The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that ho...
Our way of life decrees that everyone is born with a pre-determined destiny. With good karma, one can try to make the most of one’s circumstances. But that’s all. There is a lot that is beyond the power of mere humans, ; the future unfolds the wa...
Today something unusual happened; I was walking without even knowing, where I was going. I was smiling without any cause. I was just happy without reasons. I can tell you that birds do sing, leaves of trees, do dance, and it’s beautiful. I am, a co...
May every man find the softest and most fragile expression of his personality with the right woman who would treasure and honour the beauty of his femininity and not misuse it and may all women find empowering and supportive men who would exult in he...
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret dip...
Socialists are convinced socialism will work if it's only managed by the right people. It's one of the reasons so many socialist countries wind up led by dictators. Socialist leaders inevitably become convinced that only they can manage the state pro...
Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my ...
I get depressed with these fluffy dragons and noble elves. Elves were never noble. They were cruel bastards. And I dislike heroes. You can’t trust the buggers. They always let you down. I don’t believe in the natural nobility of kings, because a ...
We have too much respect for the printed word, too little awareness of the power words hold over us. We allow worlds to be conjured up for us with very little concern for the implications. We overlook glaring incongruities. We are suckers for alliter...
Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-...
Many people are born into their religion. For them it is mostly a matter of legacy and convenience. Their belief is based on faith, not just in the teachings of the religion but also in the acceptance of that religion from their family and culture. F...
Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another w...
He was becoming something the world had never seen before - a dream animal - living at least partially within a secret universe of his own creation and sharing that secret universe in his head with other, similar heads. Symbolic communication had beg...
At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is...
I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of ou...
The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it. This pronouncement seems to state the obvious and yet it is false. Men grow old, the end grows near, each moment becomes more and mo...
No one is your enemy, we all are one. Some understand all about you and some none. Some accept you, some don't, some will like you and some won't. Let's not be divided, be on the same page, let's share love and care, not rage. Alone we may be powerfu...
His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful ...
We truly help others working on ourselves. When it comes from the knowledge that the only power we have is over our own choices, we do not struggle taking responsibility for what is not ours to be responsible for. When we choose to be happy our joy w...
Some people can’t be in your life because they don’t have the power to help you improve it. That doesn’t mean you don’t wish them well, it just means that you are on Chapter ten of your life, when they are on Chapter five. Maybe, it is just e...
