“High hopes that are dashed by the first failure are precisely what we don’t need. We need to believe in ourselves but not to believe that life is easy. Nothing in the historical record tells us that triumph is assured. Life’s problems resist solution, and we are fallible.”
John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal (Page xiii)
Motivational Quotes
“Miscommunication between two people is incredibly common because every time someone speaks they are translating their feelings into words, and then the other person has to interpret those words through the filter of their own current feelings and past emotional history. Since we are communicating through filters of perception, it takes a certain degree of calmness and emotional maturity between two people to ask each other, ‘What do you mean by this?’ or ‘Can you tell me more?’ to really understand what is being said. Communication without patience is likely to turn into conflict. Communication with patience is likely to lead to deeper connection.”
Yung Pueblo
“Life isn’t a train ride where you choose your destination, pay your fare and settle back for a nap. It’s a cycle ride over uncertain terrain, with you in the driver’s seat, constantly correcting your balance and determining the direction of progress. It’s difficult, sometimes profoundly painful. But it’s better than napping through life.”
John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal (Page xii)
“There’s something in us that fiercely resists change. And there’s something else in us that welcomes it, finds it bracing, even seeks it out. It’s the latter trait that keeps the species going.”
John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal (Page xi)
“The earth is undivided. India and Pakistan and England and Germany exist only on maps, and those maps are created by the politicians, the power-mad people. This whole earth is yours. There is no need to identify with anything. Why become confined to small territories? Why be confined by politics? Claim the whole heritage of the earth. It is your earth. Be a planetary being rather than a national one. Forget about India and England and think of the whole globe. Think of each and everyone as brothers and sisters; they are!”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 173)
“Once the honeymoon is over and you put down your masks, and the reality is revealed, then what will you share? You will share that which you have. If anger, then anger, if possessiveness, then possessiveness. Then there is fighting and conflict and struggle, and each tries to dominate the other. Meditation will give you something you can share. Meditation will give you the quality, the energy that can become love when you are relat[ing] to somebody.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 172)
“Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people—they always go away, sooner or later. You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.”
Bruce Coville
“We have reduced the world to its present state of chaos by our self-centered activity, by our prejudices, our hatreds, our nationalism, and when we say we cannot do anything about it, we are accepting disorder in ourselves as inevitable. We have splintered the world into fragments and if we ourselves are broken, fragmented, our relationship with the world will also be broken. But if, when we act, we act totally, then our relationship with the world undergoes a tremendous revolution.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 119)
“Every day we see or read of appalling things happening in the world as the result of violence in man. You may say, ‘I can’t do anything about it’, or, ‘How can I influence the world?’ I think you can tremendously influence the world if in yourself you are not violent, if you lead actually every day a peaceful life—a life which is not competitive, ambitious, envious—a life which does not create enmity. Small fires can become a blaze.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 118)
“Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention. Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life—perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 116)
“This is an old trick which has existed from time immemorial—chewing a piece of leaf or experimenting with the latest chemical to bring about a temporary alteration in the structure of the brain cells, a greater sensitivity and heightened perception which give a semblance of reality. This demand for more and more experiences shows the inward poverty of man. We think that through experiences we can escape from ourselves but these experiences are conditioned by what we are. If the mind is petty, jealous, anxious, it may take the very latest form of drug but it will still see only its own little creation, its own little projections from its own conditioned background.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 111)
“It doesn’t matter what you do, the criticism is always going to be there. So you might as well do what you think ought to be done. You might as well do what seems meaningful and important and fulfilling and right to you. People are going to say what they’re going to say, haters will find a way to hate. In the meantime, just be true to yourself, be true to the mission you have, fight for the respect (and praise) of yourself, not the mob, not the future. That’s hard enough to win anyway.”
Ryan Holiday
“We carry our burdens all the time; we never die to them, we never leave them behind. It is only when we give complete attention to a problem and solve it immediately—never carrying it over to the next day, the next minute—that there is solitude. Then, even, if we live in a crowded house or are in a bus, we have solitude. And that solitude indicates a fresh mind, an innocent mind.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 106)
“If one wants to see a thing very clearly, one’s mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering, the dialogue, the images, the pictures—all that must be put aside to look.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 103)
“There is a story of a religious teacher who used to talk every morning to his disciples. One morning he got on to the platform and was just about to begin when a little bird came and sat on the window sill and began to sing, and sang away with full heart. Then it stopped and flew away and the teacher said, ‘The sermon for this morning is over.'”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 89)
“Having lost touch with nature we naturally tend to develop intellectual capacities. We read a great many books, go to a great many museums and concerts, watch television and have many other entertainments. We quote endlessly from other people’s ideas and think and talk a great deal about art. Why is it that we depend so much upon art? Is it a form of escape, of stimulation? If you are directly in contact with nature; if you watch the movement of a bird on the wing, see the beauty of every movement of the sky, watch the shadows on the hills or the beauty on the face of another, do you think you will want to go to any museum to look at any picture? Perhaps it is because you do not know how to look at all the things about you that you resort to some form of drug to stimulate you to see better.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 89)
“Sadness is ugly because of our rejection of it; it is not ugly in itself. Once you accept it, you will see how beautiful it is, how relaxing, how calm and quiet, how silent. It has something to give that happiness can never give. Sadness gives depth.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 167)
“If your eyes are blinded with your worries, you cannot see the beauty of the sunset.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 88)
“When there is love and beauty, whatever you do is right, whatever you do is in order. If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 86)