P.D. Ouspensky Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More P.D. Ouspensky quote about:
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“When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Divide in yourself the mechanical from the conscious, see how little there is of the conscious, how seldom it works, and how strong is the mechanical - mechanical attitudes, mechanical intentions, mechanical thoughts, mechanical desires.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Seek the path, do not seek attainment, seek for the path within yourself. Do not expect to hear the truth from others, nor to see it, nor to read it in books. Look for the truth within yourself, not without yourself.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“The most difficult thing is to know what we do know, and what we do not know.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“One cannot keep all the old views and opinions and acquire new ones.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Can one alter one´s chief feature?" asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Psychology is sometimes called a new science. This is quite wrong. Psychology is, perhaps, the oldest science, and, unfortunately, in its most essential features a forgotten science.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“a man can be given only what he can use; and he can use only that for which he has sacrificed something”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Two things can get people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if they want to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge , people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Ideas by themselves cannot produce change of being; your effort must go in the right direction, and one must correspond to the other.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe; but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“There is something in us that keeps us where we find ourselves. I think this is the most awful thing of all.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Man is a machine which reacts blindly to external forces and, this being so, he has no will, and very little control of himself, if any at all. What we have to study, therefore, is not psychology-for that applies only to a developed man-but mechanics. Man is not only a machine but a machine which works very much below the standard it would be capable of maintaining if it were working properly.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings—that is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think about many things mechanically, but you will get nothing from it.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Desire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Man is confronted with two obvious facts: The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“The problem of Eternity, of which the face of the Sphinx speaks, takes us into the realm of the impossible. Even the problem of Time is simple in comparison with the problem of Eternity.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky -
“Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art.”
-- P.D. Ouspensky