Good quotes

for discussing science, relationships, religion or non-BK spirituality.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Good quotes

Post11 Mar 2016

He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.

- Alexander Pope, "Thoughts on Various Subjects"
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Arbit

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Re: Good quotes

Post11 Mar 2016

A witty saying proves nothing

- Voltaire 1694-1778
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post11 Mar 2016

But none of the posts immediately above are "witty". I'd call them truisms.

Voltaire was a great wit. I actually really liked his work and most of it remains pertinent to this day (Candide, perhaps, would be the most relevent to BKs or "seekers" in general).

If nothing else, Voltaire was proof that good, insightful wit is the child of great courage and intelligence, and those without it generally lack both, or are spiritually dead.

Voltaire also famously wrote, "If God did not exist humanity would have to invent him", to which the BKs gleefully respond, "We did, we did!".
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Pink Panther

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Re: Good quotes

Post12 Mar 2016

I agree with you Arbit up to a point. What is important with such quotes is when truth or logic is stated more succinctly and better by a great, preferably famous, mind than how I would say it. Famous of course helps with getting people’s attention and it is preferable if they are famous in the topic being discussed.

"It is the substance that makes the style worthwhile... not the other way around”” - Pink Panther
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post12 Mar 2016

Also, "fame" is rather missing the point ... it's more about their learning and world experience.

Someone like Voltaire is very "famous", but what really counts are his views after having the life experiences he had, which is what we base their worth on.

For example, if Lekhraj Kirpalani has contained himself to giving advice on building a business, working for yourself, creative accounting, social climbing and good public relationship ... I'd respect him and his position based on what he had achieved in life prior to becoming "god" - far more, and far more successfully than I.

Of course, something that interests me is how BKism has learned and adopted many of those qualities, even though they are not specifically "in The Knowledge". And now they aree ven doing business counselling!

Following the British philosophers of his day, Voltaire was a deist but remained good company at dinner. Writing over 2,000 books and pamphlets, many at the risk of his life, there's a lot of thought to quote from. Some which the BKs might agree with
"A good action is preferable to an argument."
"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are opening a new road."

Others that they might wince at. On priests of every religious sect, Voltaire said ...
... those who "rise from an incestuous bed, manufacture a hundred versions of God, then eat and drink God, then p**s and s**t God."

Generally he had a good opinion of Hinduism and Far Eastern "natural religions" which, bearing in mind he was alive in the 1700s, that he had a knowledge alone is impressive.
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post18 Mar 2016

Pride and memory were having an argument, Memory said "It was like this", and Pride said, "Oh no! It couldn’t have been!’"

- ascribed to Friedrich Nietzsche


The Kirpalani Klan are 'tip top' full of pride.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Good quotes

Post17 Aug 2016

"The first law of science is that the truth has not been found. The laws of science are working hypotheses.

The scientist knows that at any moment facts may be found that make the present theory obsolete; this is happening now constantly.

It's amusing. In a religious tradition the older the doctrine, the truer it is held to be.

"In the scientific tradition, on the other hand, a paper written ten years ago is already out of date. There's a continuous movement onward. So there's no law, no Rock of Ages on which you can rest. There's nothing of the kind. It's fluid.

And we know that rocks are fluid too, though it takes them a long time to flow. Nothing lasts. It all changes."

- Joseph Campbell, "Pathways to Bliss"
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Pink Panther

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Re: Good quotes

Post17 Aug 2016

"We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt."

- Richard P Feynman
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post11 Oct 2016

Brahma Kumaris as spiritual colonists, colonising the planet to create their Empire.
"Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip, and emptying the native's brain of all form and content.

By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.

-- Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth.
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post20 Oct 2016

One of the criticisms BKs have often made about me, or this site, is that it is not "royal" or it is "impure", relating to primarily my use of language.

One of the reason I use whatever language I feel like, and is part of my culture, is a rejection of any BK control whatsoever.

I find when BKs are refused control over an interaction, then tend to disappear pretty quickly. Likewise, I suggest that they also have a habitual tendency of avoiding situations , where they do not have control, e.g. open debates with critics, religious experts, even open questions and answers of their leaders and so on.
"If you control the language, you control the argument
If you control the argument, you control information
If you control information, you control history
If you control history, you control the past
He who controls the past controls the future.”


– Big Brother, 1984 (George Orwell)
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post21 Oct 2016

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.
I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have.
I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with them while they are right,

... and part with them when they go wrong.


- Abraham Lincoln
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Pink Panther

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Re: Good quotes

Post26 Nov 2016

Getting a proper perspective ...
Life is a touchstone for the truth of the spirit. Spirit that drags a man away from life, seeking fulfillment only in itself, is a false spirit though the man too is to blame, since he can choose whether he will give himself up to this spirit or not. Life and spirit are two powers or necessities between which man is placed. Spirit gives meaning to his life, and the possibility of its greatest development. But life is essential to spirit, since its truth is nothing if it cannot live.

- C G Jung Collected Works, P 647 -648
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Pink Panther

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Re: Good quotes

Post04 Dec 2016

Mythology––and therefore civilization––is a poetic, supernormal image, conceived, like all poetry, in depth, but susceptible of interpretation on various levels.

The shallowest minds see in it the local scenery; the deepest, the foreground of the void; and between are the stages of the Way from the ethnic to the elementary idea, the local to the universal being, which is Everyman, as he both knows and is afraid to know.

For the human mind in its polarity of the male and female modes of experience, in its passages from infancy to adulthood, in its toughness and tenderness, and in its continuing dialog with the world, is the ultimate mythogenetic zone––the creator and the destroyer, the slave and yet the master, of all the gods.”

= Joseph Campbell, "The Masks of God, Vol. I: Primitive Mythology," p. 472
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post06 Dec 2016

Not one the BKs are likely to pick up and use ... they are more likely to argue their mental health is reality.
“Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.”

– M. Scott Peck
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ex-l

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Re: Good quotes

Post10 Dec 2016

“One gets the impression that culture is something imposed on a reluctant majority by a minority that managed to gain possession of the instruments of power and coercion.”

- Sigmund Freud in The Future of an Illusion (1927)
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