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If it’s true that we’re all from the centre of a star, every atom of us from the centre of a star, then we’re all the same thing ... all been recycled thousands of times ... therefore it’s only me out there. So what is there to be afraid of? What is there that needs solace-seeking? Nothing. There’s nothing to be afraid of because it’s all us. The trouble is, we have been separated by being born and given a name, an identity, being individuated. We’ve been separated from the oneness and that’s what religion exploits – that people have this yearning to be part of the overall one again – so they exploit that, they call it God, they say he has rules, and I think that’s cruel. I think you do it absent religion. George Carlin
I often warn people: Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, There is no I in team. What you should tell them is, Maybe not. But there is an I in independence, individuality and integrity. George Carlin
The self-esteem movement began in 1970 and I’m happy to say it has been a complete failure. George Carlin
Imagine that – sociopaths have high self-esteem. George Carlin
At what age do you go from being special to being not so special? George Carlin
I do not believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the church. We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves. Robert Ingersoll, What Must We Do to be Saved? XI: The Evangelical Alliance
It is a blessed thing that in every age someone has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions. Robert Ingersoll
Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music. Sam Harris
The divided self. R D Laing, book on schizophrenia 1960
Is love possible? Is freedom possible? Is the truth possible? Is it possible to be one’s actual self with another human being? Is it possible to be a human being any more? Is it possible to be a person? Do persons even exist? R D Laing, psychiatrist
Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,
Too good to be so, and too bad to live. William Shakespeare, Richard II I i 19-20, Bolingbroke to King Richard et al
I cannot hide what I am. I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man’s jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man’s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend to no man’s business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humour. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing I iii 13-18, Don John to Conrad
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves. William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar 1970 starring Charlton Heston & Diana Rigg & Jason Robards & Christopher Lee & John Gielgud & Robert Vaughn & Richard Chamberlain & Richard Johnson & Jill Bennett et al, director Stuart Burge
This above all: to thine own self be true. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I iii 78, Polonius to Laertes
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory ...
Most necessary ’tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt
... Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown. ibid. III ii 180-181, Player King
Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I! ibid. II ii 523, Hamlet
I am myself indifferent honest. But yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. ibid. II i 123-129, Hamlet
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory ...
Most necessary ’tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt ...
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown. ibid. III ii @ 180
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. ibid. IV v 42-43, Ophelia
I never found man that knew how to love himself. William Shakespeare, Othello I iii 313-314, Iago
To know my deed ’twere best not know myself. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth II ii 71, Macbeth
As soon as you trust yourself you will know how to live. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let each man sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean. Johann Wolfgang von Goeth
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
arises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning. Isaac Asimov
One always dies too soon – or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are – your life. And nothing else. Jean-Paul Sartre
Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. Jean-Paul Sartre