Quotes and the wisdom from practical philosophy have the tools to help us rewire

some of the negative patterns of thinking which threaten our day to day wellbeing.

This video is a selection of quotes from more modern philosophy to help share some
of that wisdom.

I hope you fond something useful.

I believe that i am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of

life but that i am responsible for what i do with the life i've got when someone is
seeking said siddhartha it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he
is seeking that he is unable to find anything unable to absorb anything because he
is only thinking of the thing

He is seeking because he has a goal because he is obsessed with his goal seeking
means to have a goal but finding means to be free to be receptive to have no goal
you a worthy one are perhaps indeed a seeker for in striving towards your goal you
do not see many things that are under your nose

[Music] i have always believed and i still believe that whatever good or bad
fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into
something of value it may be important to great thinkers to examine the world to
examine and despise it but i think it is only important to love the world

Not to despise it not for us to hate each other but to be able to regard the world
and ourselves and all beings with love admiration and respect most people i like a
falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air flutters and falls to the ground but
a few others are like stars which travel one defined path no wind reaches them they
have within themselves their guide

And path every man is more than just himself he also represents the unique the very
special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena
intersect only once in this way and never again that is why every man's story is
important eternal sacred

That is why every man as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature is
wondrous and worthy of consideration in each individual the spirit has become flesh
in each man the creation suffers within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross
learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest if you hate a person

You hate something in him that is part of yourself what isn't part of ourselves
doesn't disturb us to hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping to smile without
hostility at people and institutions to compensate for the shortage of loving the
world with more love in small private matters to be more faithful in our work
To show greater patience to forego the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and
criticism all these are things we can do there is no reality except the one
contained within us that is why so many people live such an unreal life they take
the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert
itself

Words do not express thoughts very well they always become a little different
immediately after they are expressed a little distorted a little foolish what could
i say to you that would be a value except that perhaps you seek too much that as a
result of your seeking you cannot find i have been and still am a seeker but i have
ceased to question stars and

Books i have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me some of us

think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go i began to
understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex
us or cheapen us or deprive us from our dignity but to mature and transfigure us

Wisdom cannot be imparted wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds
like foolishness to someone else knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom one
can find it live it do wonders through it but one cannot communicate and teach it
oh love isn't there to make us happy i believe it exists to show us how much

We can endure those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be
their own judges obey laws others sense their own laws within them often it is the
most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them i learn through
my body and soul that it was necessary to sin that i needed lust that i had to
strive for property and

Experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them in
order to learn to love the world and no longer compare it with some kind of desired
imaginary version of perfection but to leave it as it is to love it and be glad to
belong to it each man had only one genuine vocation to find the way to himself his
task was to discover his own destiny not an arbitrary one

And to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself everything else was only a
would-be existence an attempt to division a flight back to the ideals of the masses
conformity and fear of one's own inwardness it is not for me to judge another man's
life i must judge

I must choose i must spurn purely for myself for myself alone we are sun and moon
dear friend we are sea and land it is not our purpose to become each other it is to
recognize each other to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is each
the other's opposite and compliment youth ends when egotism does

Maturity begins when one lives for others whoever wants music instead of noise joy
instead of pleasure soul instead of gold creative work instead of business passion
instead of foolery finds no home in this trivial world of ours trees have always
been the most penetrating preachers i revere them when they live in tribes and
families in forests and groves

And even more i revere them when they stand alone they are like lonely persons not
like hermits who have stolen a way out of some weakness but like great solitary men
like beethoven and nietzsche in their highest bows the world rustles their roots
rest in infinity but they do not lose themselves there they struggle with all the
force of their lives for one thing only to fulfill themselves according to their

Own laws to build up their own form to represent themselves nothing is holier
nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful strong tree when a tree is cut down and
reveals its naked death wound to the sun one can read its whole history in the
luminous inscribed disc of its trunk in the rings of its years its scars

All the struggle all the suffering all the sickness all the happiness and
prosperity stand truly written the narrow years and the luxurious years the attacks
within the storms endured and every young farm boy knows that the hardest and
noblest wood has the narrowest wings that high on the mountains and in continuing
danger

The most indestructible the strongest the ideal trees grow trees are sanctuary
whoever knows how to speak to them whoever knows how to listen to them can learn
the truth they do not preach learning and precepts they preach undeterred by
particulars the ancient law of life a tree says a kernel is hidden in me a spark a
thought

I am life from eternal life the attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took
with me is unique unique the form and veins of my skin unique the smallest play of
leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark i was made the eternal in my
smallest special detail until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct
your life and you will call it fate

