Some inspirational quotes

[SteveA]

I heard a few people mention the film "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" and I was reading through it and found some beautiful quotes that just gave me chills to read. Here's a link to the page http://www.whatthebleep.com/quotes/

You might think I copied the entire page here but seriously this is only a small fraction of the quotes. There are many other great ones there.

There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come.
- Victor Hugo

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
- William Faulkner, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always.
- Mahatma Gandhi

There is no reality in the absence of observation.
- The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
- Niels Bohr

I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.
- William James

The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.
- Emily Dickinson

Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade, But do not be disheartened, The source they come from is eternal, growing, Branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you And this whole world is springing up from it.
- Jelauddin Rumi

A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing -a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit.
- Ken Wilber

Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities. Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential. The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
- Copernicus

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
- Albert Einstein

Whoever talks about Planck's constant and does not feel at least a little giddy obviously doesn't appreciate what he is talking about.
- Niels Bohr (quoted by Teller: see French & Kennedy 1985, p.182)

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
- Niels Bohr

We have actually touched the Borderland where Matter and Force seem to merge into one another, the shadowy realm between the Known and Unknown ... I venture to think that the greatest scientific problems of the future will find their solution in this Borderland, and even beyond; here, it seems to me, lie Ultimate Realities, subtle, far-reaching, wonderful.
- Sir William Crookes, 1879

You cannot see anything that you do not first contemplate as a reality.
- Ramtha

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
- Archibald MacLeish

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the law of the universe will be simpler.
- H.D. Thoreau

Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.
- Dogen

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
- Galileo Galilei

When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth.
- Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus

Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
- Chief Seattle

Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate, sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth…home. My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.
- Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and founder, Institute of Noetic Sciences

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
- James Joyce, Ulysses

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend upon the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
- Albert Einstein

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.
- Marianne Williamson

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
- Confucius

We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot

[FFT]

You cannot see anything that you do not first contemplate as a reality. - Ramtha

You might want to do a little more research on this one.

[SteveA]

I can't help adding a few more. Maybe you guys can throw in some, if you're so inspired to add to this list.

"Existance was seeded by the possibility of something other than nothing."

"Every question creates new possibilities which lead to new realities. So, you create what you seek."

[SteveA]

Quote by: FFT You cannot see anything that you do not first contemplate as a reality. - Ramtha You might want to do a little more research on this one.

If you rolled 6 dice and the numbers came up 1,2,3,4,5 and 6. Do you see any pattern to them? Whether or not this pattern is real or not to you, depends upon whether or not you're able to envision it as such. (Of course we could also call it a real coincidence too, as it likely would be)

Now I recognize that if we dig back far enough there's a chicken or egg question of whether or not reality came before some consciousness manner of observing it did but you can't separate the two from each other for any useful discussional purposes because the reality we currently reside in and discuss has observation and reality as part of the same system. When you look at the moon you affect it slightly in many ways (gravity, absorbing the light reflect from it etc.) as well as the image is affected by your understanding of it ... if you see "the man in the moon", that's a effect of the filter of your mind ... and if you had not idea something could exist in the sky, you would have never looked up. These are the type of paradoxes found in quantum mechanics. You can't make an observation without changing something and if free will is more than simply illusion, then we choose what we observe which in itself alters/creates the event.

If you really really dig back to the "beginning" it seems to boil down to whether or not you choice to exist in the first place and experience anything. From there how your consciousness decodes this information and determines reality is something noone else can prove is real or not.

I'm not saying events can't happen that are obvious and difficult to avoid noticing but who else put you where you're at now to notice those things? From second to second, whether or not you notice a specific gust of wind depends upon what you're observing at the time. Some mental conditions can result in a person truly not being able to perceive certain things (one person even lost the ability to recognize time passes and I remember a child that they literally had to put gloves on his hand and keep him in a walker because he felt no pain and would have died without being protected from hurting himself). I heard a story that when some explorer first came to America, the natives asked how they had come and he pointed to some ships anchored off shore but the natives couldn't see them. Maybe this wasn't a true story but it makes sense that if the ships were rather far away, the natives had no idea what to even look for so would have a hard time recognizing them, whereas someone else who'd already undergone this learning process under easier circumstances with the ships up close would find it much easier to extrapolate on what a distant ship would look like.

