Nathan > Nathan's Quotes

“We're all just walking each other home.”
― Ram Dass

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
― Ram Dass

“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
― ram dass

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
― ram dass

“Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.”
― Ram Dass

“The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it--just don't get lost in it.”
― ram dass

“Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts.. if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way.”
― ram dass

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
― Sigmund Freud

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
― Sigmund Freud

“A woman should soften but not weaken a man.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?”
― Sigmund Freud

“Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.”
― Sigmund Freud

“We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued. You may therefore have to conduct yourself habitually in a manner that allows you some respect for your own Being—and fair enough. But every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God. If that stark fact meant, however, that we had no responsibility to care, for ourselves as much as others, everyone would be brutally punished all the time. That would not be good. That would make the shortcomings of the world, which can make everyone who thinks honestly question the very propriety of the world, worse in every way. That simply cannot be the proper path forward.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives—they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better. Freud called this a “repetition compulsion.” He thought of it as an unconscious drive to repeat the horrors of the past—sometimes, perhaps, to formulate those horrors more precisely, sometimes to attempt more active mastery and sometimes, perhaps, because no alternatives beckon. People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly … unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn?”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“Scccccratccch the most clever postmodern-relativist professor’s Mercedes with a key, and you will see how fast the mask of relativism (with its pretense that there can be neither right nor wrong) and the cloak of radical tolerance come off.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“you should not overlook the guidelines of your culture. Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you).”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“When you decide to learn about your faults, so that they can be rectified, you open a line of communication with the source of all revelatory thought. Maybe that’s the same thing as consulting your conscience. Maybe that’s the same thing, in some manner, as a discussion with God.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.”
― Aldous Huxley

“We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”
― Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain