Glenn Davisson > Glenn's Quotes

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey:

The sages who have compassed sea and land,
Their secret to search out and understand,
My mind misgives me if they ever solve
The scheme on which the universe is planned.”
― Tahir Shah, Beyond the Devil's Teeth : Journeys in Gondwanaland

“An intelligent enemy,' he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, 'rather than a foolish friend.' Or, 'He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.' Or, the favourite of Jan Fishan Khan: 'Nothing is what it seems.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behavior.”
― Robin Skynner

“There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.”
― Rumi

“The human being is given by Nature little more energy than what is needed to maintain the species; to reproduce and to live out our (very short) spans. But if we want to be fit for the journey up and out of the limits of ordinary life, we have to learn not to waste energy. Which we do by busying ourselves too much with material things, and by using our minds in wasteful and damaging ways. You will have seen that I am describing concepts familiar to us from religions, put here in a different context, rescued from being 'sins' or sources of guilt, reintroduced, simply, as tools. It is not 'wicked' to eat and drink too much, not a 'sin' to be envious, but gluttony makes 'the Way' difficult; and thoughts of enmity keep the mind in a seethe, making subtler inputs impossible. And, besides, laws operate that we have not been taught about, whether we have had the benefits of religions or not. Thoughts of anger, jealousy, enmity, revenge, bring retribution. There is nothing theoretical about this: slowly you learn to see patterns where before you saw nothing, because you were over-emotional.”
― Doris Lessing, The Doris Lessing Reader

“Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.”
― Idries Shah, Seeker After Truth: A Handbook

“The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.”
― Idries Shah, Sufi Thought and Action: An Anthology of Important Papers

“But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.”
― Idries Shah, Sufi Thought and Action: An Anthology of Important Papers

“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
― William Blake

“You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.”
― Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

“As well as this, there were of course many sceptics and detractors, not only of Shah but of his students and his would-be or wanna-be students. They’d say things like “You’ve been studying for – what? – 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And where has it got got you, eh? Eh? Nowhere.” And there really was no answer to that, other than to simply try to show a good example, and hope that some might sense subtle signs of progress having been made. But no: they wanted to see Gandalf with his whizz-bangs. Unlike Rabia, we couldn’t magically produce an onion out of thin air – an incontrovertible act – and later retort: “What? Do you think that God is a greengrocer, or something?”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“Only later – much, much later, and after losing all hope and undergoing a seemingly interminable Dark Night of the Soul – would Louie begin to see how Shah’s own work tied in with others. Not only among Sufis, nor in the general fields of spirituality and mysticism, nor in the work of Shah’s own family, friends of Shah, and friends of friends of Shah, and people who quoted people quoting Shah, but in diverse fields and in the town’s marketplace, mucky alleyways and smoke-clouded taverns of everyday life. That was a whole new vista, a continent beyond Shah’s own island – vast, exotic, and apparently self-contained as it had been, and yet not all and everything. Looking back, this wonderful caravanserai had been a very necessary, and much loved, step or two along the way.”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” This touches on the heart of the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Physical reality does not require belief to sustain it, and belief will not modify the rules of the universe.”
― Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”
― William Blake

“I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Human beings are members of a whole
In creation of one essence and soul
If one member is afflicted with pain
Other members uneasy will remain
If you have no sympathy for human pain
The name of human you cannot retain”
― Saadi, گلستان سعدی

“He who by progress has grown from the darkness, lifted himself from the night into light, free is he made of the Halls of Amenti, free of the Flower of Light and of Life.

Guided he then, by wisdom and knowledge, passes from men, to the Master of Life.

There he may dwell as one with the Masters, free from the bonds of the darkness of night.

Seated within the flower of radiance sit seven Lords from the Space-Times above us, helping and guiding through infinite Wisdom, the pathway through time of the children of men.

Mighty and strange, they, veiled with their power, silent, all-knowing, drawing the Life force, different yet one with the children of men.

Different, and yet One with the Children of Light.

Custodians and watchers of the force of man’s bondage, ready to loose when the light has been reached.

First and most mighty, sits the Veiled Presence, Lord of Lords, the infinite Nine,
over the other from each the Lords of the Cycles; Three, Four, Five, and Six, Seven, Eight, each with his mission, each with his powers, guiding, directing the destiny of man.

There sit they, mighty and potent, free of all time and space.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet Of Hermes

“Matter is energy. In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.”
― Graham Chapman, The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words, Vol. 2