On Life, Truth & Philosophy:
Quotes
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything.
G. C. Lichtenberg
Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
Giordano Bruno
An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it.
Mahatma Gandhi
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most
difficult act of heroism you can perform.
Theodore White, author
He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.
Leonardo da Vinci, artist, engineer
You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.
Samuel Johnson, lexicographer
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply
stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life,
knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
George Santayana, Philosopher
Pain that does not kill us makes us stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
The news and truth are not the same thing.
Walter Lippmann, American journalist, 1889-1974
Search for the TRUTH is the noblest occupation of man; its PUBLICATION is a DUTY.
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael, French author
On most subjects we desire to communicate ideas and, hence, we use plain and understandable language; but if we
have no ideas to communicate, or our ideas are false and, consequently, it is not desirable for them to be understood, we employ language that enables us to conceal the weak points and discourage close examination. Whoever
investigates medicine will find mystery! Mystery! Mystery! He will find no principles at the bottom of the system, except such as are at variance with all the known principles
of life and are, consequently, false--hence the necessity of profound study and of specialty of language. ... The show of words without rational meaning and the greater show of
technicalities thrown in as a cover for ignorance, are perfectly marvelous, but exceedingly useful. They overawe the ordinary reader, causing him to retire into reverent
silence. There is nothing like a few Latin and Greek terms with which to silence annoying questions without answering them.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, major proponent of “Natural Hygiene”
Compare “Modern Medicine is not a science”.
We live in a world where it is easier to break an atom than a preconceived idea.
Albert Einstein
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail
to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
Herbert Spencer
Science advances, funeral by funeral.
Niels Bohr
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sometimes in our lives we reach rock bottom. We
experience what we call HELL. For each of us it’s dressed up differently, but for all of us it is dark, tough and devastating. This HELL can be our awakening. Some people call it a breakdown; I believe it is a breakthrough.
From “The Pocket Guide To Your Heart"
Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions.
Unknown
...all values and qualities in any society, including technological progress and the struggle to maintain social
justice and human liberty, ultimately depend on the honest and accurate use of language. ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ And without it there is no salvation. And no physical cure or relief either.
Martin Sieff reviewing "Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny," by Michael Gearin-Tosh, who cured himself of a normally deadly form of cancer (0.005 percent 3-year survival chance)
Wer heilt, hat recht. (The one who heals is right.)
German saying
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James
[Men] fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.... Thought is subversive
and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is
not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Bertrand Russell
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally
handed down in his community.
Ruth Benedict
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
Simon and Garfunkel
Far more important than what we know or do not know is
what we do not want to know.
Eric Hoffer
Nearly all men can stand adversity; but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president
At every crossroads to the future, there are a thousand self-appointed guardians of the past.
Betty MacQuitty
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives; only a few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
Voltaire
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young
children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
Thomas Szasz
Many receive advice, few profit by it.
Publilius Syrus
You are always up against those people who think they know, but they don't!...I also thought I knew.......... but I didn't...........
paraphrasing Lila Lipscomb, the mother from Flint who lost her son in Iraq,
commenting in "Fahrenheit 9/11" on a woman who had told her to blame her son's death on AlQaeda
I know that most (men), including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept
even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they
have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread into the fabric of their lives.
Count Leo Tolstoy
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you; then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Albert Einstein
It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair
Most people would rather die than think. In fact they do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The pain of a new idea is one of the greatest pains in human nature... Your favorite notion may be wrong, your firmest
beliefs ill-founded. And your favorite foods may be the root cause of your greatest pains! It's a fact of life that people find it much easier to believe a lie they've heard a thousand
times than a fact they've never heard before.
Daniel P. Reid in The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity
Public health announcements and prevention programs, by their suggestive nature, create more instances of the diseases than they prevent!
Seth
...we have made of ourselves living cesspools, and driven doctors to invent names for our diseases.
Plato
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
Gandhi
All illness is self-created.
