Jeff > Jeff's Quotes

“Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to image things differently, to make art. The more I prize Gotama's teachings free from the matrix of Indian religious thought in which they are entrenched and the more I come to understand how his own life unfolded in the context of his times, the more I discern a template for living that I can apply at this time in this increasingly secular and globalized world.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“Buddhism, it seemed, was a rational religion, whose truth-claims could withstand the test of reason.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“No matter how hard I tried, I was incapable of giving more importance to a hypothetical, post-mortem existence than to this very life here and now.
Moreover, the Buddhist teachings and practices that had the most impact upon me did so precisely because they heightened my sense of being fully alive in and responsive to this world.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“For me, Buddhism is like a living organism. If it is to flourish outside self-enclosed ghettos of believers, it will have to meet the challenge of understanding, interacting with, and adapting to an environment that is strikingly different from those in which it has evolved.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“I was more concerned with refining my sense of the sheer mysteriousness of life so that it infused each moment of my waking existence, thereby serving as a ground from which to respond more openly and vitally to whatever occurred.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“By emphasizing doubt rather than belief, perplexity rather than certainty, and questions rather than answers, Zen practice granted me the freedom to imagine.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”
― Eugene Debs

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”
― Eugene Victor Debs

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches

“Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.”
― Eugene V. Debs

“I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Eugene V. Debs Speaks

“Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.”
― Eugene Debs

“The people can have anything they want, the only problem is they do not want anything.”
― Eugene Victor Debs

“To stir the masses, to appeal to their higher, better selves, to set them thinking for themselves, and to hold ever before them the ideal of mutual kindness and good will, based upon mutual interests, is to render real service to the cause of humanity.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

“patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood