Jiddu Krishnamurti on the Significance of Doubt

"Why do we accept, why do we follow? We follow another's authority, another's experience and then doubt it; this search for authority and its sequel, disillusionment, is a painful process for most of us. We blame or criticize the once accepted authority, the leader, the teacher, but we do not examine our own craving for an authority who can direct our conduct. Once we understand this craving we shall comprehend the significance of doubt."

-- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Do You Get Out of the House Much, Your Excellency?

"The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools." -- Demetrio Fernández, Bishop of Córdoba.

(H/T: Pharyngula)

Four From Voltaire

Les habiles tyrans ne sont jamais punis.
-- Clever tyrants are never punished.

C'est une des superstitions de l'esprit humain d'avoir imaginé que la virginité pouvait être une vertu.
-- It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Nous cherchons tous le bonheur, mais sans savoir où, comme les ivrognes qui cherchent leur maison, sachant confusément qu'ils en ont une.
-- We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

Il y a eu des gens qui ont dit autrefois: Vous croyez des choses incompréhensibles, contradictoires, impossibles, parce que nous vous l’avons ordonné; faites donc des choses injustes parce que nous vous l’ordonnons. Ces gens-là raisonnaient à merveille. Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste. Si vous n’opposez point aux ordres de croire l’impossible l’intelligence que Dieu a mise dans votre esprit, vous ne devez point opposer aux ordres de malfaire la justice que Dieu a mise dans votre coeur. Une faculté de votre âme étant une fois tyrannisée, toutes les autres facultés doivent l’être également. Et c’est là ce qui a produit tous les crimes religieux dont la terre a été inondée.
-- Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.

(Source)

If You Have Not Changed Your Beliefs...

“If you have not changed your beliefs in the last few years, check your pulse as you may not be alive”. -- Gelett Burgess, as paraphrased by Ken Perrott at the Open Parachute blog.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Writing Down What One Thinks and Feels

"If you find it difficult to be aware, then experiment with writing down every thought and feeling that arises throughout the day; write down your reactions of jealousy, envy, vanity, sensuality, the intentions behind your words, and so on."

"Spend some time before breakfast in writing them down, which may necessitate going to bed earlier and putting aside some social affair. If you write these things down whenever you can, and in the evening before sleeping look over all that you have written during the day, study and examine it without judgment, without condemnation, you will begin to discover the hidden causes of your thoughts and feelings, desires and words."

"Now, the important thing in this is to study with free intelligence what you have written down, and in studying it you will become aware of your own state. In the flame of self-awareness, of self-knowledge, the causes of conflict are discovered and consumed. You should continue to write down your thoughts and feelings, intentions and reactions, not once or twice, but for a considerable number of days until you are able to be aware of them instantly."

"Meditation is not only constant self-awareness, but constant abandonment of the self. Out of right thinking there is meditation, from which there comes the tranquility of wisdom; and in that serenity the highest is realized."

"Writing down what one thinks and feels, one's desires and reactions, brings about an inward awareness, the cooperation of the unconscious with the conscious, and this in turn leads to integration and understanding."

-- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Carl Sagan on Understanding Science and Technology

"We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

-- Carl Sagan

Two Quotes from Toynbee

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."

"The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play."

-- Arnold J. Toynbee  

Three Quotes of John W. Gardner

"One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure."

"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all."

"When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale."

-- John W. Gardner 

Four Quotes of W. Somerset Maugham

"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

"American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."

"Often the best way to overcome a desire is to satisfy it."

"There are three rules for writing the novel.  Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

-- W. Somerset Maugham

Henry Miller on Growth

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

--Henry Miller