Conversations With God
Everything - absolutely everything - that happens in our lives has a spiritual cause. Events on all other levels -
mental, emotional and physical - are only effects. When we are struggling with any challenge, whether it be ill health, a lack of money, a lost job, poor relationships, an accident,
whatever - we need to look for the spiritual learning. We can ask ourselves, "What quality does my soul want me to live more fully?" If you start to think the problem is ‘out
there,’ stop yourself. That thought is the problem.
THE DAILY GURU
Often, we are so stuck in our old beliefs and patterns that we aren't able to see the changes we need to make. Even
when we feel frustrated about our problems, we may not recognize what we need to learn to change things. That is why we need to use the mirror of life...We can use everything that happens externally as a mirror to help us
see the areas within us that need healing and development. Whenever we have a problem, especially a recurring or chronic problem, it is always an arrow pointing directly to
some aspect of our psyche where we need more awareness. If we accept that life is always trying to teach us exactly what we need to learn, we can view everything that happens to us as a gift. Even experiences that are
uncomfortable or painful contain within them an important key to our healing, wholeness, and prosperity. We may have difficulty understanding what the mirror of life is trying to
show us, but if we sincerely ask for the learning and the gift in every experience, it will be revealed to us one way or another.
Shakti Gawain in Using the Mirror of Life
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Carl Jung
We learn the lessons in life we are to learn two ways: either through obedience to natural laws or through suffering the
consequences of not observing those laws...None of us consciously create the suffering we experience.
Karol Truman, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die..., 1998
To my new patients I always say: I have three goals. First, I want to teach you how to get rid of your symptoms. Next, I
want to teach you how to get rid of your medications. Last, I want to teach you how to get rid of me.
Dr. Sherry Rogers, M.D.
...as I paid the £80 for the privilege of not having an eight-year-old boy slowly poisoned, I said to the
receptionist who had witnessed some of the scene in the surgery that when the day came, as it would, when even officialdom would have to accept that mercury fillings were
poisoning people and seriously affecting brain function, she and her dentists would remember this day. The receptionist told me that the danger of mercury fillings was a matter of
"opinion". "Right" I asked her "How much research have you done into this subject?" "None" she replied. "So how do you know that mercury fillings are safe". The answer was a
classic: "Well it’s not illegal to do it, so if it weren't safe the dentists would not be allowed to do it, would they?" In that one sentence you have the very foundation of how a few
people control this world and its billions of inhabitants. There is nothing that is more prone to manipulation than a person that is genuine without being "street wise". It’s
about being open, loving and innocent in one way, but also having the balance of being "street wise".
David Icke on the ubiquitous betrayal of trust
The object of the superior man is truth.
Confucius
There is no such thing to this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know
it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with.
Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another
job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in 1 issue of my paper, before 24 hours my occupation would be gone. The business of journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright;
to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent
press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all
the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
John Swinton, former Chief of Staff of the NY Times
A true Master does not 'give up' something. A true Master simply sets it aside, as he would do with anything for which
he no longer has any use.
Conversations with God
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it is hell!
Harry Truman
It has been the fate of all bold adventures and reformers to be esteemed insane.
G.B. Cheever
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being
self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.
Hermann Hesse
Science always has effects, but they are opposing effects one that is destructive and one that is constructive. Science
ruled by the intellect will splinter the view of the world into a chaos of details, losing connection to the Whole in the process. Science ruled by spirit, however, turns into wisdom,
since it will be deeply moved by the wondrous overall scheme of things and feel respect and awe for the great mind felt to be at work behind it. Such is the difference between learnedness and wisdom.
Max Bircher-Benner, MD, translated by Healing Cancer Naturally
All the world is a Stage. And all the men and women merely players.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
The greatest achievements of mankind have been accomplished by two types of men, those who were smart
enough to know it could be done, and those too dumb to know it couldn't.
Anonymous
Whenever you fall, pick something up.
Oswald Avery
Most dealing with physical body health lessons do not realize that the finest healers in the infinite Universe are
literally at their beck and call. The Angelic Healers and Galactic Healers are literally an invocation away and can completely cleanse, rewire, heal and transform your physical
body. The problem is no one knows to ask for this and they are not allowed to help unless they are asked.