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart who looks
outside dreams who looks inside awakes people will do anything no matter how absurd
in order to avoid facing their own souls one does not become enlightened by
imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious be silent and
listen

Have you recognized your madness and do you admit it have you noticed that all your
foundations are completely mired in madness do you not want to recognize your
madness and welcome it in a friendly manner you wanted to accept everything so
accept madness too let the light of your madness shine and it will suddenly dawn on
you madness is

Not to be despised and not to be feared but instead you should give it life if you
want to find paths you should also not spurn madness since it makes up such a great
part of your nature be glad that you can recognize it for you will thus avoid
becoming its victim madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all
teachings and philosophies but even more to daily life since life itself is full of
craziness

And at bottom utterly illogical man strives towards reason only so that he can make
rules for himself life itself has no rules this is its mystery and its unknown law
what you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life
[Music] everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding
of

Ourselves i am not what happened to me i am what i choose to become a man who has
not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them as far as we
can discern the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the
darkness of mere being knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing
with the

Darkness of other people loneliness does not come from having no people about one
but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself or
from holding certain views which others find inadmissible the pendulum of the mind
oscillates between sense and nonsense not between right and wrong there are as many
nights as days and the one is just as long as the other
In a year's course even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness and
the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness it all
depends how we look at things and not on how things are in themselves the least of
things with the meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without
it the first half of life is devoted to

Forming a healthy ego the second half of life is going inward and letting go of it
where love rules there is no will to power and where power predominates love is
lacking the one is the shadow of the other i am astonished disappointed pleased
with myself i am distressed depressed rapturous

I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sam i am incapable of
determining ultimate worth or worthlessness i have no judgment about myself and my
life there is nothing i am quite sure about i have no definite convictions not
about anything really i know only that i was born to exist and it seems to me that
i have been carried along

I exist on the foundation of something i do not know we should not pretend to

understand the world only by the intellect we apprehend it just as much by feeling
therefore the judgment of the intellect is at best only half of the truth and must
if it be honest also come to an understanding of its inadequacy mistakes are after
all the foundations of truth if a man does not know what a thing is

It is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not no tree it is

said can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell it is my mind with its
store of images that gives the world color and sound and that supremely real and
rational certainty which i can experience is in its most simple form an exceedingly
complicated structure of mental images thus there is in a certain sense

Nothing that is directly experienced except the mind itself everything is meditated
through the mind translated filtered allegorized twisted even falsified by it we
are enveloped in a cloud of changing and endlessly shifting images every form of
addiction is bad no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol morphine

Or idealism [Music] about a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically

definable neurosis but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives this can
be defined as the general neurosis of our times mid-life is the time to let go of
our over-dominant ego and to contemplate the deeper

Significance of human existence wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion

of one's being but by integration of the contraries in all chaos there is a cosmos
in all disorder a secret order i have frequently seen people become neurotic when
they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life
they seek position

Marriage reputation outward success of money and remain unhappy and neurotic even
when they have attained what they were seeking such people are usually confined
within too narrow a spiritual horizon their life has not sufficient content
sufficient meaning if they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities
the neurosis

Generally disappears as a child i felt myself to be alone and i am still because i

know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of and for
the most part do not want to know the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the
whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life that i feed the
hungry

That i forgive an insult that i love my enemy in the name of christ all these are
undoubtedly great virtues what i do unto the least of my brethren that i do unto
christ but what if i should discover that the least among them all the poorest of
all beggars the most impotent of all offenders the very enemy himself that these
are within me

And that i myself stand in need of the arms of my own kindness that i myself am the
enemy who must be loved as a rule the christian's attitude is then reversed there
is no longer any question of love or long-suffering we say to the brother within us
wrecker and condemn and rage against ourselves we hide it from the world

We refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves we are
not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without act in such a way that
you treat humanity whether in your own person or in the person of any other never
merely as a means to an end but always at the same time as the end all our
knowledge begins with the senses proceeds then to the understanding and ends with
reason

There is nothing higher than reason seek not the favor of the multitude it is
seldom got by honest and lawful means but seek the testimony of few and number not
voices but weigh them genius is the ability to independently arrive at and
understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person
enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity immaturity is the
inability to use one's

Understanding without guidance from another two things fill my mind with ever
increasing wonder and awe the more often and the more intensely the reflection
dwells on them the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me morality is
not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy but how we may make
ourselves worthy of happiness

Rules for happiness something to do someone to love something to hope for the
people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demands at least self-exertion and
the least use of their own reason and which can best accommodate their duties to
their inclinations our age is the age of criticism to which everything must be
subjected

