Aydin Mohseni

“I live my life in widening circle
That reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
But I give myself to it.

I circle around God, that primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
And I still don't know: am I a falcon,
A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense of surrender to the empty passing of time. In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start; the pensée de derrière la tête [thought at the back of the head] fails to pierce the shell of lethargy that wraps our state about. Every moment we expect the shell to break, for we know no reason why it should continue. But it does continue, pulse after pulse, and we float with it, until—also without reason that we can discover—an energy is given, something—we know not what—enables us to gather ourselves together, we wink our eyes, we shake our head, the background ideas become effective, and the wheels of life go round again.”
― William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow