Mystical explanations!

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep;
The truth is that they are not even shallow.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To relate to their environment and fellow man!

"I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are, but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man."
~ Chippewa

If you end up with a boring, miserable life!

"If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it."
~ Frank Zappa

Because it provides you with enemies!

The biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel GOOD because it provides you with enemies.

Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in YOU. Attractive, isn't it?

So, if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway and you therefore enjoy abusing people, then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons! And if it wasn't for them, you'd actually be good natured, and courteous, and rational all the time. So, if you want to FEEL GOOD, become an extremist

You can strut around, abusing people, and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth. A fighter for the greater good. And not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are.

—John Cleese

He hears a different drummer!

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
~ Henry David Thoreau

The pursuit of truth and beauty!

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

Does my idiocy bother you, sire?

Does my idiocy bother you, sire?
You see world differently, through the set of thoughts you have carefully picked over the years. You keep them because they seem true to you, they serve you well, in making sense of your observations, of the world you see. No wonder when you see, read, hear someone say, write something that is not right, not true according to your thoughts, you get annoyed, feel that the world is filled with lots of idiots. You see futility in those thoughts, idiocy in those thought bearers. But what if most truths are relative, what if they are convenient stepping stones, angles from ones viewing position. What if your truths are probabilities, that you find more probable? What if other probabilities also exist, which seem more probable to others?
To me you are a person who see the other probabilities, other angles. Maybe you are right (maybe not). To me my thoughts seem more right, they are the only knowns to me, only possibilities that make more sense, my understandings, my known world. You maybe right, but at this time, according to my knowledge base, my own knowns make more sense. Therefore, I have to come out with questions, with arguments, sent out as scouts, to probe, to analyze, to test what you present. For to accept your views I have to expel one of my faithful citizen, my thought. Therefore the resistance, the reluctance, the critical look. Make me understand, clearly, give me time to think, provide material, don't force, don't judge and maybe I'll accept your position, maybe I'll reject it, or maybe I'll merge portions of your thoughts with mine, an evolution of thoughts. Let the fittest thoughts survive on their merits!

Children should be taught to question everything!

“Children should be taught to question everything. To question everything they read, everything they hear.. children should be taught to question authority. Parents never teach children to question authority. Because parents are authority figures themselves and they don’t wanna undermine their own bullshit inside the household. So they stroke the kid and the kid strokes them, and they all stroke each other and they all grow up all fucked up and then come to shows like this.”
-George Carlin (in his final tour, ‘It's Bad For Ya’, 2008)

The one who walks alone!

“The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.” -Albert Einstein

An ignorant man follows public opinion!

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion” ~Chinese Proverb

Science is different to all the other systems of thought!

Science is different to all the other systems of thought...because you don't need faith in it, you can check that it works.
~ Brian Cox

Cut off fake people!

"Cut off fake people for real reasons, not real people for fake reasons."

Everything we hear is an opinion!

Everything we hear is an opinion not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective not the truth.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Perception becomes reality!

“Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.” 
-William James

I hope everybody could get rich and famous!

I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it's not the answer.
~ Jim Carrey

Happiness is your nature!

“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.” -Ramana Maharishi

....to go insane!

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

Philip K. Dick

Two possibilities exist!

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C. Clarke

Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum!

"Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum. " — Erich Maria Remarque

Read everything!

"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window." — William Faulkner

Mental slavery!

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds.”
~ Bob Marley

Human speech is like a cracked kettle!

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Gustave Flaubert

Which is more important, to love or be loved?

"I once asked an old man: which is more important, to love or be loved?

He replied: Which is more important to a bird, the left wing or the right wing?"

If a man is proud of his wealth....!

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
Socrates

Wise man and insults!

A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
~ Moliere

You and Drama!

"Drama does not just walk into your life. You either create it, invite it, or you associate with people who love to bring it into your life."

A life of constant amusement!

"Because of his imperfection man is not able to engage in serious and fruitful activities without interruption.  He needs relaxation and play, or amusement. Because the necessities of life frequently force man to work beyond the limit within which working is pleasant, the illusion arises that a life of constant amusement would be the most pleasant and joyful. In reality nothing is more tedious."

Democracy and trial of Socrates!

"Though Socrates had survived unharmed through the regime of the Thirty – partly because it did not last long, partly because he was supported by some close relatives of their leader Critias – it was under the restored democracy that he was accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth and finally condemned to death, largely also in consequence of his intransigent attitude during the trial."