Dr. Joshua David Stone
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents...but rather because its opponents eventually die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Max Planck
Never give in. Never give in. Never give in!
Sir Winston Churchill
Do you remember how electrical currents and "unseen waves" were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.
Albert Einstein
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Illnesses are signs that anarchy and disorder reign in the human organism, that light and intelligence have not yet
penetrated into each cell of every organ. And it is man himself who, through his ignorance, has allowed this disorder to establish itself. It is imperative that a light, an
intelligence dawn in his brain and convince all the cells of his organism that, to be truly powerful and rich, they must get along with each other and become unified. When, in the
interest of this immense kingdom to which they belong, the cells are in harmony with each other and vibrate in unison, all the organs will obey wisely and intelligently. They will
work together lovingly, and happiness and abundance will reign throughout the kingdom.
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
Human progress has never been achieved with unanimous consent. Those who were enlightened first are compelled to
pursue the light in spite of others.
Christopher Columbus
The jury is composed of the old guard who, as history teaches us, have a vested interest in protecting the status
quo, no matter the cost in human lives.
Robert Barefoot
In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
Eric Hoffer, philosopher
I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do
things in his spirit, not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.
Albert Einstein
...if one looks closely one sees that there is no essential difference between a beggar’s livelihood and that of
numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar
works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable
trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable
compared with a hire-purchase tout — in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should
justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other
people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him. Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised? — for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple
reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be
profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except ‘Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it’? Money
has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at
realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honour; he has
merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.
George Orwell: 'Down and Out in Paris and London'
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.
Dalai Lama
The things that will destroy us are: politics without
principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.
Mahatma Gandhi
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict
pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved
through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed.
Dalai Lama
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person, my country is the
world, and my religion is to do good.
Thomas Paine
Innovation is a two-fold threat to the scientific hierarchy. First it threatens their oracle authority. Secondly, it evokes
the deeper fear that their whole laboriously constructed authoritarian edifice may collapse
Arthur Koestler
Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by naiveté. People are all-to-ready to believe lies that make
them feel morally or intellectually superior.
Ed Friedlander, M.D.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent
encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
President James Madison
We're NOT a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: A government by the wealthy.
Ramsey Clark, former U S Attorney General
Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.
John Pierpont Morgan
Free enterprise is a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive
government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.
Dr Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our
government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.
Benito Mussolini
The real truth of the matter as you and I know is that a
financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.
President Franklin D Roosevelt
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Aesop
A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of
the Nation and all of our activities are in the hands of a FEW men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely CONTROLLED and dominated governments
in the world no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of SMALL groups of dominant men.
President Woodrow Wilson, Campaign Speeches, 1912
Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some
philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said: 'War is an evil inasmuch as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.
Immanuel Kant
If a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before
the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has NO defense,... it is a national crime.
Charles Eliot Norton
Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured
all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system,' he wrote, 'and in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.
Gore Vidal, The Decline & Fall of the American Empire
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes
stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The present’s uncanny reminiscence of the unspeakable past (I)
We stand for the maintenance of private property,... we shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.
Adolph Hitler
The present’s uncanny reminiscence of the unspeakable past (II)
God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany.
Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its
reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is DESTROYED.
President Abraham Lincoln, 1865
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an INvisible government owing NO allegiance and
acknowledging NO responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.
President Theodore Roosevelt, 1906
It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53
annually on the victims of poverty.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.
Albert Einstein
Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it
popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular,... but one must take it simply because it is right.
Martin Luther King, Jr
No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except
by LIES.
Salvador de Madariaga, Spanish writer, diplomat and historian
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did NOTHING because he could only do a little.
Edmund Burke
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing
God's service when it is violating all his laws.
President John Adams
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider God-fearing and
pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Aristotle
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that the one that must be loved is not a friend.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for
all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
Democracy and violence can ill go together. Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such
allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
Jesus Christ
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
Winston Churchill
Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of
destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international affairs. The machineries of government stand
between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
Compare Alternative cancer treatment caveat & advice: on honesty & deception, money & manipulation, commercialism, theft of copyright, ego & “all that glitters is not gold”.
|
