Week 2022-34: Deepak Chopra - Collected Quotes

"Don't try to steer the river." (Deepak Chopra)

"Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never have imagined." (Deepak Chopra)

"Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future." (Deepak Chopra)

"Expectations determine outcomes. If you expect your mental and physical capacity to diminish with age, it probably will. If you have the expectation that you will grow younger and live longer, this will be your experience." (Deepak Chopra)

"In every act of perception we create the world," (Deepak Chopra)

"In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you." (Deepak Chopra)

"It helps if you remember that everyone is doing their best from their level of consciousness." (Deepak Chopra)

"One way to access the field is through the daily practice of silence, meditation, and non-judgment. Spending time in nature will also give you access to the qualities inherent in the field: infinite creativity, freedom, and bliss." (Deepak Chopra)

"Religion is belief is someone else's experience. Spirituality is having your own experience." (Deepak Chopra)

"Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything... even when you can not foresee the outcome." (Deepak Chopra)

"The best way to motivate other people to help you fulfill your goals is to help them fulfill their goals." (Deepak Chopra)

"The need for approval, the need to control things, and the need for external power are needs that are based on fear. When we experience the power of the Self, there is an absence of fear, there is no compulsion to control, and no struggle for approval or external power." (Deepak Chopra)

"The way you think about your body leads to the way you treat it. For people to shift their behavior toward self-care and heightened well-being, we don't need just compliance with standard prevention. There also has to be a drop in our addiction to drugs and surgery as the main approaches of medicine." (Deepak Chopra)

"There are many aspects to success; material wealth is only one component. But success also includes good health, energy and enthusiasm for life, fulfilling relationships, creative freedom, emotional and psychological stability, a sense of well-being, and peace of mind." (Deepak Chopra)

"There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle." (Deepak Chopra)

"Through silence, through meditation, and through non-judgment, you will access the first law, the Law of Pure Potentiality." (Deepak Chopra)

"We have to learn to go beyond both a positive mind and a negative mind to become a silent, nonjudgmental, non-analytical, non-interpretive mind. In other words, the silent witness. In the process of silent witnessing, we experience inner silence. In the purity of silence, we feel connected to our source and to everything else." (Deepak Chopra)

"Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution." (Deepak Chopra)

"You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible." (Deepak Chopra)

"You must learn to get in touch with the innermost essence of your being. This true essence is beyond the ego. It is fearless; it is free; it is immune to criticism; it does not fear any challenge. It is beneath no one, superior to no one, and full of magic, mystery, and enchantment." (Deepak Chopra)

Week 2022-33: Sir Francis Bacon - Collected Quotes

"[…] no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth […]" (Sir Francis Bacon, "Essays", 1597)

"God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world." (Francis Bacon, "The Great Instauration", 1620)

"Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true." (Sir Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum", 1620)

"Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, dies and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to things or the mind permit him, and neither knows or is capable of more." (Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum", 1620)

"No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed." (Sir Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum" Book 2, 1620)

"The first and most ancient inquirers into truth were wont to throw their knowledge into aphorisms, or short, scattered, unmethodical sentences." (Sir Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum", 1620)

"The human mind is often so awkward and ill-regulated in the career of invention that is at first diffident, and then despises itself. For it appears at first incredible that any such discovery should be made, and when it has been made, it appears incredible that it should so long have escaped men’s research. All which affords good reason for the hope that a vast mass of inventions yet remains, which may be deduced not only from the investigation of new modes of operation, but also from transferring, comparing and applying those already known, by the methods of what we have termed literate experience." (Sir Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum", 1620)

"The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits a tincture of the will and passions, which generate their own system accordingly; for man always believes more readily that which he prefers." (Sir Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum", 1620)

"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible." (Francis Bacon, "New Atlantis", 1627)