Anaxagoras's Universe!

"Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, a 5th-century pluralist, believed that because nothing can really come into being, everything must be contained in everything, but in the form  of infinitely small parts. In the beginning all of these particles had been mixed in an even mixture, in which nothing could be distinguished, much like the indefinite apeiron of Anaximander. But then nous, or intelligence, began at one point to set these particles into a whirling motion, foreseeing that in this way they would become separated from one another and then recombine in the most various ways so as to produce gradually the world in which men live.  In contrast to the forces assumed by Empedocles, the nous of Anaxagoras is not blind but foresees and intends the production of the cosmos, including living and intelligent beings; but it does not interfere with the process after having started the whirling motion. This is a strange combination of a mechanical and a nonmechanical explanation of the world."

Empedocles and evolution!

"Parmenides had an enormous influence on the further development of philosophy. Most of the philosophers of the following two generations tried to find a way to reconcile his thesis that nothing comes into being nor passes away with the evidence presented to men by their senses. Empedocles of Acragas (mid-5th century) declared that  there are four material elements (he called them roots of everything) and two forces, love and hate, that did not come into being and would never pass away or increase or diminish. But the elements are constantly mixed with one another by love and again separated by hate. Thus, through mixture and decomposition composite things come into being and pass away. Because he conceived of love and hate as blind forces, Empedocles had to explain how through random motion living beings could emerge. This he achieved by means of  a somewhat crude anticipation of the theory of the survival of the fittest. In the process of mixture and decomposition the limbs and parts of various animals would be formed by chance. But they could not survive. Only when by chance they had come together in such a way that they were able to support and reproduce themselves would they survive. It was  in this way that the various species were produced and continued to exist."

Radical honesty!

"Some people think I say inappropriate things....
I prefer to think of it as, radical honesty."

If you are neutral in situations of injustice...!

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” -Desmond Tutu

Then it all evaporated and fell apart!

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
- Charles Bukowski

The economic and social classes!

"You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.
~ George Carlin

In the center of my heart!

In the waters of purity, I melted like salt
Neither blasphemy, nor faith, nor conviction, nor doubt remained.
In the center of my heart a star has appeared
And all the seven heavens have become lost in it.

~ Rumi

The difference between my darkness and your darkness!

“The difference between my darkness and your darkness is that I can look at my own badness in the face and accept its existence while you are busy covering your mirror with a white linen sheet. The difference between my sins and your sins is that when I sin I know I'm sinning while you have actually fallen prey to your own fabricated illusions. I am a siren, a mermaid; I know that I am beautiful while basking on the ocean's waves and I know that I can eat flesh and bones at the bottom of the sea. You are a white witch, a wizard; your spells are manipulations and your cauldron from hell yet you wrap yourself in white and wear a silver wig.”
- C. JoyBell C.

Individuality

"You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same!"

Freedom!

"Freedom isn't something that comes to you comfortably without any struggle or cost. In fact freedom is one of the outstandingly expensive and precious commodities. For Freedom doesn't lie in the outside world, it lies within you. And to attain actual freedom you have to fight with yourself and all the falsehood, deceit and fraud you have been spoon fed since your birth. You have to rediscover your self and your true identity in the world through reason, rational thinking and objective inquiry. Only then you are able to unlock yourself from the prison of your own heart and mind.

Once you are free your life becomes pleasant and easy. You no longer need to suffer unnecessarily and bear pain to absolve yourself. Once your heart is free you become something larger than life, encompassing everything within this world and all the universe. You love everyone and everything and there is no restraint for you !!"

Normal living?

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so that you can afford to live in it.
~ Ellen Goodman

Living with wrong answers!

It's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
~ Richard Feynman

Most people are never going to die because....

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

Philosophical systems are never definitively proved false!

"Philosophical systems are never definitively proved false; they are simply discarded or put aside for future use. And this means that the history of philosophy consists not simply of dead museum pieces but of ever-living classics – comprising a permanent repository of ideas, doctrines, and arguments and a continuing source of philosophical inspiration and suggestiveness to those who philosophize in any succeeding age. It is for this reason that any attempt to separate philosophizing from the history of philosophy is both a provincial act and an unnecessary impoverishment of its rich natural resources."

Books are not absolutely dead things!

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

John Milton

A philosophical system is a vision of the world subjectively assembled!

