Andrew Lisi > Andrew's Quotes

“But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Detestava i cimiteri, con tutti quei monumenti che significavano qualcosa solo per gli iniziati e i parenti del defunto. Un nome, un titolo professionale e una vita comprese tra due date! Tutto qui, come se bastasse. Perché non scriveva invece com’erano vissuti, i morti? Perché si lasciava estinguere ciò che era importante?”
― Bjorn Larsson

“Ho sempre voluto farcela da solo, con i miei sforzi, senza chiedere nulla a nessuno.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff, Meetings With Remarkable Men

“My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator.
The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible.This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine. This means giving up your sense of entitlement and your belief that you’re somehow owed something by this world.”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“Abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of concretes - and without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a new born infant”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Intellectual honesty consists in taking ideas seriously. That means that you intend to live by, to practice, an idea you accept as true”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“The only means of “changing” men is the same as the means of “changing” nature: knowledge - which, in regard to men, is to be used as a process of persuasion, when and if their minds are active; when they are not, one must leave them to the consequences of their own errors”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Money is the tool of men who have reached a high level of productivity and a long-range control over their lives. Money is not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption, and buys time for future production.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Only producers constitute a market - only men who trade products and services for products and services. In the role of producers, they represent a market’s supply; in the role of consumers, they represent a market’s demand. The law of supply and demand has an implicit subclause: that it involves the same people in both capacities. When this subclause is forgotten, ignored or evaded - you get the economic situation of today.
The man who consumes without producing is a parasite, whether is a welfare recipient or a rich playboy”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“In an intellectual battle, you do not need to convert everyone. History is made by minorities - or, more precisely, history is made by intellectual movements, which are created by minorities. Who belongs to these minorities? Anyone who is able and willing actively to concern himself with intellectual issues. Here is not quantity, but quality that counts (the quality - and consistency - of the ideas one is advocating”
― Ayn Rand

“If you want to influence a country’s intellectual trend, the first step is to bring order to your own ideas and integrate them into a consistent case. Knowledge necessarily includes the ability to apply abstract principles in specific issues, to demonstrate them, and to advocate a consistent course of action.

What is required is honesty - intellectual honesty, which consists in knowing what one does know, constantly expanding one’s knowledge, and never evading or failing to correct a contradiction”
― Ayn Rand

“Self-actualization is not a sudden happening or even the permanent result of long effort. The eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint Milarupa suggested: "Do not expect full realization; simply practice every day of your life." A healthy person is not perfect but perfectible, not a done deal but a work in progress. Staying healthy takes discipline, work, and patience, which is why our life is a journey and perforce a heroic one.”
― David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

“Most people think of love as a feeling but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.”
― David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

“Attention from others leads to self-respect. Acceptance engenders a sense of being inherently a good person. Appreciation generates a sense of self-worth. Affection makes us feel lovable. Allowing gives us the freedom to pursue our own deepest needs, values, and wishes.”
― David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

“Beings as complex as ourselves need retreats from others to explore the depths of our character and our destiny. We need regular periods of solitude to replenish ourselves, to locate new sources of creativity and self-knowledge, and to discover possibilities in our souls that are invisible when we are with others.”
― David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

“We sit as a practice for how we will act throughout the day. Mindfulness, however, involves more than sitting. It is moment by moment non-clinging to ego. It is the simplicity that results when we experience reality without the clutter produced by the decorative arts of ego.”
― David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

“Finally, when the desperados of the neurotic ego—fear, grasping, expectation, judgment, control, attachment, and so forth—threaten our psychic domain, it is time for mindfulness. Sit quietly or walk slowly as you contemplate each stressful assault and let go of it with a label such as “just a thought” or with an affirmation such as “I let go of control in this predicament and let the chips fall where they may.” Then expand your personal concern into universal loving-kindness, that is, mature love: “May all beings let go of whatever stands in the way of their happiness.” This is how we move from ego-love to eco-love!”
― David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

“We are, in a sense, our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good”
― David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The 5 Keys to Mindful Loving Excellent series 1ST

“We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.

From time to time, sit close to the one you love, hold his or her hand, and ask, 'Darling, do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer? Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly. I don't want to make you suffer, and if I do so because of my ignorance, please tell me so that I can love you better, so that you can be happy." If you say this in a voice that communicates your real openness to understand, the other person may cry.

That is a good sign, because it means the door of understanding is opening and everything will be possible again.

Maybe a father does not have time or is not brave enough to ask his son such a question. Then the love between them will not be as full as it could be. We need courage to ask these questions, but if we don't ask, the more we love, the more we may destroy the people we are trying to love. True love needs understanding. With understanding, the one we love will certainly flower.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice... No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be a writer, a creative person, you must retain your ability to react uniquely. Your feelings must remain your own. The day you mute yourself, or moderate yourself, or repress your proneness to get excited or ecstatic or angry or emotionally involved...that day, you die as a writer.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Some religious ideas may be on the decline, but not, I would say, human exceptionalism. Fewer people might believe in God than they used to, yet, although veganism is on the rise, most of us are still perfectly happy with the fact that we kill and eat huge amounts of animals when we don’t really need to. Most of us don’t bother with questioning this much. But I assume, if asked why we all think it’s OK to kill animals and not humans for meat, most would agree that humans are more important, more sacred, more valuable, more entitled to life than animals. There is secular backing for this idea – we have culture and language, and animals don’t (not true, they just have different culture and language) – but at heart it’s a hangover from religion. It’s a hangover from the notion that God made us in His image, and thus we sit at the top of the tree of life.”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“But also, the cynic may have to accept something else. That he, as a human, is not exceptional. He might have to accept that perhaps, when you look at how animals, certainly mammals, behave – how they have sex with their genitals, and shit from their anuses, and eat with their mouths – and how they appear, with their noses and ears and eyes and feet and hands/paws – that we are just one branch of multiple DNA outcomes. And accepting that – properly, viscerally accepting it – may not just throw a spanner in the works of complacently eating hot dogs. It also must mean that there is no God. Not least because clearly, coming back to the fact of that ongoing genocide, God does not care about the animals.”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“Humans invest emotionally in story in a very intense way. It matters to them. And they are not unaware of the fact that they're investing in is fictional even while they build all sorts of cosmetic realities around it.”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“Essere umani non è cosa che si possa sopportare da soli
Abbiamo bisogno degli dèi”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“Immaginare che il mondo sia controllato dalle forze del male è più confortante che pensarlo senza controllo”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“La fisica quantistica non risponde alla domanda Perché, ma solo alla domanda Come”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire

“Moriremo tutti e la vita è insensata. Fine.”
― David Baddiel, The God Desire