2099 Quotations Found

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher.” But when you yourselves … [ Read more ]

Author: Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Religion, Thought | Inquiry

Yet how was it possible that 10 per cent could effectively master and control 90 per cent of the population? They bribed them; they deceived them; they created internal rivalries; they consoled them for their lack of power by weaving myths of origin and identity.

Author: Peter Ackroyd | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

Cynicism leads to acceptance of the previously unacceptable.

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

Author: Oscar Wilde | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Personal Improvement, Reading | Writing

“Don’t talk to strangers,” has to be the single worst piece of cultural brainwashing done to my generation. For starters, the people (statistically) most likely to hurt you are friends and family, and secondly, all of the best people are strangers.

Author: Jennifer Miller | Subjects: Life & Society, Relationships

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion.

Author: Simon Sinek | Subjects: Career, Health & Medicine, Personal Improvement

Love is a passion to be chosen and mastered, not sacrificed to.

Author: Skye Cleary | Subjects: Concepts, Love

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.

Author: Erich Fromm | Subjects: Concepts, Love

Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.

Author: David Quammen | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing

To matter forever, you need to matter to those who don’t care. And if that strikes you as sad, be sad.

Author: Chuck Klosterman | Subjects: History, Personal Improvement

You will never get any more out of life than you expect.

Author: Bruce Lee | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Recognizing that my emotions often err in their over-enthusiasm, and my faculty of reason often is without the warmth of feeling that is necessary to enable me to combine justice with mercy in my judgments, I will encourage my conscience to guide me as to what is right and what is wrong, but I will never set aside the verdicts it renders, no matter what … [ Read more ]

Author: Bruce Lee | Subject: Personal Improvement

Realizing that my emotions are both positive and negative I will form daily HABITS which will encourage the development of the positive emotions, and aid me in converting the negative emotions into some form of useful action. Recognizing that both my positive and negative emotions may be dangerous if they are not controlled and guided to desirable ends, I will submit all my desires, aims … [ Read more ]

Author: Bruce Lee | Subject: Personal Improvement

Recognizing that the power of will is the supreme court over all other departments of my mind, I will exercise it daily, when I need the urge to action for any purpose; and I will form HABIT designed to bring the power of my will into action at least once daily.

Author: Bruce Lee | Subject: Personal Improvement

The real test of intelligence is the degree to which you are willing to “non-conform” in order to do the right thing.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Intelligence | Knowledge

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Author: Isaac Asimov | Subjects: America, Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, International

Love animals! God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness … [ Read more ]

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Insight

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied… but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is … [ Read more ]

Author: John Berger | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Politics & Public Policy

You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. Being as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.

Author: Barack Obama | Subjects: Communication, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Relationships

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Author: Alvin Toffler | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement