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If you can't explain it simply, you There are two ways to live: To understand the world one must I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle. Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest; a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. When I was still a rather precocious young man, I already realized most vividly the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. We still do not know one thousandth of No problem can be solved from the same Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves. The true value of a human being can be found in the
There's a genius in all of us.
A man is a God in ruins. What would be the use of immortality to a A chief event of life is the day in which we Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain. Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. Nothing external to you has any power over you. To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined
The highest revelation is that God is in every man. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle. So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
What is hardest of all? None are more hopelessly enslaved than Thinking is more interesting than knowing, Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. The heights charm us, but the steps do
not; with There is nothing in the world more shameful
than Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality. People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them. Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow. You had better live your best, think
your best and do your best today, Everyone hears only what he understands. Viewed from the summit of reason, all
life looks like We do not have to visit a madhouse to
find disordered minds; The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. We usually lose today, because there
has been To act is easy; to think is hard. To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state. If you inquire what the people are like
here, All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. He only earns his freedom and his life Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life. Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or Yes! To this thought I hold with firm persistence;
Nothing is worth more than this day.
When we remember we are all mad, the It ain't what you don't know that gets you into Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed. Whenever you find that you are on the In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. Sacred cows make the best hamburger. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains — chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a word, Circumstance — and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A
Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul. "There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought — a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!” -The Mysterious Stranger Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
Most people would rather die If fifty million people say a foolish What is wanted is not the will to believe, but What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires — desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. Men are born ignorant, not stupid. There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed. I do not believe that I am now dreaming, Thoughts is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. Thinking you know when in fact you don't Man is a rational animal — so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. Just because an idea is held by the masses does not make it true. Indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, an idea that is widely held is more likely to be false than true.
To find yourself, think for yourself. The unexamined life is not worth living. The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. I thought to myself, "I am wiser than this man: neither of us knows anything that is really worthwhile, but he thinks he has knowledge when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think that I have. I seem, at any rate, to be a little wiser than he is on this point: I do not think that I know what I do not know." He who is not contented with what he has, would An honest man is always a child. Beware the barrenness of a busy life. To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know? Wisdom begins in wonder.
I am conquered by truth. In the kingdom of the blind, Man's mind is so formed that it is far Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't — it's human. What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things? There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. Jupiter, not wanting man's life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason — you could reckon the ration as twenty-four to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions. It is the worst of madness to learn what has to be unlearnt. I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.
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Albert
Einstein
Ralph
Waldo Emerson 
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
Mark
Twain
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Russell
Socrates
Desiderius
Erasmus 
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