Roger Lipsey > Quotes

“The great obstacle to the 'struggle toward clear vision of the universal' is the human trait that Mondrian variously calls 'individuality,' 'personality'... [p.73]”
― Roger Lipsey, An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art

“To put oneself in the position of others is an act of compassionate imagination freed from self-concern.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself—only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“Gurdjieff put considerable emphasis on what he called the “instinctive sensing of reality,” weak in many of us but not irretrievably so.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“Quick and able as some participants were, the Movements were not and have never been intended for professional dancers.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“If he was to have able pupils and helpful associates as time went on, they would have to find their way to the attitude evoked by Henri Tracol in his response to Luc Dietrich: open to Gurdjieff but psychologically free and self-possessed.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“The United Nations relies on factuality—and steady ideals—to progress. “No institution,” he once observed, “can become effective unless it is forced to wrestle with the problems, the conflicts, and the tribulations of real life.”5 For this reason, he didn’t mind the clash of ideas and agendas at UN meetings large and small. On the contrary, he welcomed substantive debate and the often awkward search for solutions. “I feel that what very many people call negative sides—the talking, the conflicts, the flux of events, the uncertainties about outcomes and so on and so forth—are not negative sides but positive sides.”6 Obstacles and delays were to be expected: “Setbacks in efforts to implement an ideal do not prove that the ideal is wrong…. At the beginning of great changes in human society there must always be a stage of…frailty or seeming inconsistency.”7”
― Roger Lipsey, Politics and Conscience: Dag Hammarskjold on the Art of Ethical Leadership

“When for self, prayer and wish no good; only work good for self. But when wish with heart for other, can help.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“At one level it means to be present in this world—present, a term and thought likely first introduced in the West in Gurdjieff’s writings, now common. It means that one has attained or knows something of the way back to a sense of reality, of “being there.” But it means more than that. It means that one cares for and strives invisibly toward depth of humanity—toward conscience and awakened feeling, toward some reserve of goodness and wisdom that can gradually reveal itself and offer guidance. To be is to be fully human at last, not a dreamer, not consumed by self-serving passions, not complacent. Further, it is a matter of contact and acknowledgment, open to whatever we intuit or know to be above us, open to one’s fellow human beings, to living things, to all things that support decency of life. When one encounters authentic being in others, it evokes spontaneous respect.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“Everyone nice when asleep. But you press on one of his corns and then you see what kind of man he is.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“We have to let everyone hear, the result does not belong to us.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“I must not say ‘I’ merely mechanically, as a word, but I must note in myself its resonance. This means that in saying ‘I’ you must listen carefully to the inner sensation.” Listening, resonance, sensation: Gurdjieff initiated at the Prieuré an approach to self-awareness and the possibility of fullness of being. It is true that he was a riding master in these years, demanding, urging people on. It is also true that he was a man of spirit. His approach to the deeper dimensions of human being was expressed in a new language unheard before in the West, although many of its terms have since entered the lingua franca of contemporary spirituality.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“I wish to be, I can be, I have the right to be, I have the ability to be. I swear to myself that this will never be for my personal profit, but to help others. I wish to be, to help others. This is to be understood as a vow.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“he gave it explicit thought, and some of his provocations and offensive behavior were intended to free his circle, as needed, from enslaving admiration. And yet that particular trap cannot help but make itself known in the relation between serious student and accomplished teacher, and it is a measure of the student’s resourcefulness, once the trap is recognized, to free oneself without losing an ounce of regard for the teacher.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy

“People of Western culture put great value on the level of a man’s knowledge but they do not value the level of a man’s being and are not ashamed of the low level of their own being. They do not even understand what it means.”
― Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy