanished. Even here, in Europe, we’ve seen ethnic cleansing in the Balkans that shocked the conscience. The difficulties of integration and globalization, recently amplified by the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, strained the European project and stirred the rise of a politics that too often targets immigrants or gays or those who seem somehow different. While technology has opened up vast opportunities for trade and innovation and cultural understanding, it’s also allowed terrorists to kill on a horrifying scale. Around the world, sectarian warfare and ethnic conflicts continue to claim thousands of lives. And once again, we are confronted with the belief among some that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way -- that recycled maxim that might somehow makes right. So I come here today to insist that we must never take for granted the progress that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world, because the contest of ideas continues for your generation. And that’s what’s at stake in Ukraine today. Russia’s leadership is challenging truths that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident -- that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

People, Truth, World, Law

“Virtue is debased by self-justification.”

Voltaire Oedipus

Oedipe, act II, scene IV (1718)
Citas

“Well then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him. I think I understand something of human nature; and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man: none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than a man. I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts. Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him, experience that remarkable, supernatural love toward Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This is it, which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Jesus Christ.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

In a statement about Jesus Christ. While exiled on the rock of St. Helena, Napoleon called Count Montholon to his side and asked him, "Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" Upon the Count declining to respond Napoleon countered. Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods http://books.google.com/books?id=jSI9HnMHdPsC&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=napoleon+jesus+among+gods&source=bl&ots=CdsDSjamnm&sig=K3l7Ek972r7pyEFT681lbf3PVSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nBqhUf3RL4au9AS37ICwCQ&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA, p. 149, in Henry Parry Liddon (1868) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. New edition. https://books.google.com/books?id=IcINAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA148&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 147-148, and in Henry Parry Liddon (1869) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. Fourth edition. https://ia800203.us.archive.org/15/items/divinityofourlord00libbrich/divinityofourlord00libbrich.pdf pp. 147-148. Attributed

Love, Men, Children, Soul

“The origin of our passions, the root and spring of all the rest, the only one which is born with man, which never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-love; this passion is primitive, instinctive, it precedes all the rest, which are in a sense only modifications of it. In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications are the result of external influences, without which they would never occur, and such modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are harmful. They change the original purpose and work against its end; then it is that man finds himself outside nature and at strife with himself.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book IV

Love, Spring, Nature, Sense

“Ever since the war he's had a low opinion of people and of nations, they're selfish, all of them, without the imagination to see the injustices they're perpetrating. The idealism of his youth, a belief in the moral mission of mankind and the enlightened spirit of the white race that he took from the lectures of John Stuart Mill and his followers, was buried once and for all in the bloody mire of Ypres and the chalk quarry at Soissons where his son met his death. Politics disgusts him, the cool conviviality of the club and the showy self-congratulation of the public banquet repel him; since the death of his son he's avoided making new acquaintances. His own generation's sour unwillingness to recognize the truth and its inability to adapt to the postwar era anger him, as does the younger generation's smart-alecky thoughtlessness. But with this girl he's regained belief, a vague devout gratitude for the mere existence of youth; in her presence he sees that one generation's painfully acquired mistrust of life is fortunately neither understood nor credited by the next, and that each new wave of youth is a new beginning.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Life, Death, War, People

“Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. … This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. … We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the Deity’s calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source of our inspiration?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 36
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

Search, Appearance, Heart

“In the course of thousands of years of mechanical development, the mechanistic concept, from generation to generation, has anchored itself deeply in man's biological system. In so doing, it actually has altered human functioning in the sense of the machine-like. In the process of killing his genital function, man has become biologically rigid. He has armored himself against that which is natural and spontaneous within him, he has lost contact with the biological function of self-regulation and is filled with a strong fear of that which is alive and free.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Section 2 : The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy

Fear, Nature, Sense, Strong

“I’ve said this before -- when human rights are denied and citizens have no opportunity to redress their grievances peacefully, it feeds terrorist propaganda that justifies violence. Likewise, when political opponents are treated like terrorists and thrown in jail, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the real path to lasting stability and progress is not less democracy; I believe it is more democracy in terms of free speech, and freedom of religion, rule of law, strong civil societies. All that has to play a part in countering violent extremism.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism speech (September 2015)