"A prudent question is, as it were, one half of wisdom." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"Every act of discovery, advances the art of discovery." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"Great discoveries appear simple once they are made." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with 

doubts, he shall end in certainties." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must expect to employ methods never before attempted." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"Make the time to come the disciple of the time past and not its servant." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"Man can only conquer nature by obeying her." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"Mere power and mere knowledge exalt human nature but do not bless it; we must gather from the whole store of things such as make most for the uses of life." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"That all things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"The human understanding is of its own nature prone to abstractions and gives us a substance and reality to thing which are fleeting. But to resolve nature into abstractions is less to our purpose than to dissect her into parts." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do." (Sir Francis Bacon)

"We do not arbitrarily give laws to the intellect or to other things, but as faithful scribes we receive and copy them from the revealed voice of Nature." (Sir Francis Bacon)

Week 2022-32: Carl von Clausewitz - Collected Quotes

"Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is, that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; so our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience; and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832) 

"[…] the conduct of war branches out in almost all directions and has no definite limits; while any system, any model, has the finite nature of a synthesis. An irreconcilable conflict exists between this type of theory and actual practice." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"The deduction of effect from cause is often blocked by some insuperable extrinsic obstacle: the true causes may be quite unknown." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"The function of theory is to put all this in systematic order, clearly and comprehensively, and to trace each action to an adequate, compelling cause. […] Theory should cast a steady light on all phenomena so that we can more easily recognize and eliminate the weeds that always spring from ignorance; it should show how one thing is related to another, and keep the important and the unimportant separate. If concepts combine of their own accord to form that nucleus of truth we call a principle, if they spontaneously compose a pattern that becomes a rule, it is the task of the theorist to make this clear." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"The insights gained and garnered by the mind in its wanderings among basic concepts are benefits that theory can provide. Theory cannot equip the mind with formulas for solving problems, nor can it mark the narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side. But it can give the mind insight into the great mass of phenomena and of their relationships, then leave it free to rise into the higher realms of action." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"The principle of polarity is valid only in relation to one and the same object, in which positive and negative interests exactly cancel one another out. […] When, however, we are dealing with two different things that have a common relation external to themselves, the polarity lies not in the things but in their relationship." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"[…] the role of determination is to limit the agonies of doubt and the perils of hesitation when the motives for action are inadequate." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"The state of crisis is the real war; the equilibrium is nothing but its reflex." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"The primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled. Not until terms and concepts have been defined can one hope to make any progress in examining the question clearly and simply and expect the reader to share one’s views." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"Theory becomes infinitely more difficult as soon as it touches the realm of moral values. Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena. Mechanical and optical structures are not subject to dispute. But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"Truth in itself is rarely sufficient to make men act. Hence the step is always long from cognition to volition, from knowledge to ability. The most powerful springs of action in men lie in his emotions." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"War is the province of chance. in no other sphere of human activity must such a margin be left for this intruder. it increases the uncertainty of every circumstance and deranges the course of events." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

Week 2022-31: Benjamin Disraeli - Collected Quotes

 "It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!" (Benjamin Disraeli, "Curiosities of Literature" Vol. 3, 1824)

"Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own minds." (Benjamin Disraeli, "The Young Duke", 1831)

"Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Contarini Fleming", 1832)

"What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Henrietta Temple", 1837)

"Extreme views are never just; something always turns up which disturbs the calculations formed upon their data." (Benjamin Disraeli, 1847)

"As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Endymion", 1880)

"Imagination is too often accompanied by somewhat irregular logic." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Wit and Wisdom, Imagination", 1881)

"The world is devoted to physical science, because it believes theses discoveries will increase its capacity of luxury and self-indulgence. But the pursuit of science only leads to the insoluble. (Benjamin Disraeli, "Lothair", 1870)

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Ignorance never settles a question." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own."  (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The secret of success is constancy of purpose." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"There is no education like adversity." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"What art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern; the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men, the useful has succeeded to the beautiful." (Benjamin Disraeli)