1. "Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."
2. "Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
3. "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
4. “Among us English-speaking peoples do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation of material attachments, the unbridled soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly -- the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. / It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There must be thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman. Think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club doors close in our faces; yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably bear witness to the spirit, and our example would help to set free our generation. The cause would need its funds, but we its servants would be potent in proportion as we personally were contented with our poverty. / I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.”
5. “Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer... It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
6. "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."
7. "Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."
8. "Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me."
9. "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing song."
10. “Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers which he habitually fails to use.”
11. “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”
12. "Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance."
13. “[Environment is] a big, booming, buzzing confusion.”
14. “Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call fourth. … Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. … Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives fare within his limits he possesses powers of various sorts he habitually fails to use.”
15. "Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it."
16. "Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."
17. “Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.”
18. "Human Beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives".
19. "I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride."
20. “If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.”
21. "If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. Try the "as if" technique."
22. "I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says 'This is the real me!"
23. ”Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making.”
24. "In logic a concept is unalterable; but what are popularly called our 'conception of things' alter by being used. The aim of 'Science' is to attain conceptions so adequate and exact that we shall never need to change them. There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to renovate, its ideas. Our education is a ceaseless compromise between the conservative and the progressive factors.... Most of us grow more and more enslaved to the stock conceptions with which we have once become familiar, and less and less capable of assimilating impressions in any but the old ways. Old fogyism, in short is the inevitable terminus to which life sweeps us on. Objects which violate our established habits of 'apperception' are simply not taken account of at all; or, if on some occasion we are forced by dint of argument to admit their existence, twenty-four hours later the admission is as if it were not, and every trace of the unassimilable truth has vanished from our thought. Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."
25. "Inquiry is fatal to certainty."
26. “I think you will practically recognise the two types of mental make-up that I mean if I head the columns by the titles `tender-minded' and `tough-minded' respectively.”
27. "Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference."
28. “Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be in the bargain, is simply the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species.”
29. “Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they possess and which they might use under appropriate circumstance.”
30. “Metaphysics means only an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently.”
31. “Most of us can learn to live in perfect comfort on higher levels of power. Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon - deeper and deeper strata of explosible material, ready for use by anyone who probes so deep. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.”
32. "Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of hiswhole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his lttle finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed."
33. ”Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man, who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.”
34. "Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you."
35. “No human being ever learns to live until he has awakened to the dormant powers within him.”
36. "Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task."
37. "Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will."
38. “Often quoted in forms that correspond only loosely to Hugo's original words, for example: No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation.”
39. “Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.”
40. “Ought it to be assumed that in all men the mixture of religion with other elements should be identical? Ought it, indeed, to be assumed that the lives of all men should show identical religious elements? In other words, is the existence of so many religious types and sects and creeds regrettable? To these questions I answer 'No' emphatically. And my reason is that I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner.”
41. "Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf."
42. “Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible; we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.”
43. “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,- for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.”
44. “Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible; we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.”
45. “Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.”
46. “Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up in to our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.”
47. “Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.”
48. “Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
49. “Some years ago I myself made some observations on...nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question -- for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”
50. “The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.”
51. “The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life, the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician.”
52. “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
53. “The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.”
54. “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
55. “The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.”
56. ”The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.”
57. "The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it."
58. “The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the Bitch-Goddess success. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.”
59. “There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.”
60. "There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision."
61. "There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it."
62. "There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers."
63. “The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.”
64. "The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds."
65. “The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.”
66. “Think of her beauty--a shining ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over one half, the other bathed in starry night, reflecting the heavens from all her waters, myriads of lights and shadows in the folds of her mountains and windings of her valleys, she would be a spectacle of rainbow glory, could one only see her from afar as we see parts of her from her own mountain-tops.”
67. "This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it."
68. "Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle."
69. “To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.”
70. "Truth happens to an idea"
71. "We all are ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause."
72. ”We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.”
73. "'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth"
74. “Whenever two people meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”
75. "When a thing is new, people say: 'It is not true.' Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: 'It is not important.' Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: 'Anyway, it is not new.'"
76. “When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.”
77. “You cannot fly like an eagle with wings of a wren.”
78. "Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them."
