Joko Beck - Lawrence Krauss - Martin Luther King - Christopher Hitchens - Derren Brown TV - Carl Sagan - The Sopranos TV - Ludwig Wittgenstein - Iain Banks - Richard Dawkins - David Foster Wallace -
We have self-centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall. Joko Beck, Everyday Zen
The greatest gift of science is that it teaches us we need to go beyond ourselves. Lawrence Krauss, with Richard Dawkins, Australian National University June 2017
An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Martin Luther King
The final insult that religion delivers to us, the final poison it injects into our system, it appeals both to our meanness, our self-centredness and our solipsism and to our masochism. In order words it’s sadomasochistic. Christopher Hitchens v Alister McGrath, Georgetown University Washington debate 2007
Beware of solipsism ... Don’t ever think you are the centre of the world. Be very careful of assuming that you are the object of a divine design. That there’s something special just about being you. Christopher Hitchens, Collisions: Christopher Hitchens v Douglas Wilson
You have to imagine that all this mass extinction and death and randomness is the will of a being … and all of this should happen so that one very imperfect race of evolved primates should have the opportunity to become Christians … that all of that was done with us in view – it’s a curious kind of solipsism; it’s a curious kind of self-centredness … there’s a certain arrogance to this assumption … the tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it – never mind, at least we’re here and we can be people of faith. Christopher Hitchens
So if you think that all this is going on in these gigantic fields of gravity and light with you in mind, then you really do have a self-centredness problem. Christopher Hitchens
We create the idea of an agency – that God takes an interest in us, and is pulling strings in our lives. Derren Brown: Fear and Faith, Channel 4 2012
There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. Carl Sagan, Time magazine 9 January 1995, re Pale Blue Dot image taken by Voyager 1 spacecraft 6 billion kilometres from Earth 1990
I thought we made some progress on your Narcicism. The Sopranos s1e4: Meadowlands ***** starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al, Dr Melfi to Tony, HBO 1999
I am my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion. Iain M Banks, The Algebraist
Bertram Russell got a letter from a lady who said, Dear Lord Russell, I’m so delighted to hear you are a solipsist; there are so few of us around these days. Richard Dawkins, Waking Up With Sam Harris #57: An Evening With Sam Harris & Richard Dawkins, Los Angeles, Youtube 1.36.57
The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King