I recognize there will always be unaswered questions and limits to knowledge but the intent of many of these quotes is to express exactly that and open up new possibilities. In order for man to fly and experience it as a reality, he had to first envision it was possible to do so.

P.S. Does your name stand for Fast Fourier Transform?

[Osborn F Enready]

Steve, thanks for sharing.

Loved them all, especially this one.....

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
- Archibald MacLeish

[Rave7pt0]

Steve, I think he means that you should look into Ramtha. The mythos surrounding the woman who allegedly channels him is a little out there, and if I'm not mistaken the implication by FFT is that it's all bull and you shouldn't listen to him/her. I, on the other hand, remain fenced.

[SteveA]

Quote by: Rave7pt0 Steve, I think he means that you should look into Ramtha. The mythos surrounding the woman who allegedly channels him is a little out there, and if I'm not mistaken the implication by FFT is that it's all bull and you shouldn't listen to him/her. I, on the other hand, remain fenced.

Thank you for the info. I didn't know about Ramtha though most the quotes weren't that good and this was the only quote I wanted to copy here by Ramtha (out of maybe 5?) so likely my opinions are similar on the questionable value of them.

[dthmstr254]

here is another quote

Quote by: anonymous (I think) Every generation has its accepted evils, the greatest leaders are the ones that end them.

[Technosoul]

If you walk ahead of me, I will not follow.
If you walk behind me, I will not lead you.
If you walk by my side, then we can share this journey toegether. .... book of TAO.

I like the Chicken and egg riddle. If one pre-assumes that evolution is the reality then one might think that something else laid the egg and then that kind of bird evolved inside the egg to it's current idenity (Perhaps graudually egg by egg?). If in your mind you beleive that nature is an eternal circular motion then the chicken did not really start or end - the egg would be a chicken in a different stage of appearence - and once a mature chicken then the part of that chicken would be more eggs. so the chicken and the egg are in fact the same thing and being the same thing you do not have the first or 2nd "thing", of course if time is reality then a baby chick would come before the mature chicken but both would be the same bird. Our concept then depends on the reality via which we wish to construct our perception about that bird. At first we might think that the sun is moving across the sky from east to the west - because that would be our perception of reality, that is until we learn knowledge that the earth is turning in a circular orbit and the sun is standing relatively still. Then our new knowledge based reality would alter of observation - or rather how we interpret what we see.

What if you picked up a girl in a 21 years or older bar and had an affair with her, the next day got arrested for sleeping with a minor, who was skilled at make-up and could look like an adult, and who managed to slip into the bar somehow without being carded. Your first reality would not hold up in court - only the reality that she was in fact only 17 years old - date bate. Here we can see how mainstream reality might differ form personal reality based on ones perception of it.

Reality is sometimes stranger then fiction - Webster.

Love is the answer, now what was the question? - unknown to me.

Everyplace is the center of the universe - Black Elk.

You are, as you are towards others - Technosoul. (hey, that's me!).

PS - glad this post got a five star rating.

[dthmstr254]

AAAAAAHHHHH, *runs and finds an axe, returning to chop the confusion up*

see, that was easy.

[Technosoul]

Quote by: dthmstr254 AAAAAAHHHHH, *runs and finds an axe, returning to chop the confusion up* see, that was easy.

Yipes - the hatchet man.

I knew he was grinding his ax for some reason.

I once knew this tree which was where I worked and everyday I would go out at lunch and sit under my friendly tree - each day that I looked at that tree I would learn something new that I did not know before. It was amazing how much we can learn by just looking at some tree, and how they can insprire concepts about philosophy and so forth. Then one day the company chopped down the tree because the limbs were too close to some electric wires. I was not happy about that at all but continued to have lunch next of the tiny stump.

Then the company went broke and someone came to distroy the building, leaving only the parking lot and the lawns around the building. Later one spring day I was driving by my old work place and I looked over where the tree had been, and I thought I saw something green, I stopped the car for a better look. Yes, the tree was spouting new growth, as if reincarnated from it's doom. The parking lot was now all cracked and weeds were growing up in all the cracks. Nature was reclaiming the truf. No matter how many axes men might swing or how many buildings we might build - sooner or later nature will win out and then the forests will return and the animals will dominate the environment, and we will return to our more tribal status as before. That is my vision which I encountered by watching a tree.

