Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit
are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit
suicide to avoid assassination.
Anything that we can do to help foster the
intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings,
that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must
continue against all odds. Life is for service.
People look for retreats for themselves, in the
country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person
can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. .
. . So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.
At
such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty
that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her
advice in the face of melancholy is: 'Think about all the suffering in
the world and be thankful you're not part of it.' My advice is: 'Go
outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go
outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all
the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.'
I
don't think Mother's advice can be right, because what are you supposed
to do if you become part of the suffering? You'd be completely lost. On
the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for
it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A
person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and
faith will never die in misery!
Be mild with the mild, shrewd with the
crafty, confiding to the honest, rough to the ruffian, and a thunderbolt
to the liar. But in all this, never be unmindful of your own dignity.
The forest is a social network. Trees communicate and support one
another. They can sense with their leaves and roots and fit into one
another’s respective ecosystems... When Scots pine trees are attacked by caterpillars, they release a scent
from pheromones in their leaves. This pheromone attracts wasps who come
and lay eggs in the leaves which turn into larvae that eat the
caterpillars. Some trees send out electric signals via fungal fibers
underground that spread out for several miles, informing other trees of
conditions. It’s sort of like ‘tree email.’ People don’t appreciate how
much trees communicate and support one another...They’re trying to tell us that we are just like them. Both isolated and
connected. We must lay down roots and establish our presence. But we
must build alliances and connections, too. Trees take a long view, just
as we should plan for our future. Trees don’t blame. They take
responsibility for themselves. And they find peace in their
companionship.
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always
remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the
passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
Remember this, if you can–there is
nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a
measureless supply of it, but you haven’t. Wasted hours destroy your
life just as surely at the beginning as at the end–only in the end it
becomes more obvious.
Sometimes
I look back and think my whole adult life has been underlined with a
feeling of waiting – waiting for something to happen, waiting for
circumstances to change, waiting for the right man or the right job or
the right shoes-and-clothes-and-haircut to swoop down from above and
change me, to infuse me from the outside in with a feeling of well-being
and validation and peace of mind.
My job now is to try and help people understand every one of us makes a
difference. And cumulatively, wise choices in how we act each day can
begin to change the world.
The
only cure [for envy] in the case of ordinary men and women is
happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a terrible obstacle
to happiness.
We live in a
world that celebrates work and activity, ignores renewal and recovery,
and fails to recognize that both are necessary for sustained high
performance.
Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.
Your personal experiences make up maybe
0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you
think the world works... We’re all biased to our own personal history.
To
my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to
experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position
in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.
Whatever
creates or increases happiness or some part of happiness, we ought to
do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its
opposite, we ought not to do.
Ambition is his crime, and it will be his punishment too: intrigue is
his native element, and intrigue will confound his tricks, and will
deprive him of his power: he governs by means of corruption, and his
immoral practices will redound to his shame and confusion. His conduct
in the political arena has been that of a shameless and lawless
gamester. He succeeded at the time, but the hour of retribution
approaches, and he will be obliged to disgorge his winnings, to throw
aside his false dice, and to end his days in some retirement, where he
may curse his madness at his leisure; for repentance is a virtue with
which his heart is likely to remain forever unacquainted.
I have a
foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when
the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all
the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when
awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one
representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the
people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably
question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously
consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to
distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost
without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The
dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of
substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second
sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator
programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition,
but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
Of
all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and
management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it
should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a
calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the
self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by
the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognize his powers for
good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no
power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognize that this
power is not unlimited.
Read at every wait; read at all hours;
read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read
as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to
lead.
A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is
frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished
from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known
this fact.