"philosophy seems less like science than like art and the philosopher more like an artist than a scientist, for his philosophical solutions bear the stamp of his own personality, and his choice of arguments reveals as much about himself as his chosen problem. As a work of art is a portion of the world seen through a temperament, so a philosophical system is a vision of the world subjectively assembled."

The bamboozle!

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
~ Carl sagen

The you, the I!

You, yes you! What is you (and its inward directed converse, the “I”)? You is not the body, not the legs, not the DNA, not the blood cells, not the immune system. You is a product of a limited part of a body, you is associated with. You is the product of brain, a subset of brain produces you, you the awareness. You are not aware of much that goes on in your body. You are not aware of the process, the mental process, through which you is produced, comes into existence. You is not aware of the process that takes place inside eye, as photons hits retinal cells, the generation of nerve impulse, which is encoded information, its processing and progression inside visual centers of brain. We only become aware of the final processed image, or rather series of images.

You is a product of certain configuration of matter, the brain. Amazing isn’t it that matter thinks about itself, about other matter; contemplating the why’s and how’s of this universe where it, the configuration that can think, finds itself. And then there are the neuroscientists, who want to know how their minds are produced by the underlying brain matter. Matter desirous of knowing its own why’s, its own reasons, its own working, not aware of solutions to those questions itself. Mind doesn’t know how it is itself produced, projected, how it works, what is its connection with the brain? How amazing, it thinks? You is a child, playing with toys, brain being one. Then going even deeper, thinking about the particles making the brain, and deeper and wider and narrower. The collective mind branching, its roots trying to conquer, to penetrate, farther and deeper. Strange creature this aspect of matter is, the mind!

Infectious ideas!

Thoughts are like parasites! They are produced, with certain characteristics, strengths. They infect new hosts, some hosts are completely taken over, some hosts fight back, eliminate the attempts of establishment. Some hosts are carriers, not affected themselves; just pass the parasitic ideas on to other potential hosts. As they pass from host to host, they mutate, change, acquire and discard, giving rise to offshoots and branches, some even compete as new organism. Natural selection comes into play, they evolve. No one is immune to them; we all carry some, are immune to others and actively fight others.

Some are very tenacious, take over the whole organism, makes the taken over organism live for them, even fight for them, even at the cost of the organism’s life itself. They think a few sacrifices would help in their mass infection. Dangerous creatures these types are, very scary. Nearly impossible to control, once they break out in strength. These are like storms, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, carrying with them whoever comes in their path, leaving an altered landscape in their wake.

So which ones are you carrying?

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but...!

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) US Senator, honorary doctor of laws

Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell...!

Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell while they are going to heaven, somehow make me very glad that we're going to separate destinations.
~ Martin Terman

All things are subject to interpretation!

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The more it will hate those....!

The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.
~ George Orwell

I don't know if god exists!

I don't know if god exists but it would be better for his reputation if he didn't.
~ Jules Renard

Look at your thoughts today!

If you want to see what your body will look like tomorrow, look at your thoughts today.
~ Navajo Proverb

Forgiveness is a lovely idea!

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.
~ C. S. Lewis

Fundamental loneliness of man in a godless world!

"We can see here that the problem of the true and the false rationalisms [Utopianism] is part of a larger problem. Ultimately it is the problem of a sane attitude towards our own existence and its limitations–that very problem of which so much is made now by those who call themselves ‘Existentialists’, the expounders of a new theology without God. There is, I believe, a neurotic and even an hysterical element in this exaggerated emphasis upon the fundamental loneliness of man in a godless world, and upon the resulting tension between the self and the world. I have little doubt that this hysteria is closely akin to Utopian romanticism, and also to the ethic of hero-worship, to an ethic that can comprehend life only in terms of ‘dominate or prostrate yourself’. And I do not doubt that this hysteria is the secret of its strong appeal." - Karl Popper in Chapter 18 ‘Utopia and Violence’, of Conjectures and Refutations,

Best teachers!

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.
~ Alexandra K. Trenfor

The inauthentic present!

"The inauthentic present is marked by hallowness. No sense of you is implicated in what you do. Your actions don’t implicate your sense of mission in life or your sense of self-determination. You don’t bring to the present a way of structuring what’s possible that’s individual to you. Your actions don’t highlight your past and future. Instead, they express the chatter of the every-day world. To the person lost in the inauthentic present, death is an abstract subject, and the past has no impact on what’s being done now."

Joy of life!

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."