Wise Quotations

JK Rowling on the route to personal happiness

2009-03-10T13:11:00.001Z

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
JK Rowling http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

How often should I meditate?

2009-03-03T14:11:00.000Z

Half an hours meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed
(St Francis de Sales, 1567-1622)

Epicurus on informed desire-satisfaction

2009-02-25T13:11:00.000Z

71. Question each of your desires: “What will happen to me if that which this desire seeks is achieved, and what if it is not?”
Vatican Sayings

Is morality objective? James Rachels' view

2009-02-23T11:19:00.001Z

A truth in ethics is a conclusion backed by reasons. The “correct” answer to a moral question is simply the answer that has the weight of reason on its side. Such truths are objective in the sense that they are true independently of what we might want or think. We cannot make something good or bad just by wishing it to be so because we cannot merely will that the weight of reason be on its side or against it. And this also explains our fallibility: We can be wrong about what is good or bad because we can be wrong about what reason commends.

Aristotle on the benefit of examining the nature of the good life

2009-01-19T16:26:00.000Z

Will not the knowledge of [the good] , then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is ...
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, Chapter 2

Derek Parfit's Optimism about the future of Ethics

2009-01-19T13:08:00.001Z

[In the long-term future,] there could be higher achievements in all of the Arts and Sciences. But the progress could be greatest in what is now the least advanced of these Arts or Sciences. This, I have claimed, is Non-Religious Ethics. Belief in God, or in many gods, prevented the free development of moral reasoning. Disbelief in God, openly admitted by a majority, is a recent event, not yet completed. Because this event is so recent, Non-Religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will all reach agreement. Since we cannot know how Ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes.

-- Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp.453-454.

Richard Branson on his attitude to life

2009-01-06T07:25:00.001Z

"However hard I'm working and however tired I am I make sure I just
enjoy every single second of my life"

Richard Branson

Quoted in Laurence Shorter: 'Life has never been so good'

Independent on Sunday Sunday, 4 January 2009

Laurence Shorter on true optimism

2009-01-06T07:25:00.000Z

*
**True optimism, I realised, is about accepting the world as it is,
letting go of our obsession with the future, and

setting oneself free with that knowledge.*

Quoted in Laurence Shorter: 'Life has never been so good'

/Independent on Sunday/ Sunday, 4 January 2009

As a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit

2009-01-03T20:17:00.001Z

As a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, page 67

Seneca on the importance of knowing the good life

2008-07-25T19:47:00.001+01:00

Although we dont know our overall goal, we continue to move as fast as we can in the direction we are already going
(EM III, 269)

Seneca on telling us what we already know

2008-07-25T19:44:00.001+01:00

We sometimes know facts without paying attention to them...
Advice is, in fact, a sort of exhortation
(EM III, 29)

Philosophy did not find Plato a nobleman, it made him one - Seneca

2008-07-25T19:42:00.001+01:00

Philosophy did not find Plato a nobleman, it made him one
Seneca (EM 1, 289)

the meaning of mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

2008-05-14T13:23:00.001+01:00

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way:
on purpose,
in the present moment,
and nonjudgmentally.
JON KABAT-ZINN

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it." Thomas Edison

2008-02-13T10:04:00.000Z

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it."
Thomas Edison

Sutta Nipata - Who is your worst enemy?

2008-01-10T08:59:00.000Z

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded
thoughts.
Sutta Nipata

Norwid on Happiness

2008-01-08T10:44:00.000Z

To be what is called happy, one should have
(1) something to live on, (2) something to live for, (3) something to
die for.
The lack of one of these results in drama. The lack of two results in
tragedy.

/Cyprian Norwid (19^th century Polish poet)/

The Secret of Eternal Happiness (Robin Sharma)

2007-11-26T10:44:00.001Z

Find out what you truly love to do and then direct all your energy towards doing it

Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari, p. 55

Technorati tags: robin sharma, monk who sold his ferrari, happiness, buddhism

Remembering to be mindful is the great challenge - Christina Feldman

2007-11-26T09:43:00.001Z

Mindfulness is neither difficult nor complex;
Remembering to be mindful is the great challenge

Christina Feldman

Keywords: Mindfulness, Meditation, Wisdom, Christina Feldman

Read On: Christina Feldman on Stillness and Insight and Dependent Origination

Technorati tags: mindfulness quotation, meditation quotation, christina feldman

Frankl on the last of the human freedoms

2007-11-23T23:10:00.000Z

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way

Viktor Frankl

Too much information: David Fontanta

2007-11-12T13:51:00.000Z

A single issue of the New York Times contains more pieces of information in its pages than an educated 18th-century man or woman would have met with in a whole lifetime

David Fontana (Mediation Week by Weke, p. 16)

Philosophy and Psychology (Tim LeBon)

2007-10-05T18:42:00.000+01:00

We need both philosophy and psychology.

Psychology without philosophy lacks wisdom.

Philosophy without psychology lacks science.

We need to integrate the best of philosophy and science - wisdom-informed science.

The 80/20 Rule (Pareto)

2007-09-17T22:07:00.001+01:00

The Pareto Principle and how to manage time better

80% of the results are derived by 20% of activities.

80% of activities yield only 20% of the results .

Which activities make up your most productive 20%?

Which activities are least productive?

The essence of time management - M.Neenan & W.Dryden

2007-09-17T22:06:00.001+01:00

The essence of time management is knowing what your values and goals are in life and making the optimum use of your time to achieve those ends

Michael Neenan and Windy Dryden

Life Coaching - a Cognitive-Behavioural Approach (p. 58)

Neenan and Dryden provide one more motivation for becoming more aware of your values and goals in life.

"Flowers and butterflies and children dancing in the sun are good". Richard Robinson

2007-08-08T07:51:00.000+01:00

Yet it is very strange if the layman needs Oxford philosophers to tell him that milk and cheese are good, that flowers and butterflies and children dancing in the sun are good, that love and joy and companionship and laughter are good. Is there really anyone who is in the unpleasant condition of not caring about anything and wishing he did care about something?

Richard Robinson An Atheist's Values 1.1

We have all got light and dark inside us. (JK Rowling)

2007-07-14T21:37:00.001+01:00

We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we chose to act on. That's who we really are.

J.K. Rowling (Sirius Black in the film of Harry Potter in The Order of the Phoenix)