#om

The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence. ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#knowledge #wisdom #community

Who gets to be best-liked in any community? Who is the most trusted? Why, the man who does the dirty job, of course, and does it with a smile. The man who does the job you couldn't bring yourself to do. ↗

— Stephen King

#community

Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses. ↗

— Alphonse Karr

#gratitude #perspective #positive-thinking #rose

Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind. Then there is abiding in the Seer's own form. ↗

— Patanjali

#wisdom #yoga #yoga

It is useful to study different traditions in order to be free of attachment to any one way of expressing what is beyond expression. (x) ↗

— Ravi Ravindra

#non-attachment #spiritual-wisdom #spirituality #study #wisdom

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. ↗

— Terence McKenna

#culture #inspirational #life #tv #wisdom

It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#defensiveness #noam-chomsky #september- #iraq

Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling. ↗

— C.G. Jung

#conflict

Hades was the personification of dark and dangerous--a living, breathing Batman. ↗

— P.C. Cast

#spring