It is easy to see that the inventor of the heaven did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere.
An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation.
When you completely extract yourself from anything familiar, you start reverting back to that state of mind where you're having conversations with yourself, and that's where the weirdest and most honest ideas come from.
Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart.
You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.
Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.
The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
The idea of overcoming is always fascinating to me. It's fascinating because few of us realize how much energy we have expended just to be here today. I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for the overcoming.
To realize the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation-renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter.