Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something — and it is only such love that can know freedom.
Author: Jiddu Krishnamurti | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Love
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to … [ Read more ]
Author: Jiddu Krishnamurti | Subject: Life & Society
Most folks would agree that learning is good. The catch is that modern life hones skills — like pattern recognition and selective attention — that are at odds with learning. With hectic personal and professional schedules, we live much of life sensing and responding, only engaging in creative or critical thinking occasionally.
Author: Anne Dwane | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Learning
Your beliefs don’t make you a free thinker. The ability to change your beliefs based on new information does.
Author: Unknown | Subject: Thought | Inquiry
Solitude is the path over which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself. Solitude is the path that men most fear.
Author: Hermann Hesse | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
All the good in a man, for which he is praised or loved, is merely good suffering, the right kind, the living kind of suffering, a suffering to the full. The ability to suffer well is more than half of life — indeed, it is all life.
Author: Hermann Hesse | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Meaning, Pain & Suffering
Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.
Author: Maria Mitchell | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Math & Science, Religion
Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.
Author: Zadie Smith | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy
If we trust only when trust is warranted, love only when love is returned, and learn only when learning is valuable, then we abandon an essential feature of our humanity.
Author: James G. March | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Learning, Love, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Trust, Wisdom
It is desirable for us to know what price we have paid for the creation of this incomparable engine of social influence: we have certainly created a habit of almost indiscriminate, almost apathetic listening; through the air has come a really incalculable number of stupidities; much that is trite and tasteless comes with what is intelligent and bright. A critic of society would have a … [ Read more ]
Author: Gilbert Seldes | Subjects: Communication, Culture, IT | Technology
But it seems to me it’s that awakening to the full potential of what your life might be—beyond the possibilities your own family, your own class, your own race, your own neighborhood gives you—which is one of the great human gifts that art affords.
Author: Dana Gioia | Subjects: Ability | Skill, Art
Abilities must be assessed, talents must be developed, ambitions guided. This is the task for our public schools. All the future citizens pass through these institutions. They must be educated as members of a political democracy, but, more important still, they must be equipped to step on to the first rung of whatever ladder of opportunity seems most appropriate. And an appropriate ladder must be … [ Read more ]
Author: James Bryant Conant | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Politics & Public Policy
Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and, if nothingness is what awaits us, let us not act in such a way that it would be a just fate.
Author: Etienne Pivert de Senancour | Subjects: Life & Society, Wisdom
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
Author: E.E. Cummings | Subject: Wisdom
There is a disturbing American tendency to overreact to certain ideological and military factors while overlooking issues of vastly greater relevance to our safety and well-being.
Author: George McGovern | Subjects: Foreign Policy, Politics & Public Policy
Strictly idealistic undertakings eventually become too costly—in money, lives, and other assets. Wholly expedient and self-interested strategies eventually offend America’s self-image as a nobler exception among nations. Thus the story of American engagement with the world is the continual effort to find the right combination of idealism and practicality, and to readjust that balance almost as soon as it is set.
Author: James Fallows | Subjects: Foreign Policy, International
America doesn’t vote its class, as happens in, say, Europe. America votes its aspirations, and as long as its aspirations are such that “I can make it and my kids can make it,” then you don’t have the social tension that you have in Europe.
Author: Peter Schwartz | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I?
Author: Hillel the Elder | Subject: Philosophy
I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Author: Mark Twain | Subjects: Perception | Observation, Psychology | Behavior
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Author: Winston Churchill | Subjects: Character, Communication