Mind & Self-awareness quotes for UPSC & State PCS

Cynicism is humour in ill health.

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.

Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

You should inform your gut and then trust it.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

As our acts and our thoughts are, so will our lives be.

To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

If one doesn't know his mistakes, he won't want to correct them.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy's devices.

Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

He who can listen to the music in the midst of noise can achieve great things.

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong — especially if one is promptly found out.

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self criticism.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader, are your own nature reflected in them.

The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense — he is always satisfied with himself.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.

The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

There are some things about your own village that you never know until you have been away from it.

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, epochs it is the rule.

Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. p. 32 in the 1992 edition, , Beacon Press

I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

For such is the work of philosophy: it cures souls, draws off vain anxieties, confers freedom from desires, drives away fears.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. (Hays translation)

'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality.

Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up.

If I become so convinced that ‘I’m always right,’ the logical conclusion of that often ends up being great cruelty and great violence.

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.

Of any man at all it is to err, to persist in error is of none except unthinking; for the later thoughts, as they say, are usually the wiser.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Let none find fault with others; let none see the omissions and commissions of others. But let one see one’s own acts, done and undone. (Verse 50)

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push it.

The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature.

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

A boat may stay in water, but water should not stay in boat. A spiritual aspirant may live in the world, but the world should not live within him. (266)

Just as a fletcher straightens an arrow shaft, even so the discerning man straightens his mind — so fickle and unsteady, so difficult to guard. (Verse 33)

One truly is the protector of oneself; who else could the protector be? With oneself fully controlled, one gains a mastery that is hard to gain. (Verse 160)

In a world, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself.

I have often wondered how it should come to pass, that every man loving himself best, should more regard other men's opinions concerning himself than his own.

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

Do not go outside yourself, return to yourself: truth dwells in the interiority of man and, if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself too.

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

We disparage reason. But all the time it's what we're most concerned with. There's will as motor and there's will as brakes. Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.

A mind of slow apprehension is therefore not necessarily a weak mind. The one who is alert with abstractions is not always profound, he is more often very superficial.

A fixed mindset, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and not achieve their full potential.

By far the most vital lesson I have ever learned is the importance of what we think. If I knew what you think, I would know what you are. Our thoughts make us what we are.

We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin — to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

Indeed, wisdom is born of meditation; without meditation wisdom is lost. Knowing this twofold path of gain and loss of wisdom, one should conduct oneself so that wisdom may increase.

We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost.

When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.

The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed.

For what else are you busied with except improving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself?

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

The concept of the well-adjusted personality or of good adjustment sets a low ceiling upon the possibility for advancement and for growth. The cow, the slave, the robot may all be well adjusted.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.

Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

Unless we exercise our power to choose wisely, our actions will be determined by conditions. Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox. (Verse 1)

He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself is his own dungeon.

There is no fatality which forces the Old World towards new catastrophe. Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. They have within themselves the power to become free at any moment.

It is a mistake, too, to say that the face is the mirror of the soul. The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only.

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy, or a foe to a foe, the ill-directed mind can do to you even worse. Whatever a mother, father or other kinsman might do for you, the well-directed mind can do for you even better.

Some people do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. They are a thorn in the spirit. But I consider it a priceless gift and a deep responsibility to think.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel 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.

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.

You did in your twenties what you knew how to do, and when you knew better you did better. And you should not be judged for the person that you were, but for the person that you're trying to be and the woman that you are now.

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.

Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

We are what we are, because of the vibrations of thought which we pick up and register, through the stimuli of our daily environment. Resolve to throw off the influences of any unfortunate environment, and to build your own life to order.

The three great things that govern mankind are reason, passion and superstition. The first governs a few, the two last share the bulk of mankind and possess them in their turns. But superstition most powerfully produces the greatest mischief.

So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.

For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.

If we are willing to make such efforts in order to understand foreign cultures, unknown species and distant planets, it might be worth working just as hard in order to understand our own minds. And we had better understand our minds before the algorithms make our minds up for us.

Use the atman to raise the atman. Do not lower the atman. The atman is the atman’s friend and the atman is the atman’s enemy. The atman, which has been used to conquer the atman, is the atman’s friend. For someone who has failed to control the atman, the atman harms like an enemy.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Many unfortunate human situations unfold [...] where people who face very bad options take desperate gambles, accepting a high probability of making things worse in exchange for a small hope of avoiding a large loss. Risk taking of this kind often turns manageable failures into disasters.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. (Hays translation)

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.

Gautama... attained nirvana... fully liberated from suffering. Henceforth... as 'Buddha'.., 'The Enlightened One'.., spent... his life explaining his discoveries... in a single law: ...to be ...liberated from suffering is to be ...liberated from craving; and the only way ...is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.

Habit is a second nature.

Delay is preferable to error.

One may be humble out of pride.

A man is what he wills himself to be.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.

You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog.

Not circumstance but will can make impure.

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

Man is free at the instant he wants to be.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.

We invent by intuition, though we prove by logic.

Live within; be not shaken by outward happenings.

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.

We must not say that every mistake is a foolish one.

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

One cannot prevent people from thinking what they please.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.

Those who are free from common prejudices acquire others.

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

No Man is wise at all Times, or is without his blind Side.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

I do not quote from the scriptures; I simply see what I see.

The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.

If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I?

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.

A good repentance is the best medicine for diseases of the soul.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. (Hays translation)

Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.

That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more than their judgment.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.

Do not read so much, look about you and think of what you see there.

The first advice is to slow down, and not follow your first impulses.

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.

No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.

It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

For love of bustle is not industry – it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Diseases of the mind are more common and more pernicious than diseases of the body.

