Thinking Quotes - Page 309

You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

I paint what I think, not what I see.

Besides, all evil is relative. Something that is evil at one level of evolution can be good at an earlier stage because it provides the essential stimulus for development. But you want to judge everything by your own standards. You have reached a comparatively high level and so you see what you fight against as evil. Just think of the others, those who are at an earlier stage of development. Do not bar them from the path toward progress and evolution.

In general, life is better than it has ever been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word : Dentistry.

I think mentors are important and I don't think anybody makes it in the world without some form of mentorship. Nobody makes it alone. Nobody has made it alone. And we are all mentors to people even when we don't know it.

Poetry, in the past, was the center of our society, but with modernity it has retreated to the outskirts. I think the exile of poetry is also the exile of the best of humankind.

There's nothing Israel can do without US support. It can't breathe without US support. The US bankrolls everything, and it's just silly to think that Israel can do anything without the support.

My background is that I came from a middle class family, and I think those values stay where ever you go.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

I think everyone's dream is to be an actress, but I never really thought it was going to happen. Now that it's happening, it's incredible. I do a lot of other things, too. I'm not stuck in this little world. I'm aware that we're in the middle of an economic crisis in the U.S. There's a lot going on in the world, and I'm really happy and excited about what I have and I don't take it for granted. I'm pretty lucky.

I don't think it's about who you play, I think it's about who you are.

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.

I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it.

Young people should think in a different way - they should be job givers not job seeker.

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things.

Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it's worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.

Don't focus on the negative things that can happen, just think about the positive things.

Global warming is already acting upon us with an accelerated feedback and compounded effect that may be irreversible! We do not have eons or centuries or many decades. Most of us alive today may not even have the luxury of saying 'Après moi, le déluge' because we will be around to experience it ourselves. And if you think it will be 'interesting' or 'exciting,' ask the tsunami survivors if that's how they felt. This time the plutocratic drive to 'accumulate, accumulate, accumulate' may take all of us down, once and forever.

I think the leading cause of financial disablement is the belief that you can rely on the experts to help you. Investing requires an intense personal involvement.

I don't think closeted homosexual morticians have the market cornered on self-loathing or sense of shame.

Sincerity is the way to heaven; to think how to be sincere is the way of man.

I think that people get outraged over things. I think what we really need is a kind of borderline extinction level event to get people back to caring about what really matters.

Writing a novel is a very hard thing to do because it covers so long a space of time, and if you get discouraged it is not a bad sign, but a good one. If you think you are not doing it well, you are thinking the way real novelists do. I never knew one who did not feel greatly discouraged at times, and some get desperate, and I have always found that to be a good symptom.