Meanwhile there is still some freedom left in the world. Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value freedom. But some of us still believe that, without freedom, human beings cannot become fully human and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.
In the street he drew a deep breath. He was free. Free from recollection and anticipation. Free, for an hour or two, to refuse to admit the existence of the past or future. Free to live only now and here, in the place where his body happened at each instant to be. Free – but the boast was idle; he went on remembering. Escape was not so easy a matter.
Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.
In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn’t become king.” Mr. Bahu’s face was positively twinkling with Voltairean glee. “He gets lynched.
Start by being fully aware of what you think you are. It’ll help you to become aware of what you are in fact.
Oh, what fun it would be”, he thought, “if one didn’t have to think about happiness.
Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.
Good ends, as I have frequently to point out, can be achieved only by the employment of appropriate means. The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.
When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, ‘Four years.’ They said, ‘How can that be?’ He answered, ‘I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years, but I have seen Him during the last four years. The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one’s life.’” On another occasion someone knocked at the saint’s door and cried, “Is Bayazid here?” Bayazid answered, “Is anybody here except God?
It is in the light of our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality that we formulate our conceptions of right and wrong that we frame our conduct, not only in the relations of private life, but also in the sphere of politics and economics. So far from being irrelevant, our metaphysical beliefs are the finally determining factor in all our actions.
That one should have to talk about the mind in metaphors is unfortunate, but inevitable.
Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that sanity is impossible. On the contrary, though I remain no less sadly certain than in the past that sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am convinced that it can be achieved and would like to see more of it.
What fun would it be if one didn’t have to think about happiness.
He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take.
Cruelty and compassion come with the chromosomes.
What could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self? William Law.
Certain memories, certain trains of thought are like the aching tooth one must always be touching just to make sure it still hurts.
She was like a permanent invasion of one’s privacy.
To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift.
By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies- all these are private and except through symbols and at second hand incommunicable.