Posts

Plato | Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture

"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses."

Plato

Voltaire | throw stones at those who are showing a new road

"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road."

Voltaire

Thomas Paine | A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."

Thomas Paine

Dave Chappelle | Being “awake” isn’t cool

"Being "awake" isn't cool. It means having to dumb down 98% of your conversations every day so you don't sound like a lunatic."

Dave Chappelle

Frank Ocean | When you’re happy you enjoy the music

"When you're happy you enjoy the music, but when you're sad you understand the lyrics."

Frank Ocean

Franz von Holtzendorff | The highest conceivable degree of lying is reached

"The highest conceivable degree of lying is reached when judgment between truth and falsehood ceases and the liar believes his own lie and is indignant that others place doubt in his words."

Franz von Holtzendorff

Mark Passio | The more moral a population is, the freer it becomes

"The more moral a population is, the freer it becomes. The more immoral a population is, the deeper into bondage and slavery it goes. Another way of saying this is to say that the presence of truth and morality in the lives of the people of any given society is always inversely proportional to the presence of tyranny and slavery in that society. The more truth and morality there is, the less tyranny and slavery there is. The less truth and morality there is, the more tyranny and slavery there is. That's the Law of Freedom. And many people don't want to understand that; that these two things are inextricably interwoven and connected and can never be separated from each other: the presence of truth and morality in a society and the presence of freedom or its lack in a society."

Mark Passio

Carl Gustav Jung | certain views which others find inadmissible

"As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."

Carl Gustav Jung

Marcus Aurelius | What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance

"If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance."

Marcus Aurelius

Florian Willet | sad human truth

"One cause is rooted in the sad human truth that 'slaves' usually dream less of what it would be like to be free than of what it would be like to be 'slave overseers'"

Dr. Dr. Florian Willet

Nikolaus Roerich | The last war among men will be a war for truth

"The last war among men will be a war for truth. This war will be in every single person. War - with its own ignorance, aggression, irritation. And only a radical transformation of each individual person can become the beginning of a peaceful life for all people."

Nikolaus Roerich

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | The most powerful figment of the imagination is public opinion

"The most powerful figment of the imagination is public opinion: no one knows exactly who makes it, no one has ever met it personally, but everyone lets themselves be tyrannized by it!"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ernst Reinhardt | It takes courage to seek the truth

"It takes courage to seek the truth without knowing if you can bear it."

Ernst Reinhardt

Marcus Aurelius | 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

Carl Sagan | The bamboozle has captured us

"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 Sagan

Gustave Le Bon | The masses have never thirsted after truth

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will."

Gustave Le Bon

Plato | No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth

"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth."

Plato

Plato | Those who tell the stories rule society

"Those who tell the stories rule society."

Plato

Miyamoto Musashi | Truth is not what you want it to be

"Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie."

Miyamoto Musashi

Erich Fromm | Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable

"Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth."

Erich Fromm

Voltaire | men can be influenced by making them think for themselves

"Controversy never convinced any man; men can be influenced by making them think for themselves, by seeming to doubt with them, by leading them as if by the hand, without their perceiving it. A good book lent to them, which they read at leisure, produces upon them surer effects, because they do not then blush to be subjugated by the superior reason of an antagonist."

Voltaire

Ayn Rand | He is free to evade reality

"He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see."

Ayn Rand

Thomas von Aquin | The greatest kindness

"The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth."

Thomas von Aquin

Daniel Dennett | There’s simply no polite way

"There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion."

Daniel Dennett

Søren Kierkegaard | There are two ways to be fooled

"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true."

Søren Kierkegaard

Adyashanti | Enlightenment is a destructive process

"Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true."

Adyashant