A Quote by Christopher Hitchens
If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.
Related Quotes
Remember that there is only one important time and it is Now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person with whom you are, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making that person, the one standing at you side, happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.
The master and the student on the journey to mastery, knows that the illusions are the illusions, decides why they are there, and then consciously creates what will be experienced next within the self through the illusions. When facing any life experience, there is a formula, a process, through which you may choose to move through mastery. Simply make the following statements: One, nothing in my world is real. Two, The meaning of everything is the meaning I give it. Three, I am who I say I am, and my experience is what I say it is. This is how to work with the illusions of life.
If I had to choose, I would always take the less dynamic, indeed even the lazy person who knows what's right than the zealot in the cause of error. He may move slower, but he's headed in the right direction.
Curiously, a principle affects your life whether you are aware of it or not. For instance, the principle of gravity was working long before the apple ever fell on Newton's head. But once it did, and he understood it, then we as a society were free to harness this principle to create, among other things, airline flight.
It's very important to learn quick lessons from your failures, very important to recognize symptoms of failure pretty early, and it is very, very important to not to be attached too much to the idea - you have to know when to give up an idea.
Before we can change anything in our life, we have to recognize that this is the way it is meant to be right now. For me, acceptance has become what I call the long sigh of the soul. It's the closed eyes in prayer, perhaps even the quiet tears. It's "all right," as in "All right, You lead, I'll follow." And it's "all right" as in "Everything is going to turn out all right." This is simply part of the journey.
Being happy is not all about love! Love is not everything. Work, friends, and achieving things... your finite thing in life can't be getting married and having children. Like, creating a life for myself that's my own, and my own road? That was always the most important thing for me. Right now, I have a kid and stuff, and it's fantastic to be a mother, but it's not the final thing. You want to stay an individual. You need to stay an individual for your kid, as an example of what a human being should be! You want to stay true to yourself and not become a half a person. That is so, so important.
I do not invent characters. There they are. That's who they are. That's their nature. They talk and they behave the way they want to behave. I don't have a character behaving one way, then a point comes in the play where the person has to either stay or leave. If I had it plotted that the person leaves, then the person leaves. If that's what the person wants to do. I let the person do what the person wants or has to do at the time of the event.
The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality–it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see." -Richard
My mother taught me to focus on being myself and not to worry what other people think about you. I know that as long as I'm a good person I'll stay on the right path. From my dad I learned that when someone tells you “No” it's only the beginning of a conversation. They both have always let me know that I can do anything I want to do as long as I don't give up. They are the most important role models in my life because they are exactly who I want to be when I grow up. They are supportive and understanding and I try every day to remember what they've taught me.
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
The first principle of ethical power is Purpose... It is the picture you have of yourself - the kind of person you want to be or the kind of life you want to lead.
If a person is working toward a predetermined goal and knows where to go, then that person is successful. If a person does not know which direction they want to go in life, then that person is a failure.
We cannot but recognize that, in practical terms, defending human life has become more difficult today, because a mentality has been created that progressively devalues human life and entrusts it to the judgement of individuals. A consequence deriving therefrom is lessened respect for the human person, a value that lies at the foundation of any form of civil coexistence, over and above the faith a person may profess.
I have no illusions about my filmmaking work but I must add I have no illusions about anybody else's either. I am very strict with myself and I think, "no, that could have been improved", "why didn't I put a little bit more then? Why didn't we come out then?" It was what I thought was right at the time and you have to stand by that. And if it completely fails you have got to say, "But that is what I meant at the time.".
"My #1 guiding principle for a successful life (learned from J Brad Britton): "Do the right thing; not the easy thing." Everyday, you are constantly faced with choices to do either the right thing (any activity that moves you closer to where and who you want to be) or the easy thing (anything else). In every moment of choice, choose to do the right thing over the easy thing, and your becoming successful is inevitable.
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