When people show you who they are, believe them, the first time. Not the 29th time!

It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise!

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Even in the most uneventful of our lives, we are called upon to choose our battles (p165)

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

In order not to be astonished at obtaining victories, one ought not to think only of defeats.

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.

Man struggles to find life outside himself, unaware that the life he is seeking is within him.

The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.

When you identify yourself with a group of people or a set of ideas, aren't you separating yourself?

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

The pen is the tongue of the soul; as are the thoughts engendered there, so will be the things written.

The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

The fact is women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

To be ignorant is not the special prerogative of man; to know that he is ignorant is his special privilege.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, would be to be a god.

When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.

To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one's mind — this is the teaching of the Buddhas. (Verse 183)

Should you find a wise critic to point out your faults, follow him as you would a guide to hidden treasure. (Verse 76)

It's silly to try to escape other people's faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own. (Hays translation)

He is happy, whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances.

As the quality of water changes with the nature of the soil; So will a man’s reason vary with the quality of his friends.

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value.

In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons.

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels; he whose desire overcomes his intellect is less than an animal.

I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of strength that is already within them.

Men take on the nature and the habits and the power of thought of those with whom they associate in a spirit of sympathy and harmony.

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.

The vanities of all others may gradually die out, but the vanity of a saint regarding his sainthood is hard indeed to wear away. (110)

When thou callest another a fool, as thou must, sometimes, yet do not forget that thou thyself hast been the supreme fool in humanity.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

Translation: If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Toleration ... is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

We must overcome difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.

Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.

On the occasion of every act ask thyself, How is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it? A little time and I am dead, and all is gone.

All birds find shelter during a rain, but eagle avoids rain by flying above the clouds. Problems are common, but attitude makes the difference.

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist – someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations

There's a whole bunch of things I don't know a thing about — I just stay away from those. So, I stay within what I call my circle of competence.

Failure is a state of mind. It’s like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and ... each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

The superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. When internal examination discovers nothing wrong, what is there to be anxious about, what is there to fear?

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

If some people hadn't felt obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had at one point maintained it, they would have turned into quite different people.

Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.

There is no worse sickness for the soul, O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection. The heart and eyes must bleed a lot before self-complacency falls away.

A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther.

Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world.

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A being that is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.

For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

But no wall can be erected against Fortune which she cannot take by storm; let us strengthen our inner defences. If the inner part be safe, man can be attacked, but never captured.

Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.

You may drink the ocean dry; you may uproot from its base the mountain Meru; you may swallow fire. But more diffucult than all these, oh Good One! is control over the mind. Panchadasi.

This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.

We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

Adults are only less superstitious than children in proportion as they have more power over their environment. In predicaments where everyone is powerless (eg war, gambling) everyone is superstitious

The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price. But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.

Although humans are not irrational, they often need help to make more accurate judgements and better decisions. [...] [They] also need protection from others who deliberately exploit their weaknesses [...].

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.

It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.

He that in his studies wholly applies himself to labour and exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time, and he that only applies himself to meditation, and neglects labour and exercise, only wanders and loses himself.

False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera.

Who may be called a paramahamsa? He who, like a swan, can take the milk from a mixture of milk and water, leaving aside the water. He who, like an ant, can take the sugar from a mixture of sugar and sand, leaving aside the sand.

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity. . .

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance.

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

The superior man examines his heart, that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause for dissatisfaction with himself. That wherein the superior man cannot be equaled is simply this — his work which other men cannot see.

Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions.

Reality is, after all, too big for our frail understanding to fully comprehend. Nevertheless, we have to build our life on the theory which contains the maximum truth. We cannot sit still because we cannot, or do not , know the Absolute Truth.

Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

O Madhusūdana, the mind is an unsteady thing. Hence it is unrealistic to expect evenness out of it as your system of yoga demands. O, Keśava, it is easier to control the wind than to try and control the fickle, unsettling, dominant, and stubborn mind.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

In Nekhludoff, as in all people, there were two beings; one spiritual, who sought only such happiness for himself as also benefited others; and the animal being, seeking his own happiness for the sake of which he is willing to sacrifice that of the world.

All students of man and society who possess that first requisite for so difficult a study, a due sense of its difficulties, are aware that the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for true, as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us.

Moreover, there is a victory and defeat—the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats—which each man gains or sustains at the hands, not of another, but of himself; this shows that there is a war against ourselves going on within every one of us.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one.

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.

I always disagree, however, when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates.

The lesson is clear: estimates of causes of death are warped by media coverage. [...] The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.

The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads — Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.

When one's mind dwells on the objects of Senses, fondness for them grows on him, from fondness comes desire, from desire anger. Anger leads to bewilderment, bewilderment to loss of memory of true Self, and by that intelligence is destroyed, and with the destruction of intelligence he perishes

We speak glibly of conservation education, but what do we mean by it? If we mean indoctrination, then let us be reminded that it is just as easy to indoctrinate with fallacies as with facts. If we mean to teach the capacity for independent judgement, then I am appalled by the magnitude of the task.

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.

Writing is born as the maidservant of human consciousness, but is increasingly becoming its master. Our computers have trouble understanding how Homo sapiens talks, feels and dreams. So we are teaching Homo sapiens to talk, feel and dream in the language of numbers, which can be understood by computers.

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.

Three years ago he was an honest, self-denying youth, ready to devote himself to every good cause; now he was a corrupt and refined egotist, given over to personal enjoyment. ... And all this terrible transformation took place in him only because he ceased to have faith in himself, and began to believe in others.