Most profound quotation you have read or heard?

"Life's a B*tch"-The story of my life, it's what gets us through everyday (me and my buds)

"How many roads can a man walk before he's called a man?"
-Bob Dylan

And my personal favorite comes from Bill, honored in my status,

"And most importantly, cut the damn strings, and find your own original voice... and deny ignorance, please!"----SkepticOverlord

reply to post by Grumble


Thank you Grumble... your quote was really great from the start... It's something I've been finding a lot of lately... references to our dreams...

Here's a couple that I have ... I couldn't decide on my favorite...

"It is possible to become the master of the entire universe. You have that potential within you, but you must work. Actually, you are already the Lord of the universe. You are the emperor of the entire world, but you are dreaming that you are a beggar who has to beg for food. The moment you stop dreaming, the moment you realize that the present so-called waking state is, in fact, a dream, you will realize that you are the Lord of the universe, and you will awaken to God-consciousness." –Amma Amritanandamayi Devi



A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.—Albert Einstein
and

The Theory and Practice of Alchemy In considering the formulæ on the following pages, it must be recognized that the experiments cannot be successfully conducted unless the one who performs them be himself a Magus. If two persons, one an initiate and the other unilluminated in the supreme art, were to set to work, side by side, using the same vessels, the same substances, and exactly the same modus operandi, the initiate would produce his "gold" and the uninitiated would not. Unless the greater alchemy has first taken place within the soul of man, he cannot perform the lesser alchemy in the retort. This is an invariable rule, although it is cunningly hidden in the allegories and emblems of Hermetic philosophy. Unless a man be "born again" he cannot accomplish the Great Work, and if the student of alchemical formulæ will remember this, it will save him much sorrow and disappointment. To speak of that part of the mystery which is concerned with the secret life principle within the actual nature of man, is forbidden, for it is decreed by the Masters of the art that each shall discover that for himself and on this subject it is unlawful to speak at greater length.
THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES by Manly P. Hall


Time to wake up...

Here's a few.

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

And along the same lines:
Sometimes in order to change the world. You must first change yourself.

It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice.

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.”

It's better to aim for the moon and miss than to aim for a pile of sh*t and hit.

"Once again all the market pundits are coming out to tell us why this time it's different.

Ladies and Gentleman, I am here to tell you, no it's not."


Then Chief Market Analyst for Merrill Lynch, and elder stateman of Wall Street at the time - Bob Farrell.

Circa 1986

As I sat at the light, watching it turn from green to yellow to red, and back again......I wondered......was life just a bunch of screaming and honking?
Sometimes it seems that way.......
Jack Handey


( sorry, I couldn't resist)

“An extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities.

Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars…We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work…and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins…star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth…Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.

We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light.” Carl Sagan

Everything is too much!

How bout' I fix you a tall cold glass of shut the hell up!

-Its on one of my sons t-shirts!

A man is only as young as the woman he feels.

"The one thing that never changes is the fact that things always change"

-Scott Lenig (me)

"life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans"

-John Lennon

"One who knows does not speak. One who speaks does not know"

-From the Tao Tai Ching.


Those are a few that stick out in my mind, they ring of a certain wisdom and truth and deepness.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.


T.S. Eliot
The Hollow Men 1925

Great thread, thanks.

I would have to say that my favorite is probably -

"When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose." Bob Dylan.

I think Bob succeeded in putting a whole library into a single line with that one. (which is another Dylan quote)

I happen to be reading a book titled "Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists" by James Geary, which has all of these great sayings. Apparently, an Aphorist is someone who write these short lines of wisdom.

Others that I didn't see here that I like.

"I have not failed, I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work."

and

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed up in overalls and looks like work."

Both by Thomas Edison.

"What is not missed is not lost." by Publilius Syrus, from Syria in the 1st century AD.

This one I find very strange but makes me think.

"We go through life expecting to be tasted while being swallowed." by Elizabeth Bibesco, a Paris socialite described by Marcel Proust as "probably unsurpassed in intelligence by any of her contemporaries".

One more

"Some do it in church,
Some do it by tearing the wings off of butterflies,
and some men do it in Miami, laying it into butter blondes with cadillac souls." by Charles Bukowski

Ok, one more.

"I generally avoid temptation, unless I can't resist it". Mae West

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1994

sometimes the greatest of answers come from the simplest of questions-me

one can learn anything through someone elses eyes-me

and continuing that last quote is this

if i can see the world everyday through someone elses eyes instead of my own
if i can be someone else while being me
then i can bring the world that much closer

Carl Sagan's quotes are so amazing. The best quotes that people have put are the ones from him in my opinion.

When I read them I feel so utterly ashamed to be a human being.

In compost... is the future wealth of America.

anon.

Originally posted by bsbray11
One of my favorites:

"We shall not cease from our exploration, and at the end of all our exploring, we shall arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Elliot

The is the truest thing I have ever heard...

"I may not be the best dancer in the world, but I've got a heart of gold and I love onion rings."

My Grandpa

"You don't count the dead when God's on your side"
-Bob Dylan

Dr.Robert D. Hare describing psychopaths as:

"Intraspecies predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse... What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony."

It might not comfort you to know that an estimated 1% of the population matches this description.