Source: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey
Quotes about thing
page 3
“You have within you the potential to accomplish wonderful things with your life.”
The 21 Success Secrets of Self-made Millionaires (2001), Conclusion : Success Is Predictable, p. 64
Context: You have within you the potential to accomplish wonderful things with your life. Your greatest responsibilities are to dream big dreams, decide exactly what you want, make a plan to achieve it … take action every single day in the direction of your dreams and goals, and resolve to never, never, never give up. When you take these actions, you put yourself on the side of the angels. You become unstoppable and your success becomes inevitable.
Alfred Binet (1900), La suggestibilite, Paris: Schleicher. p. 119–120); As cited in: Carson (1999, 363-4)
Alfred Binet (1903). L’Etude experimentale de l’intelligence. Paris: Schleicher Freres and Cie. p. 299; As cited in: Carson (1999, 360)
Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 17
Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 76
Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 43
Source: What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
Speech to the Reichstag, 30 January 1939, as quoted at The History Place http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/threat.htm.
1930s
As quoted in Albert Speer's diary entry for 26 December 1950 recalling a conversation with Hitler in January 1943, published in Spandau: The Secret Diary (2000), p. 167
1940s
“There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are.”
Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter I, Consolations For Unpopularity, p. 23.
Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters
“Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”
Reply, according to Dr. Felix T. Smith of Stanford Research Institute, to a physicist friend who had said "I'm afraid I don't understand the method of characteristics," as quoted in The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (1979) by Gary Zukav, Bantam Books, p. 208, footnote.
As quoted in The World of the Atom (1966) by Henry Abraham Boorse and Lloyd Motz, p. 741
Source: https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/
“School, I never truly got the knack of. I could never focus on things I didn't want to learn.”
http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
Statement of advice on being presented the Radcliffe Medal, as quoted in "Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg" by Colleen Walsh, in The Harvard Gazette (29 May 2015) https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/honoring-ruth-bader-ginsburg/
2010s
http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes
“With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.”
Variant: The simplest explanation is usually the right one
“What's the last thing a drummer says in a band? "Hey guys, why don't we try one of my songs?”
"Give the Drummer Some," http://www.fooarchive.com/gpb/tenjokes.htm www.fooarchive.com (1995)
“Stewart: Well, that's great because we're all trying to do the same thing. Live well.”
On Charlie Rose, 15 September 1995
“For one thing, God didn't invent the circumcision, I did.”
Satan vs. God- Jackass Episodes]
“That’s the best thing about being dead. It’s like being stupid. It’s only painful for others.”
Adv. Prax. 12 http://www.intratext.com/IXT/LAT0788/_P1.HTM
Original: (la) Qui si ipse deus est secundum Ioannem - Deus erat sermo - habes duos, alium dicentem ut fiat, alium facientem. Alium autem quomodo accipere debeas iam professus sum, personae non substantiae nomine, ad distinctionem non ad divisionem.
Source: Inaugural address (15 August 1956)
First Rule of the Friars Minor
“Solicitude for material things rends the soul; thus distracted, it divides it. The devil seizes the divided soul and thereby kills it.”
Sollicitudo mentem distrahit, distractam dividit, divisam diabolus rapit, et sic animam interficit.
Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Part II: De sollicitudine expellenda, par. 7)
Sermons
Or, comme il y a une infinité d'univers possibles dans les idées de Dieu, et qu'il n'en peut exister qu'un seul, il faut qu'il y ait une raison suffisante du choix de Dieu qui le détermine à l'un plutôt qu'à l'autre. Et cette raison ne peut se trouver que dans la convenance, dans les degrés de perfection que ces mondes contiennent, chaque possible ayant droit de prétendre à l'existence à mesure de la perfection qu'il enveloppe.
La monadologie (53 & 54).
The Monadology (1714)
Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857
“There can be no free speech in a mob: free speech is one thing a mob can't stand.”
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
Jane Hirshfield, ed., Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women.
The Mengeldichten (Poems in Couplets) 25-29
Hieronymi Fracastorii De Contagione Et Contagiosis Morbis Et Eorum Curatione, Libri III (1930), translation and notes by Wilmer Cave Wright, p. 5
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
"Nietzscheism and Realism" from The Rainbow, Vol. I, No. 1 (October 1921); reprinted in "To Quebec and the Stars", and also in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 71
Non-Fiction
Source: Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany
McKenna interview (1992)
“Unless you do the right things, the right things will not happen to you.”
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
"Food Talks: Willem Dafoe, His Italian Family, Broccoli, Carciofi & Panzanella" http://www.foodiamo.com/italian-food-news/food-talks-willem-dafoe/, interview with Foodiamo (January 2018).
Variant translations
It is best to keep one’s own state intact; to crush the enemy’s state is only second best.
Source: The Art of War, Chapter III · Strategic Attack
Source: Interview. Torreblanca, M. E. Entrevista al escritor José Baroja. Fondo de Cultura Económica. https://www.fondodeculturaeconomica.com/Noticia/706
Interviuri cu scriitor Jorge Majfud in Forumul Judecãtorilor (January 2014) http://www.juridice.ro/346346/revista-forumul-judecatorilor-nr-12014.html
"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in Esquire (May 1961)
“Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things.”
