Bremer Acosta > Quotes

“When you pursue wisdom, you will soon realize how much you don’t know. Your knowledge will be incomplete, but continually developing through your curiosity.

Arrogance blocks new information from coming in. When you’re conceited, you’ll resist change, and struggle to preserve your fixed image. Don’t fall into smug idleness, used to comfort. Challenge what you think you know, not caring if other people see you as a fool.

Progress daily in your own uncertainty.”
― Bremer Acosta, Stoic Practice

“leaves glow under
a haze of sunlight,
and hang
still on a windless
day”
― Bremer Acosta, Cosmos in a Tree

“Progress daily in your own uncertainty. Live in awareness of the questions.”
― Bremer Acosta, Stoic Practice

“full moon fills
in power lines,
crow flies off”
― Bremer Acosta, Cosmos in a Tree: Wordless Poems

“I raved
we will find soul
in 5g of dry mushrooms,
humbled by the world
not put into words

sit in nature,
just listen

tears after
lengthy laughter”
― Bremer Acosta, Internet Erasure

“a bright star
haunts me,
as I fell in love
with the sunsets
on a breezy rooftop”
― Bremer Acosta, Internet Erasure

“You are all the lives you have influenced. You are all your distant ancestors who survived for you to be born. You are all your descendants who will grow after your decomposition.”
― Bremer Acosta

“We have traded our intimacy for social media, our romantic bonds for dating matches on apps, our societal truth for the propaganda of corporate interests, our spiritual questioning for dogmatism, our intellectual curiosity for standardized tests and grading, our inner voices for the opinions of celebrities and hustler gurus and politicians, our mindfulness for algorithmic distractions and outrage, our inborn need to belong to communities for ideological bubbles, our trust in scientific evidence for the attractive lies of false leaders, our solitude for public exhibitionism.

We have ignored the hunter-gatherer wisdom of our past, obedient now to the myth of progress.

But we must remember who we are and where we came from.

We are animals born into mystery, looking up at the stars. Uncertain in ourselves, not knowing where we are heading. We exist with the same bodies, the same brains, as Homo sapiens from thousands of years past, roaming on the plains, hunting in forests and by the sea, foraging together in small bands.

Except now, our technology is exponentially increasing at a scale that we cannot predict.

We are overwhelmed with information; lost in a matrix that we do not understand.

Our civilizational “progress” is built on the bones of the indigenous and the poor and the powerless.

Our “progress” comes at the expense of our land, and oceans, and air.

We are reaching beyond what we can globally sustain. Former empires have perished from their unrestrained greed for more resources. They were limited in past ages by geography and capacity, collapsing in regions, and not over the entire planet.

What will be the cost of our progress?

We have grown arrogant in our comfort, hardened away from our compassion, believing that our reality is the only reality.

Yet even at our most uncertain, there are still those saints who are unknown and nameless, who help even when they do not need to help.

They often are not rich, don’t have their profiles written up in magazines, and will never win any prestigious awards.

They may have shared their last bit of food while already surviving on so little. They may have cherished the disheartened, shown warmth to the neglected, tended to the diseased and dying, spoken kindly to the hopeless.

They do not tremble in silence while the wheels of prejudice crush over their land.
Withering what was once fertile into pale death and smoke.

They tend to what they love, to what they serve.

They help, even when they could fall back into ignorance, even when they could prosper through easy greed, even when they could compromise their values, conforming into groupthink for the illusion of security.