Religion, Law, Democracy, Freedom

“The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

ABC News interview (16 August 2006)

Way, Change, Sea

“It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants. They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They knew-they were expressly notified-that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more. They knew that this Government desired to keep the garrison in the fort, not to assail them, but merely to maintain visible possession, and thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate dissolution, trusting, as hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion, and the ballot box for final adjustment; and they assailed and reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object — to drive out the visible authority of the Federal Union, and thus force it to immediate dissolution. That this was their object the Executive well understood; and having said to them in the inaugural address, "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors," he took pains not only to keep this declaration good, but also to keep the case so free from the power of ingenious sophistry as that the world should not be able to misunderstand it. By the affair at Fort Sumter, with its surrounding circumstances, that point was reached. Then and thereby the assailants of the Government began the conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or in expectancy to return their fire, save only the few in the fort, sent to that harbor years before for their own protection, and still ready to give that protection in whatever was lawful. In this act, discarding all else, they have forced upon the country the distinct issue, "Immediate dissolution or blood."”

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

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Men, Pain, World, Law

“Apparently the rise of consciousness is linked to certain kinds of privation. It is the bitterness of self-consciousness that we knowers know best. Critical of the illusions that sustained mankind in earlier times, this self-consciousness of ours does little to sustain us now. The question is: which is disenchanted, the world itself or the consciousness we have of it?”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"A Matter of the Soul" (1975), pp. 75-76
It All Adds Up (1994)

World, Question, Time

“If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world. We can then begin to make the real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and our actual behavior.”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: What Got You Here Won't Get You There, 2008, p. 125 (in 2010 edition)

World, Behavior, Thinking, Change

“Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 192
1910s

Dead

“If, however, it happens to be necessary to speak of myself, I do so on account of the world, which would not understand me should I name myself otherwise than as men are named, yet inwardly I say: my I is God, nor is any other self known to me except my God.”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Life and Doctrine

Men, God, World, Understanding

“Specialization in this world is rudimentary and self-sufficiency characterizes most individual households”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: Institutions (1990), p. 119

World

“There exists, I grant you, a clinical depression, upon which certain remedies occasionally have effect; but there exists another kind, a melancholy underlying our very outbursts of gaiety and accompanying us everywhere, without leaving us alone for a single moment. And there is nothing that can rid us of this lethal omnipresence: the self forever confronting itself.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“16. Without seeing the origin of light, the true form of one's Self, the ordinary man sees by the mind different things and is deluded.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

The Science of the Heart

Light

“Be united, persevere, and achieve self-Government, so that the millions now perishing by poverty, famine, and plague may be saved, and India may once more occupy her proud position of yore among the greatest and civilized nations of the world.”

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) Indian politician

In 1906 at the age of 80 when he became president of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta.
Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji: "The Grand Old Man of India"

World, Perseverance

“That which rises in this body as 'I' is the mind. If one enquires 'In which place in the body does the thought 'I' rise first?', it will be known to be in the heart [spiritual heart is 'two digits to the right from the centre of the chest']. Even if one incessantly thinks 'I', 'I', it will lead to that place (Self)'.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nan Yar = Who am I?

Thinking, Heart

“The motivation that drives the commission of the worst human atrocities is an inevitable social consequence of the refusal of the self-conscious individual to make the sacrifices appropriate to establishing a harmonious life, and their consequent degeneration into a kind of murderous and resentment-filled rage propagating endlessly through its variations in society until everything comes to an end.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Tragedy vs Evil (5th Biennial International Conference on Personal Meaning, July 24-27, 2008). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLp7vWB0TeY&t=32m21s Other

Life, Motivation, Rage

“Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata? … It is the Noble Eightfold Path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.piya.html, as translated by Piyadassi Maha Thera (1999) Unclassified

Life, Pain, People, Pleasure