A Growing List of Phenomenal Quotes

[I started making this list when I was 19 years old. Today, I’ve pulled it out of its grave, and now I’ll be adding quotes when I come across a good one. Enjoy!]

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Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. – Karl Marx

• He considered the distress that people expressed in their religion were real but religion itself is an illusion preventing people from doing anything effective to remedy their condition –Meredith McGuire (Religion the social context)

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Man makes religion, religion does not make man. – Karl Marx , communist philosopher

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God of the gaps; if that is where you are going to put your god in this world, then god is an ever reseeding pocket of scientific ignorance – Neil Tyson , astrophysicist, scientist

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Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. – Horace Mann , educator

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Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law. – Immanuel Kant , ethical philosopher

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It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. – Adam Smith , economist

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There is no value in suffering when it is done without purpose.

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Don’t ask yourself what you want out of life. It’s easy to want success and fame and happiness and great sex. Everybody wants those things. A much more interesting question to ask yourself is, “What kind of pain do I want?” What you are willing to struggle for is a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

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You can’t merely be in love with the result. Everybody loves the result. You must love the process.

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“Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable, and more depressed. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest to obtain and the easiest to lose.” – Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

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“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” -Sigmund Freud , psychologist

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“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” –Aristotle , philosopher

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“So if you really go the whole way and see how you feel at the prospect of vanishing forever. Have all your efforts, and all your achievements, and all your attainments turning into dust and nothingness. What is the feeling? What happens to you? That’s what it’s all going to come to. And for some reason or other, we are supposed to find this depressing. Do you see in a way, how that is saying: the most real state is the state of nothing? But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness. Where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again you get how it looks behind your eyes. You see?

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So in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality. Then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of you being scared, and put out and worried, and so on, this is nothing, it’s a dream. Because you’re really nothing. But this is most incredible nothing. So cheer up! You see?

The essence of your mind is intrinsically pure. Pure means clear, void.

See? If you think of this idea of nothingness as mere blankness, and you hold onto this idea of blankness then kind of grizzly about it, you haven’t understood it. Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole universe. All the sun and the stars and the mountains, and rivers, and the good men and bad men, and the animals, and insects, and the whole bit. All are contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and you are it. What else could you be?”

― Alan W. Watts, The Essence of Alan Watts

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The bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go

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You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.

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– Galileo Galilei , astronomer , discovered planets and 4 of Jupiter’s moons

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An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out. –Max Planck , physicist , Nobel Prize in physics for energy quanta / (quantum theory)

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A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. – Charles Darwin, naturalists, contributed to the idea of evolution

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Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. – Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation Philosopher from the 18th century, Founder of utilitarianism

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Quote’s from The Good Among the Great by Donald Van do Mark:

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You ought to do what you want to do… even more compelling, the best among us invert that premise- they want to do what they ought to do.

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What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature.

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The terrible thing is that people realize too late that many of the things they’re going after don’t keep their promise. For me, a perfect definition of hell is to have everything you’ve ever wanted… and still not be satisfied, to know that you’ve missed something. (- Reverend Maurice Boyd in TGATG)

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Quotes from Rising Strong by Brené Brown:

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Daring is not saying, “I’m willing to risk failure.” Daring is saying, “I know I will eventually fail and I’m still all in.” Fortune may favor the bold, but so does failure.

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Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricable connected to one another by a power greater than all of us and that our connecting to that power and to one another is grounded in love and belonging. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.

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BEN SHAPIRO:

Socialism is the most selfish philosophy on planet earth because it is based on the concept that, I am breathing therefore I deserve. Capitalism is forced altruism because if I do not give you something you want then I will starve. Capitalism is based on consent while socialism is based inherently on force.

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Random quotes:

• Man is like a cup with no bottom and his desires are what he pours in it
• Be the change you want to see
• How you do some things is how you do most things
• The greatest thing to fear is fear itself
• Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity
• Peace does not lie in the absence of war but in the presence of justice
• Everything will be okay, if it’s not then it’s not the end
• Even hell can get comfy once you settle in
• Fortune favors the bold

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Rousseau:

–There is only one man who gets his own way—he who can get it single-handed; therefore freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it
–Give him, not what he wants, but what he needs. Let there be no question of obedience for him or tyranny for you. Supply the strength he lacks just so far as is required for freedom, not for power, so that he may receive your services with a sort of shame, and look forward to the time when he may dispense with them and may achieve the honor of self-help.
–If [your child] words were prompted by a real need you should recognize it and satisfy it at once; but to yield to his tears is to encourage him to cry,
–Too much bodily prosperity corrupts the morals. A man who knew nothing of suffering would be incapable of tenderness towards his fellow-creatures and ignorant of the joys of pity; he would be hard-hearted, unsocial, a very monster among men.
–There is only one man who gets his own way—he who can gets it single-handed; therefore freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it.
–Too much bodily prosperity corrupts the morals.

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“If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of a giant” – Sir Isaac Newton

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“I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church” – Frank Lloyd Wright (Architect)

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Jordan Peterson:

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“There are monsters in the dark, so you better learn how to handle them”

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Like Harry Potter know when to break the rules. You will find favor among the Dumbledore’s (the archetypical father, the rule maker)

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“Those who have swords and know how to use them but keep them sheaf will inherit the world” “You should be a monster, then you should learn how to control it” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T7pUEZfgdI 1:07:20 with JoeRogan

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“What do you do when someone is chasing you, turn around and chase them back, that is your best beat!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscPHmLWo-M 1:48:00 with Dr.OZ

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“You won’t always catch something if you pursue it, but you’ll probably find something interesting along the way.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscPHmLWo-M 2:01:00 with Dr.OZ

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“I want a society that strengths each other up, not one that caters to the weak” summary (8min) from Steven Crowder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ecEqh5EJ0&feature=share

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“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ‘the rat race’ is not yet final.” – Hunter S. Thompson journalist and writer

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. – James Madison 4th pres.

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Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. – Thomas Jefferson 3rd pres

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Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence – John Adams 2nd pres.

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It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes – Andrew Jackson 7th pres

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Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. – Abraham Lincoln – 16 pres

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An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. – Benjamin Franklin founding father

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In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. –FDR 32nd Pres in 1933, served 4 terms

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th Pres, From: The Man in The Arena

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Freedom is not something to be secured in any one moment of time. We must struggle to preserve it every day. And freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Summary of Ronald Reagan

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Donald Trump

“No country has ever prospered that failed to put its own interests first.”

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February, 2021:

Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time, I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation… – Rene Descartes

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From: The Tablet of the True Seeker

He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth. –Baha’u’llah, The Book of Certitude, p. 191.

August, 2021

“I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;

For Life is just an employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.”

– Jessie B. Rittenhouse

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