Quotes

If some people, despite recognizing the virtue of love, can admit the necessity of tormenting or murdering certain people for the sake of some future good, then others, by just the same right and also acknowledging the virtue of love, can claim the same necessity in the name of some future good. Thus it might appear obvious that the admission of any kind of exception to the requirements of fulfilling the law of love diminishes the whole significance, meaning and virtue of this law which lies a ...

Those in power say that without employing violence there can be no order, or decent life, meaning by the word 'order', that structure of life wherein the minority can indulge in excess through the labour of others, and by 'decent life', the lack of any impediment to leading such a life. However unjust what they say it is, one can see that they are able to speak thus because the suppression of violence would not only deprive them of the possibility of living in the way that they ...

Leave us in peace! If you, emperors, presidents, generals, judges, bishops, professors and other learned men need armies, navies, universities, ballets, synods, conservatories, prisons, gallows and guillotines, do it all yourselves: collect your own taxes, judge execute and imprison among yourselves, murder people in war, but do it all yourselves and leave us in peace because we need none of it, and we no longer wish to participate in all these useless, and above all evil deeds!

The spiritual state of those who employ violence, submit to it, and participate in it is that of strife. Instead of experiencing the natural and inherent feeling of love for their fellow men, all these millions of people carry only feelings of hatred, blame and fear towards all humanity, with the exception of the small circle of like-minded people to which they belong. They suppress all their human feelings to such an extent that murdering fellow men seems to them to be a necessary condition o ...

You will be saved and delivered from the evil you endure and receive the true well-being you so clumsily strive after, not through personal desire, nor envy, nor through adherence to a party programme; nor through hatred, indignation or the pursuit of fame, nor even through a sense of justice, and above all not through troubling yourselves about the organization of other people's lives. However strange it may seem, it is only through an activity within your own soul, involving no external ...

The desires of an enlightened soul for the welfare of others is in no way satisfied by vainly organizing their lives through violence, but that it is only achieved through one's own inner work - the only thing where man has complete freedom and control. No activity aimed at the organization of other people's lives through coercion can enhance people's welfare, but is always a more or less consciously hypocritical deceit used to cover up men's basest desires: vanity, pride and s ...

The belief that some people, the minority, can arrange the lives of the majority - a thing that is regarded as the most indisputable truth in the name of which the greatest crimes are committed - is only a superstition. The activity founded on this superstition, the political activities of the revolutionaries as well as the rulers and their assistants, generally regarded as the most honourable and important matter, is really a most futile, and moreover harmful, human occupation and has been an ...

Most of the religious and moral teachings on love, while compelled to admit the virtue of love in human life, yet allow the possibility of certain situations whereby the fulfillment of the law of love ceases to be obligatory and could be suspended. As soon as the law of love ceases to be the highest, immutable law of human life, all it's beneficence disappears, and the teaching of love is reduced to eloquent homilies and words which are optional and leave the whole way of the life of the n ...

If you don't feel, your words will not inspire;
Unless from deep within you speak sincere,
And with a charismatic fire
Compel the hearts of all who hear.
Oh, you can sit there gluing bits together
Or mixing cold leftovers in a stew,
Blowing at the ashes, wondering weather
There's any fire to warm your brew.
Yes - fools and children you'll impress -
If that is really what you want to do;
But you will never know another's heart, unless
...

Who unaided may break free
From passions that enslave them?
How easily the feet may slip
Upon the path they tread;
By flattery of eye or lip
How many are misled!

A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, Pray, which leg comes after which?
Which threw her mind in such a pitch,
She laid bewildered in the ditch
Considering how to run.

Those who are preoccupied with organizing the lives of others, be they monarchs, presidents and ministers, or spies and executioners, or members and leaders of a party, or dictators; these people manifest nothing worthy - as people seem to think - but, to the contrary, are pitiable, deeply misled people, preoccupied with a task that is not only vain and stupid, but is one of the most horrible things man can choose to do.

The wretchedness of war and military preparation not only fail to comply with the reasons presented in their justification, but for the most part these reasons are so insignificant that they are unworthy of consideration and are quite unknown to those who die in war.

'Woman, you see, it's such a subject that, however much you study her, there'll always be something new.'
'Better not to study then.'
'No. Some mathematician said that the pleasure lies not in discovering the truth, but in searching for it.'

The law of love cannot admit any exceptions and is only genuine when it is applied equally to foreigners, to all sectarians, and likewise to the enemies who hate us and wrong us.

People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last member of a dying species with arrows, they like to think that the boogeyman entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.

Valentinus's premise is that both the world and humanity are sick. The sickness of both has a common root: ignorance. That is, we ignore the authentic values of life and substitute inauthentic ones for them. We believe that we need physical things such as money, symbols of powers and prestige, physical pleasures in order to be happy or whole. Similarly, we fall in love with the ideas and abstractions of our minds. Our rigidities are always due to excessive attachment to abstract concepts a ...

While philosophy is but a tale told, myth and ritual are reality lived and enacted. Philosophy explains the phenomena of life to the rational mind, but myth and ritual represent the reemergence of the primordial reality that created the phenomena that philosophy wishes to explain. Thus, while philosophy attempts to answer the question why? myth and ritual reply to the question whence?. Depth psychology teaches us that disciplines like philosophy and ethics can at best only addres ...

A naive person trusts because he or she believes that people are essentially or even universally trustworthy. But any person who has truly lived has been, or has, betrayed. Someone with experience knows that people are capable of deception and willing to deceive. That knowledge brings with it an arguably justified pessimism about human nature, personal and otherwise, but it also opens the door to another kind of faith in humanity: one based on courage, rather than naivete. I will trust you, I ...

Aim at something. Pick the best target you can currently conceptualize. Stumble towards it. Notice your errors and misconceptions along the way, face them, and correct them. Get your story straight. Past, present, future - they all matter. You need to map your path. You need to know where you were, so that you do not repeat the mistakes of the past. You need to know where you are, or you will not be able to draw a line from your starting point to your destination. You need to know where you ar ...