If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own ...
After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memo...
And even if something had once been committed to paper, did it mean that it was still true? true? Unlike the relative permanence of paint, words were temporal. You uttered them and they evanesced, but if you wrote them, they remained, though whether ...
Our consciousness on the physical plane is relatively crude. We view choice making in terms of language, but like time, language is a construct of the physical plane. Nonetheless, on some level and in some way that may be incomprehensible to us now, ...
Every integral man has inside him, in his heart of hearts, a mystic center around which all else revolves. This mystic whirling lends unity to his thoughts and actions; it helps him find or invent the cosmic harmony. For some this center is love, for...
One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an ins...
...Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you've ever been there, you know the signs don't tell you the exit you're coming up to, they only point out the exits you've just missed. It ...
It is intellectually dishonest to present the Republican Party as the only supporter of Zionism and Israel. The Democrats, while posing as an alternative to the right wing, are just as dedicated to Israel and they are far more dependent on Jewish vot...
She pulled her lips away again. "Wait!" He stopped and stared at her. "I'm relatively positive we're not supposed to be doing this." "Who says?" "The laws of nature and God." "Laws are made to be broken and God just wants us to be happy." Fucking thi...
My father was a doctor,' she says, 'a very kind man. He died in the early '70s, relatively young.' She taps the cigarette packet on the table. 'Of lung cancer.' 'Oh.' 'But the thing about that is,' she says as she exhales, 'it doesn't take very long ...
It's from the newspapers that people I know - relatives and co-workers - have got the idea that crosswords are a prophylactic against Alzheimer's. Newspapers are of course also the place where crosswords (and now sudokus) are most readily available, ...
Life can be confusing. Good God, and how. Sometimes it seems like the older I get, the more confused I become. That seems ass-backwards. I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser. Instead, I just keep getting hit over the head with my relative ins...
This may interest you. A letter from my dear cousin Fouquier-Tinville.” Camille cast an eye over his relative’s best handwriting. “Squirm, flattery, abasement, squirm, dearest sweetest Camille, squirm squirm squirm … ‘the election of the Pa...
I don't really understand the point of crying. Also, I feel that crying is almost - like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever - totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate t...
Some years ago I read a book that brought Einstein's theory of relativity down to an eighth grade level. This convinced me that any subject can be made easy. In other words, always beware of anyone who tells you a topic is above you or better left to...
There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can ...
Why should anyone raise an eyebrow because a latter-day Einstein’s wife expects her husband to put aside that lifeless theory of relativity and help her with the work that is supposed to be the essence of life itself: diaper the baby and don’t fo...
If a man we don't know phones us up one day and talks a little, makes no suggestions, says nothing special, but nevertheless pays us the kind of attention we rarely receive, we're quite capable of going to bed with him that night, feeling relatively ...
Everyone over 50 in America feels like a refugee. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because parenting is hard. Inadequate parents could say, 'Go outside and play in the culture,' and the culture -- relatively innoc...
When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist. When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Things are objects because of the subject; the mind is such because of things....
Colinialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natrual resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the col...