Difficulties are things that show what men are. -- Epictetus, Chap. xxiv.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -- Richard Feynman
If you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are for yourself, then what are you? If not now, when?
You may be gone tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that you weren't here today.
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going. -- Professor Irwin Corey
Troubles are like babies; they only grow by nursing.
The wise man seeks everything in himself; the ignorant man tries to get everything from somebody else.
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
This life is yours. Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.
I'm like a sort of living carpet. I need a pattern, a design, like you have on that carpet. I come apart, I unravel, unless there's a design. -- Rebecca (from: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks)
Be eccentric to yourself -- Jacques Lacan (?)
I became disillusioned with some of the delusions. -- John Nash, 60 Minutes interview regarding his schizophrenia adaptation
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. -- Aristotle [Being slightly mad does not necessarily indicate an excellent soul. -Ed.]
A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself. -- Du Bois
Self Test for Paranoia: You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's your own fault.
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
As a general rule, men expect disappointment: they know they must not be impatient, that it will come soon or later, that it will hold off long enough for them to proceed with their undertakings of the moment. The disabused man is different: for him, disappointment occurs at the same time as the deed; he has no need to await it, it is present. -- E. M. Cioran
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain
Who alone has reason to lie himself out of actuality? He who suffers from it. -- Friedrich Nietzsche (?)
No matter where you go, there you are. -- Buckaroo Banzai
First Rule of Holes: When you're in one, you should stop digging.
The duration of our passions is no more dependent upon us than the duration of our life. -- La Rochefoucauld
A philosophy professor is giving a class lecture on solipsism (the theory that reality is a creation of ones mind). After the lecture, several students rush up and introduce themselves to the professor and explain that the theory was really in-tune with how they felt and its really opened their minds and they just wanted to tell him in person how they felt about his lecture ... to which the professor replies "That's wonderful, so rarely does one solipsist meet another."
The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process: how does it come about that this does not come into the considerations of our ordinary life? This idea of a difference in kind is accompanied by slight giddiness - which occurs when we are performing a piece of logical sleight-of-hand. (The same giddiness attacks us when we think of certain theorems in set theory.) When does this feeling occur in the present case? It is when, I, for example, turn my attention in a particular way on to my own consciousness, and, astonished, say to myself: THIS is supposed to be produced by a process in the brain! - as it were clutching my forehead. - But what can it mean to speak of "turning my attention on to my own consciousness?" This is surely the queerest thing there could be! ... -- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Philosophical Investigations
Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know that?
The door is the key.
When one looks into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. -- Nietzsche
Consistency is a disease, and I'm the cure. -- Nietzsche (?)
In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing certain. -- Pliny the Elder
- No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. -- Heraclitas (c. 535-475 BC, see also: selected fragments, the fire priest)
- - After reading Heraclitus, Socrates is reported to have said: "The concepts I understand are great, but I believe that the concepts I can't understand are great too. However, the reader needs to be an excellent swimmer ... so as not to drown from his book." (Diogenis Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Socrates 22)
You have taken yourself too seriously.