Moscow State University http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/053188b.htm (31 May 1988)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)
Context: Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions.
Indian Spirituality and Life (1919)
Context: The fundamental idea of all Indian religion is one common to the highest human thinking everywhere. The supreme truth of all that is is a Being or an existence beyond the mental and physical appearances we contact here. Beyond mind, life and body there is a Spirit and Self containing all that is finite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, a supreme Absolute, originating and supporting all that is transient, a one Eternal. A one transcendent, universal, original and sempiternal Divinity or divine Essence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss is the fount and continent and inhabitant of things.
Soul, nature, life are only a manifestation or partial phenomenon of this self-aware Eternity and this conscious Eternal.
“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
Variant: Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
“The only thing greater than the power of the mind is the courage of the heart”
“The love we do not show here on Earth is the only thing that hurts us in the after-life.”
Praying for Time
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990)
“There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.”
“Two things cause people to be destroyed: fear of poverty and seeking superiority through pride.”
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol. 72, p. 39
“It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.”
Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Context: Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.
Where is science going? The Universe in the light of modern physics. (1932)
“I like people. They're entertaining. I just may laugh at different things than most people.”
As quoted in An Interview with Jim Carrey: We talk to the comedy mastermind about his most reserved performance http://movies.ign.com/articles/498/498545p1.html by Jeff Otto IGN (12 March 2004)
Context: I like people. They're entertaining. I just may laugh at different things than most people. I laugh at mistakes. I laugh at how you recover from mistakes.
Never Born, Never Died (2002)
Context: Tao mystics never talk about God, reincarnation, heaven, hell. No, they don't talk about these things. These are all creations of human mind: explanations for something which can never be explained, explanations for the mystery. In fact, all explanations are against God because explanation de-mystifies existence. Existence is a mystery, and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation. No, explanation is not needed — only exclamation, a wondering heart, awakened, surprised, feeling the mystery of life each moment. Then, and only then, you know what truth is. And truth liberates.
Source: The Last Testament : Interviews with the World Press (1986)
Context: I would like that what I am doing is not lost. So I am trying in every possible way to drop all those things which in the past have been barriers for the revolution to continue and grow. I don't want anybody to stand between the individual and existence. No prayer, no priest... you alone are enough to face the sunrise, you don't need somebody to interpret for you what a beautiful sunrise it is... And this is my attitude: you are here, every individual is here, the whole existence is available. All that you need is just to be silent and listen to existence. There is no need of any religion, there is no need of any God, there is no need of any priesthood, there is no need of any organization. I trust in the individual categorically. Nobody up to now has trusted in the individual in such a way.
[Mann, Adam, Video: Wired’s Interview with SpaceX’s Elon Musk, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/elon-musk-hangout/, 18 August 2012, Wired, 26 April 2012]
Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)
“Holy flying fuck, that thing took off!”
Reaction to Falcon Heavy Launch[Video: Behind-the-Scenes: See How Elon Musk Celebrated the Falcon Heavy Launch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL4dnvBytLA]
“We need to figure out how to have the things we love, and not destroy the world.”
[Driving With Elon Musk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSNXhHTLLIk, 26 March 2012]
“I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible.”
Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)
[Musk, Elon, I don't get the little ship thing, https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/965769366422798337]
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“If you do not look at things on a large scale it will be difficult for you to master strategy.”
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book
Context: If you do not look at things on a large scale it will be difficult for you to master strategy. If you learn and attain this strategy you will never lose even to twenty or thirty enemies. More than anything to start with you must set your heart on strategy and earnestly stick to the Way. You will come to be able to actually beat men in fights, and to be able to win with your eye. Also by training you will be able to freely control your own body, conquer men with your body, and with sufficient training you will be able to beat ten men with your spirit.
“By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void.”
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Book No-Thing-ness
Context: What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void.
“These things cannot be explained in detail. From one thing, know ten thousand things.”
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book
Context: These things cannot be explained in detail. From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the Way of strategy there will not be one thing you cannot see. You must study hard.
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book
Context: The gaze should be large and broad. This is the twofold gaze "Perception and Sight". Perception is strong and sight weak.
In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things. It is important in strategy to know the enemy's sword and not to be distracted by insignificant movements of his sword. You must study this. The gaze is the same for single combat and for large-scale combat.
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book
Context: There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing, first seeing the distance timing and the background timing. This is the main thing in strategy. It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain.
Go Rin No Sho (1645)
Context: The Way is shown in five books concerning different aspects. These are Ground, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void.
The body of the Way of strategy from the viewpoint of my Ichi school is explained in the Ground book. It is difficult to realise the true Way just through sword-fencing. Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things. As if it were a straight road mapped out on the ground, the first book is called the Ground book.
Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit, p. 8
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression and anger.
I often took out this anger on my first wife. After I had been meditating for about two weeks, she came to me and said, "What's going on?" I was quiet for a moment. But finally I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "This anger, where did it go?" And I hadn't even realized that it had lifted.
I call that depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. It's suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once you start meditating and diving within, the clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom.
Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they are like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They are like a vise grip on creativity. If you're in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.