They help.”
― Bremer Acosta

“Life will question you in its vital moments. It's up to you in how you'll respond. You might have drifted from the principles that you once followed. You could've indulged in vices or fallen into unthinking habits. It's your choice to start your practice again. Remind yourself of what's valuable and then act. You still have a choice to be brave, temperate, and wise.”
― Bremer Acosta, Stoic Practice

“A mountain shrouded in mist is not hiding anything profound. There is no more wisdom on top of that mountain than there is anywhere else. It is just as sacred as a nap below the bough of a tree, washing the dishes, the sun fading over a meadow, belly laughter, a walk down a narrow path.”
― Bremer Acosta

“When you give your items away, don’t keep the excess of your pride.”
― Bremer Acosta, Stoic Practice

“In order to not feel alone, we conform our selves to masks and hide in social solitude. We ignore the inner geniuses and envy the others.”
― Bremer Acosta, Internet Erasure

“black clouds
drifting through
starlight”
― Bremer Acosta, Cosmos in a Tree

“Critical thinkers are honest about the limitations of their knowledge. Perhaps it is impossible to know everything there is to know—and there is still so much to learn.”
― Bremer Acosta, A Philosophy of Critical Thinking

“A mind rooted in honest exploration is essential to understanding the world and living a meaningful life.”
― Bremer Acosta, A Philosophy of Critical Thinking

“Popularity was an attractive snare. Only fools wanted attention at the expense of peace.”
― Bremer Acosta, Father in My Name

“A good story mattered. The truth of what happened was only a coincidence.”
― Bremer Acosta, Father in My Name

“light stills dust
into the steel
guitar strings”
― Bremer Acosta

“Those who are truly free do not seek to prove themselves to others. They accept responsibility for their actions and find fulfillment in the unfolding of daily life.”
― Bremer Acosta, A Philosophy of Critical Thinking

“pregnant belly of
sunlight, bouncing
over an open book”
― Bremer Acosta

“It was the American Dream to strive for a future that might not exist.”
― Bremer Acosta, Father in My Name

“To be duped into joining cults and stupid fads, to be manipulated into voting for politicians who promote disastrous policies, to be fooled into ordering sham products, to be tricked into donating vast sums of money to charlatans, to waste decades trying out false solutions to medical ailments, to unwittingly spread misinformation to close friends, is not only unwise. It may ultimately be deadly for the ignorant. It may destroy the minds of the most vulnerable.”
― Bremer Acosta

“How many mistakes have we made, how many of our choices have led to unnecessary suffering, so that we could earn our wisdom?”
― Bremer Acosta

“When we aren’t aware of our biases, we can easily be fooled. Sometimes even when we are aware, we can be fooled. While our ignorance works against us, it can be profitable for those who wish to take advantage of us.”
― Bremer Acosta

“hands full
of wrinkled
sunlight and
shadow”
― Bremer Acosta, Cosmos in a Tree

“Those who rebelled were considered a threat to the group. Their very existence was proof enough of chaos.”
― Bremer Acosta, Father in My Name

“In a way,” Ava said, “we hardly know ourselves. Our senses are limited, our brains are biased, and our instruments are imprecise. Even all of visible matter is just a tiny fraction of what exists. Think about dark matter and dark energy. Think about all the hypotheses that haven’t been tested or can’t be tested in our lifetimes. Our bodies of knowledge are not only incomplete. They’re changing with every approximation, with every rigorous study. The more we learn, the more mysteries arise in the universe. To me, that’s the greatest realization. Discovering how insignificantly small we are in the cosmos while knowing we’re the cosmos too. We are what we’re looking for. We believe we’re so separate from everything, but we’re all connected in this moment, changing, always changing, but never capable enough to realize the immensity of existence itself. Our mammalian brains will never comprehend our interconnection to everything. We’re waves in an ocean and we don’t truly understand how deep that ocean can go.”
― Bremer Acosta, Father in My Name

“There is more wisdom in a crumbling leaf than in a thousand words about impermanence.”
― Bremer Acosta

“Dr. Hopkins told our class that we might never know what other people think and feel, but we used symbols that we generally agreed upon (language, mathematics, maps) for our meaning and purpose. We built rickety bridges over chasms of ignorance.”
― Bremer Acosta, Father in My Name

“Is this neuro-bot really supposed to be her, this creature, this thing, compiled of the ghosts of human data, the replicas of their past?”
― Bremer Acosta, Blood of Other Worlds