Famous quotes

[Guest]

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

 

All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.

 

Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it.

 

Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self or it is that (which accounts for it) that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but (consists in the fact) that the relation relates itself to its own self.

 

Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.

 

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

 

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

 

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion-and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion . . . while Truth again reverts to a new minority.

 

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply: Create Silence.

 

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

 

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. . . . My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known-no wonder, then, that I return the love.

 

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.

 

Soren Kierkegaard

 

[ September 10, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Guest]

Life cannot be destroyed for good, neither . . . can history be brought entirely to a halt. A secret streamlet trickles on beneath the heavy lid of inertia and pseudo-events, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it. It may be a long process, but one day it must happen: the lid will no longer hold and will start to crack. This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique . . . something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

 

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

 

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

 

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility. (continued...)

 

Václav Havel

 

[ September 09, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Guest]

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them---the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience. But nothing is a greater cause of suffering.

 

Until you have become really, in actual fact, as brother of everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass.

 

All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.

 

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

 

Neither man or nation can exist without a sublime idea.

 

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

 

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[Guest]

I think we should call you Confusious!

[Guest]

Neah... He has destroyed the ancient Chinese civilization, but I haven't done (yet ) with the medieval Armenian.

 

I would be much better served if you could call me by my own name.

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited January 22, 2001).]

[Guest]

My favorite: Oscar Wilde.

 

1. to feel is better than to know

2. the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself.

3. the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it

4. punctuality is the thief of time

5. experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes.

6. never take notice of what common people say

7. unselfish people are colorless; they lack individuality.

8. the basis of optimism is sheer terror.

9. if you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.

10.the origin of self torture and self denial is fear.

11. there is no mood of the mind that doesn't have its counterpart in the sensuous life.

12. each of us has heaven and hell in him

13. to define is to limit

14. every effect that one produces gives one an enemy

15. the things one feels absolutely certain about are never true.

16. if you pretend to be good the world takes you very seriously.

17. it may well be that the things we call evil are good, and the things we call good are evil.

18. one should never take sides in anything

19. nothing is serious except passion

20. the basis of every scandal is an absolutely immoral certainty

21. every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

22. criticism demands infinitely more cultivation than creation does.

23. sin is an essential element of progress.

24. self denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress

25. beauty has as many meanings as it has moods.

26. the strength of women comes from the fact that psychology can't explain them.

27. girls never marry the men they flirt with

28. the truth is rarely pure and never simple.

29. it's a very dangerous thing to know one's friends.

30. the public forgives everything except genius.

31. learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

[Guest]

Victor Hugo:

 

1. understand what's right and do what's wrong.

2. we have a destiny of which the devil has woven the stuff and god has sewn the hem.

3. to carry nothing to extremes is the wise man's maxim.

4. innocence is higher than virtue; it's holy ignorance.

5. he who reads, thinks; who thinks, reasons.

6. unreasonable fidelity is like a ladder leading into a cavern--one step down, another, then another, and there you are in the dark. the clever reascend; fools remain in it.

7. men can do nothing to create beauty, but everything to produce ugliness.

8. the blind see the invisible.

9. to be wise is to be invulnerable

10. man respires, aspires, and expires.

[Guest]

Henry David Thoreau:

 

1. that government is best which governs least.

2. law never made men a whit more just.

3. there are 999 patrons of virtue to 1 virtuous man.

4. let every man make known what kind of government would commmand his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

4. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

[Guest]

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.

 

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

 

To the query, "What is a friend?" his reply was "A single soul dwelling in two bodies."

 

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions. (continued...)

 

Aristotle

 

[ September 09, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Guest]

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"

 

Sigmund Freud

[Guest]

If men are for a long time accustomed only to one sort or method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it, and do not readily turn to another...I do not propose...a variety and stock of knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking...an increase of the powers and activity of the mind, not...an enlargement of its possessions.

 

And reason...teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

 

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

 

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

 

It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-laborer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way of knowledge. (continued...)

 

John Locke

 

[ September 09, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Guest]

Existentialism rests on phenomenology, i.e, it uses personal, subjective experience as the foundation upon which abstract knowledge is built.

 

The existentialists along with many other groups are helping to teach us about the limits of verbal, analytic, conceptual rationality. They are part of the current call back to raw experience as prior to any concepts or abstractions. This amounts to what I believe to be a justified critique to the whole way of thinking of the western world in the 20th century, including orthodox positivistic science and philosophy, both of which badly need re-examination.

 

It is possible that Existentialism will not only enrich psychology. It may be an additional push toward the establishment of another branch of psychology, the psychology of the fully evolved and authentic Self and its ways of being.

 

When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.

 

Education must be seen as at least partially an effort to produce the good human being, to foster the good life and the good society.

 

We do what we are and we are what we do.

 

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.

 

 

Abraham Maslow

 

[ September 09, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Guest]

If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.

 

The heaping together of paintings by Old Masters in museums is a catastrophe; likewise, a collection of a hundred Great Brains makes one big fathead.

 

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.

 

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

 

Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth. The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul. (continued...)

 

Carl Jung

 

[ September 09, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Guest]

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."

 

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

[Guest]

"We must mistrust one another, its our only

defense against being betrayed."

 

Mike Tyson

[Guest]

Here are few of my favorites by Mark Twain

 

-Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.

-We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.

-Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

-There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.

-Golf is a good walk spoiled.

[Guest]

"The one eyed man is king of the blind".

(one of my favourites).

[Guest]

"That which is obtained too easily is esteemed too lightly and has little value."

 

How true,,,

 

[This message has been edited by LISA (edited February 14, 2001).]

[Guest]

Levon is a great guy,he's the God's gift to all humanity.

Levon Yeshilian

[Guest]

When i exist there's no death,

when it exists there's no me.

Nietzsche

[MJ]

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/sandlin_...vs_ideology.htm

[dragon]

Thanks MJ for the link. Great articles

[ThornyRose]

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.

 

Dali

[dragon]

so cute

 

But I like mad women more

[hyecory]

"serving armenia is serving civilization"

 

some guy, i forgot his name