The following quotes are very much to my liking and some are close to my heart and at the same time they seem to be related
to our present way of living and the state of our society as a whole.
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs - ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
-- Howard Thurman
INTERCONNECTEDNESS
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."
- Albert Einstein.
"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true."
- Viktor Frankl on page 116 of Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy.
"Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration. I would strictly deny that one's search for a meaning to his existence, or even his doubt of it, in every case is derived from, or results in, any disease. Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient's existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crisis of growth and development."
- Viktor Frankl on page 108 of Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy.
SPIRITUALITY
"Another tension can surface when religious liberals feel a need for more spiritual depth but find themselves reluctant to engage in the kinds of sustained spiritual practices that could provide it. Practices such as prayer and meditation on scripture may carry the negative weight of now-rejected childhood religious practices. Or they may be narrowly conceived in supernaturalistic terms or smack of pietistic and emotion-laden traditions that rational-minded liberals find uncomfortable. Of course spiritual depth may be found in many places, from nature to music to long-distance running, and many liberals (and others) find fulfillment along these spiritual paths. But if these practices are to become deep spiritual resources, they require discipline and regular practice. Liberals can fall too easily into the trap of thinking that the rational and the spiritual are opposing poles rather than mutually reinforcing parts of our human condition."
- Faith Without Certainty: Liberal Theology In The 21st Century by Paul Rasor
"I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling. We were both looking at the same thing, seeing, the same thing, talking about the same thing, except he was looking, seeing, talking and thinking from a completely different dimension."
- Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.
•"Let me be honest with you---a feat which, by the way, I find of the utmost difficulty. When one is invisible, he finds such problems as good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such shifting shapes that he confuses one with the other, depending upon who happens to be looking through him at the time. Well, now I've been trying to look through myself, and there's a risk in it. I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied---not even I.
On the other hand, I've never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to "justify" and affirm someone's mistaken beliefs; or when I've tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear. In my presence they could talk and agree with themselves, the world was nailed down, and they loved it. They received a feeling of security. But here was the rub: Too often, in order to justify them, I had to take myself by the throat and choke myself until my eyes bulged and my tongue hung out and wagged like the door of an empty house in a high wind. Oh, yes, it made them happy and it made me sick. So I became ill of affirmation, of saying "yes" against the nay-saying of my stomach---not to mention my brain.
There is, by the way, an area in which a man's feelings are more rational than in his mind, and it is precisely in that area that his will is pulled in several directions at the same time. You might sneer at this, but I know now. I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man. Thus, I have come a long way and returned and boomeranged a long way from the point in society toward which I originally aspired."
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Epilogue
Personally I resonate hugely with this true blue statement here.
Source of quotes http://www.systemsthinker.com/quotes/
to our present way of living and the state of our society as a whole.
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs - ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
-- Howard Thurman
INTERCONNECTEDNESS
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."
- Albert Einstein.
"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true."
- Viktor Frankl on page 116 of Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy.
"Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration. I would strictly deny that one's search for a meaning to his existence, or even his doubt of it, in every case is derived from, or results in, any disease. Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient's existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crisis of growth and development."
- Viktor Frankl on page 108 of Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy.
SPIRITUALITY
"Another tension can surface when religious liberals feel a need for more spiritual depth but find themselves reluctant to engage in the kinds of sustained spiritual practices that could provide it. Practices such as prayer and meditation on scripture may carry the negative weight of now-rejected childhood religious practices. Or they may be narrowly conceived in supernaturalistic terms or smack of pietistic and emotion-laden traditions that rational-minded liberals find uncomfortable. Of course spiritual depth may be found in many places, from nature to music to long-distance running, and many liberals (and others) find fulfillment along these spiritual paths. But if these practices are to become deep spiritual resources, they require discipline and regular practice. Liberals can fall too easily into the trap of thinking that the rational and the spiritual are opposing poles rather than mutually reinforcing parts of our human condition."
- Faith Without Certainty: Liberal Theology In The 21st Century by Paul Rasor
"I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling. We were both looking at the same thing, seeing, the same thing, talking about the same thing, except he was looking, seeing, talking and thinking from a completely different dimension."
- Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.
•"Let me be honest with you---a feat which, by the way, I find of the utmost difficulty. When one is invisible, he finds such problems as good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such shifting shapes that he confuses one with the other, depending upon who happens to be looking through him at the time. Well, now I've been trying to look through myself, and there's a risk in it. I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied---not even I.
On the other hand, I've never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to "justify" and affirm someone's mistaken beliefs; or when I've tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear. In my presence they could talk and agree with themselves, the world was nailed down, and they loved it. They received a feeling of security. But here was the rub: Too often, in order to justify them, I had to take myself by the throat and choke myself until my eyes bulged and my tongue hung out and wagged like the door of an empty house in a high wind. Oh, yes, it made them happy and it made me sick. So I became ill of affirmation, of saying "yes" against the nay-saying of my stomach---not to mention my brain.
There is, by the way, an area in which a man's feelings are more rational than in his mind, and it is precisely in that area that his will is pulled in several directions at the same time. You might sneer at this, but I know now. I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man. Thus, I have come a long way and returned and boomeranged a long way from the point in society toward which I originally aspired."
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Epilogue
Personally I resonate hugely with this true blue statement here.
Source of quotes http://www.systemsthinker.com/quotes/
