Michael > Michael's Quotes

“If we are considering the history of our own country, we write at length of the periods when our ancestors were prosperous and victorious, but we pass quickly over their shortcomings or their defeats. Our people are represented as patriotic heroes, their enemies as grasping imperialists, or subversive rebels. In other words, our national histories are propaganda, not well balanced investigation.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“The Age of Intellect is accompanied by surprising advances in natural science. In the ninth century, for example, in the age of Mamun, the Arabs measured the circumference of the earth with remarkable accuracy. Seven centuries were to pass before Western Europe discovered that the world was not flat. Less than fifty years after the amazing scientific discoveries under Mamun, the Arab Empire collapsed. Wonderful and beneficent as was the progress of science, it did not save the empire from chaos.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of the Age of Intellect is the unconscious growth of the idea that the human brain can solve the problems of the world. Even on the low level of practical affairs this is patently untrue. Any small human activity, the local bowls club or the ladies’ luncheon club, requires for its survival a measure of self-sacrifice and service on the part of the members. In a wider national sphere, the survival of the nation depends basically on the loyalty and self‑sacrifice of the citizens. The impression that the situation can be saved by mental cleverness, without unselfishness or human self-dedication, can only lead to collapse.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can’t work, why it doesn’t even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can’t buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: “Common sense assured…that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability.” Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry’s acquaintances didn’t fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform. I’m no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn’t even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement “I am a…” with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize “defining priorities” and “staying focused,” euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society. Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.”
― David "AWOL" Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“Anything that we consider to be an accomplishment takes effort to achieve. If it were easy, it would not be nearly as gratifying. What is hardship at the moment will add to our sense of achievement in the end.”
― David Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“Employees who are important don’t need to be told, and if they are not important, being told doesn’t make them so.”
― David "AWOL" Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“The setting, like so many others, is beautiful and serene. It is unfortunate that the pleasure is inseparable from the pain.”
― David "AWOL" Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“When you attempt to capture the highlights without burdening yourself with the tedium, the highlights lose the foundation that elevates them to the status of “highlight.”
― David "AWOL" Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society.”
― David Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“We are outraged when we are constrained by others, but willfully, unwittingly put limits on ourselves.”
― David "AWOL" Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“Many of the most gratifying experiences in life are those that are the most demanding.”
― David Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now. When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God! O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

“... there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Consciousness is what I am, not who I am. There is a big difference. The real entity is the consciousness, not me being conscious. If you can experience that, only then will you realise a degree of contentedness, because then there is nothing miss. All is well with the world.”
― Russel Williams, Not I, Not other than I: The Life And Teachings Of Russel Williams

“Call it God if you wish; that's fine when you consider that, in the Hebrew sense, God means the indefinable, that which cannot be know or understood. The universal consciousness is not easy to understand, and yet we can know it.”
― Russel Williams, Not I, Not other than I: The Life And Teachings Of Russel Williams

“Consciousness is continually widening its expanse. One becomes more and more conscious, but not as an individual. Ultimately there is no self-consciousness, and no self. The only reality is consciousness itself, no separation. When a person meditates deeply they lose awareness of the body and become part of this expanse of consciousness. They become aware that what they thought was their own consciousness is part of Consciousness itself.”
― Russel Williams, Not I, Not other than I: The Life And Teachings Of Russel Williams

“Real mindfulness is to be aware of a situation both internally and externally, and so to see as a whole...that this is not separate from that.”
― Russel Williams, Not I, Not other than I: The Life And Teachings Of Russel Williams

“It is possible to experience the almost unconditioned dimensions even whilst living in the world we know, on the basis that we begin to sense-feel that we are not wholly with the physical world, almost as though we are alien in the world, and don't really belong there. There is a part of us in some other place we can't identify, that feels much more comfortable.”
― Russel Williams, Not I, Not other than I: The Life And Teachings Of Russel Williams

“Bliss is the nature of spirit-force in the same way that wetness is a quality of water.”
― Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World

“So as evolution progresses, consciousness becomes more involved in matter: living beings become a fuller expression of spirit and move closer to the source from which they, and all things, came.”
― Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World

“To use a medical analogy, while mystics try to heal themselves (that is, to transcend sleep), conventionally religious people simply try to manage the symptoms. Near-death”
― Steve Taylor, The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening

“Mystics from all traditions have the common aim of cultivating wakefulness, while the common aim of all mainstream religions is to offer consolation and psychological support. To use a medical analogy, while mystics try to heal themselves (that is, to transcend sleep), conventionally religious people simply try to manage the symptoms. Near-death”
― Steve Taylor, The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening

“Consciousness doesn't emerge from matter because it has always been in matter. Consciousness is a fundamental quality that exists everywhere and in everything.”
― Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World

“The conventional materialist mode has very serious consequences in terms of how we live our lives, and how we treat other species and the natural world. It leads to a devaluation of life—of our own lives, of other species' and the Earth itself..a spiritual worldview can change our relationship to the world. It can engender a reverential attitude to nature, and to life itself. It can heal us, just as it can heal the whole world.”
― Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World

“Where there is spirituality there is freedom, but religion is rigid. To be spiritual you have to step aside from the belief and go more into knowing, which gives you a greater freedom, including the freedom to question. Unless you question you're not going to get past the beliefs.”
― Steve Taylor, Not I, Not other than I: The Life And Teachings Of Russel Williams