[SteveA]

Ok here are a few more additions I'll toss in:

"Science and religion are flip sides of the same coin. Religions envision what might be while science tries to calculate the odds."

"There's a truth in everything."

"Life exists in the separation between unseen incoherent chaos and the frozen lifelessness of absolute order."

"After realizing there's an interconnectedness to everything, the universe can appear smaller than it did before, but the universe didn't actually get smaller, that's simply an illusion created by being able to see further."

[SteveA]

I'm having too much fun with this. Ok, I'll add a few more:

"Anything possible, given enough time, becomes inevitable."

"Men are not separate from nature but part of its seeds, tree and caretaker."

"Once, science was envisioned as a static lifeless thing, that only had to have the various branches traced out to their ends, and leave nothing new to understand. Instead, we find the questions grow faster than the answers, with such a wealth of knowledge that even given a lifetime, noone can explore more than a small part of it."

"We only have evidence of (at least one) creation and no evidence of destruction, only transformation. The expansion of the universe likely represents continual growth."

"Knowledge is gained by lots of repetition interspersed with moments of understanding."

"The only observable constant is change."

[Osborn F Enready]

I like this thread.

[SteveA]

Quote by: Osborn F Enready I like this thread.

Go ahead and have some fun adding your own. See how "Zen" you can make it sound

[dthmstr254]

Quote by: Technosoul Yipes - the hatchet man. I knew he was grinding his ax for some reason. I once knew this tree which was where I worked and everyday I would go out at lunch and sit under my friendly tree - each day that I looked at that tree I would learn something new that I did not know before. It was amazing how much we can learn by just looking at some tree, and how they can insprire concepts about philosophy and so forth. Then one day the company chopped down the tree because the limbs were too close to some electric wires. I was not happy about that at all but continued to have lunch next of the tiny stump. Then the company went broke and someone came to distroy the building, leaving only the parking lot and the lawns around the building. Later one spring day I was driving by my old work place and I looked over where the tree had been, and I thought I saw something green, I stopped the car for a better look. Yes, the tree was spouting new growth, as if reincarnated from it's doom. The parking lot was now all cracked and weeds were growing up in all the cracks. Nature was reclaiming the truf. No matter how many axes men might swing or how many buildings we might build - sooner or later nature will win out and then the forests will return and the animals will dominate the environment, and we will return to our more tribal status as before. That is my vision which I encountered by watching a tree.

I liked the beginning. and the rest makes you want to think. considering I would rather be IN the tree (not inside, but climbing up onto it) a chopped down tree wouldn't be much fun. your story seems similar to a Phoenix, they die in a flash of fire, but are reborn from the ashes to see new life.

[Lilith]

"I like the Chicken and egg riddle. If one pre-assumes that evolution is the reality then one might think that something else laid the egg and then that kind of bird evolved inside the egg to it's current idenity (Perhaps graudually egg by egg?). If in your mind you beleive that nature is an eternal circular motion then the chicken did not really start or end - the egg would be a chicken in a different stage of appearence - and once a mature chicken then the part of that chicken would be more eggs. so the chicken and the egg are in fact the same thing and being the same thing you do not have the first or 2nd "thing", of course if time is reality then a baby chick would come before the mature chicken but both would be the same bird. Our concept then depends on the reality via which we wish to construct our perception about that bird. At first we might think that the sun is moving across the sky from east to the west - because that would be our perception of reality, that is until we learn knowledge that the earth is turning in a circular orbit and the sun is standing relatively still. Then our new knowledge based reality would alter of observation - or rather how we interpret what we see."

Which came first the chicken or the egg? I have to admit I wondered that myself before in the past. Then one day, I'm at work, standing outside smoking a cig, and I see two ducks doing it. And I had a revelation "Ah, hah! so that's how it's done!" (Yes, even I have my Jessica Simpson moments. )

Ps, I like this thread too. Been needing to change my sig, but never get around to it.

[tman_ndsu08]

"I had two pigeons, bright and gay, fly from me the other day. Why is it they did go? You cannot tell, you do not know."

[ShOuLdEr]

"you are unique, just like everyone else"

[CallousGiant]

"In the UK 100 miles is a long way, In the US 100 years is a long time"