mad men and the smarts that smart........of the non-artsy fartsy no-mind kind

[Guest guest]

Albert Camus

" At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in

the face. "

 

 

 

Lao Tzu

" Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself. "

 

 

Jeremy Bentham

" Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart. "

 

" As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to

measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends. "

 

" The question is not, " Can they reason? " nor, " Can they talk? " but

rather, " Can they suffer? " "

 

 

Albert Einstein

" The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should

transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both

the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious

sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual

as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description...If there

is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs, it

would be Buddhism. "

 

 

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein

" For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ

the word ''meaning'' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is

its use in the language. "

 

 

Peter Singer

" Animal Liberation will require greater altruism on the part of human

beings than any other liberation movement. The animals themselves are

incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against

their condition with votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Human beings

have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until

we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny

continue, proving that we really are the selfish tyrants that the

most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said we are? Or

will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine

altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our

power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists,

but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? "

 

" The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which

each one of us, individually, answers it. "

 

 

Jean-Paul Sartre

" Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being

eternal. "

 

 

Alan Watts

" But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know. "

 

" Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one

is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. "

 

 

 

David Hume

" Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are

governed by the few. "

 

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

" Man is more ape than many of the apes "

 

" Is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders? "

 

 

 

Huston Smith

" Entering Zen is like stepping through Alice's looking glass. One

finds oneself in a topsy-turvy wonderland where everything seems

quite mad - charmingly mad for the most part, but mad all the same. "

 

 

Gandhi

" Be the change you wish to see in the world "

 

 

Osho

" Very rarely does a person want to be happy - notwithstanding what

they go on saying. Very rarely is a person ready to be happy - people

have so much investment in their misery. They love to be unhappy...in

fact, they are happy in being unhappy. "

 

" The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the

moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you

become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of

freedom. "

 

 

 

Bertrand Russell

" The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very

uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through

life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the

habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which

have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his

deliberate reason. "