The sacredness of religion and the authority of legislation are by many regarded as
grounds for exemption from the examination of this tribunal but if they are
exempted they become the subjects of just suspicion and cannot lay claim to sincere
respect which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and
public examination one who makes himself a worm

Cannot complain afterwards if people step on him skepticism is thus a resting place
for human reason where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey
of the region in which it finds itself so that for the future it may be able to
choose its path with more certainty [Music] if the truth shall kill them let them
die

It was the duty of philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in
misconceptions whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by its
explanations look closely the beautiful may be small innocence is a splendid thing
only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled

As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most
tenderly cares the propensity and vocation to free thinking this gradually works
back upon the character of the people who thereby gradually become capable of
managing freedom finally it affects the principles of government which finds it to
its advantage to treat men
Who are now more than machines in accordance with their dignity for peace to reign
on earth humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first
in all judgments by which we describe anything is beautiful we allow no one to be
of another opinion how then is perfection to be sought wherein lies our hope in
education and nothing else

Man must be disciplined for he is by nature raw and wild out of the crooked timber
of humanity no straight thing was ever made space and time are the frameworks
within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality
thoughts without content are empty intuitions without concepts are blind nothing is
divine but what is agreeable

To reason a man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut
nor his person nor would he seek for flowers still less would he plant them in
order to adorn himself therewith it is only in society that it occurs to him to be
not merely a man but a refined man after his kind the beginning of civilization for
such do we judge him to be who is

Both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others and who is not
contented with an object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others
again everyone expects and requires from everyone else this reference to universal
communication of pleasure as if it were from an original compact dictated by
humanity itself whereas the beautiful is limited

The sublime is limitless so that the mind in the presence of the sublime attempting
to imagine what it cannot has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the
immensity of the attempt in the midst of winter i found there was within me an
invincible summer and that makes me happy for it says that no matter how hard the

World pushes against me within me there's something stronger something better

pushing right back for years i've wanted to live according to everyone else's
morals i forced myself to live like everyone else to look like everyone else i said
what was necessary to join together even when i felt separate

And after all of this catastrophe came now i wander amid the debris i am lawless
torn to pieces alone and accepting to be so resigned to my singularity into my
infirmities and i must rebuild a truth after having lived all my life in a sort of
lie if absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world it certainly does not belong
to the man

Or party that claims to possess it you will never be happy if you continue to
search for what happiness consists of you will never live if you are looking for
the meaning of life blessed are the hearts that can bend they shall never be broken
[Music] don't walk in front of me i may not follow don't walk behind me i may not
lead

Walk beside me just be my friend i do not believe in god and i am not an atheist
there can be no question of holding forth on ethics i have seen that people behave
badly with great morality and i note every day that integrity has no need of rules
an intellectual yes

And never deny it an intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself i like this
because i am happy to be both halves the watcher and the watched can they be put
together this is a practical question we must get down to it i despise intelligence
really means i cannot bear my doubts in the world there is parallel to the

Force of death and constraint an enormous force of persuasion that is called

culture nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be
normal get scared it will do you good smoke of it stare blankly at some ceilings
beat your head against some walls refuse to see some people paint and write

Get scared some more allow your little mind
go out i don't care what you'll do but stay
experience everything so please do poetical
experience yourself when you have once seen
beloved person
to do nothing but function stay inside
scared as hell you'll never be able to
justice to your soul and simply
the glow of happiness on the face of a

You know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces
surrounding him [Music] the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so
absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion a man wants to earn
money in order to be happy and his whole effort and the best of her life are
devoted to the earning of that money

Happiness is forgotten the means are taken for the end find meaning distinguish
melancholy from sadness go out for a walk it doesn't have to be a romantic walk in
the park spring at its most spectacular moment flowers and smells and outstanding
poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world it doesn't have to be
a walk during which you'll have multiple life

Epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter do not be
afraid spending quality time by yourself find meaning or don't find meaning but
still some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self opt for privacy
and solitude that doesn't make you anti-social or cause you to reject the rest of
the world but you need to breathe and you need to be

The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance and good will can cause as
much damage as ill will if it is not enlightened people are most often good than
bad though in fact that is not the question but they are more or less ignorant and
this is what one calls vice or virtue the most appalling vice being the ignorance
that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill

The murderer's soul is blind and there is no true goodness or fine love without the
greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness i continue to believe that this world
has no ultimate meaning but i know that something in it has a meaning and that is
man because he is the only creature to insist on having one [Music] people hasten
to judge

In order not to be judged themselves in short whoever does violence to truth or its
expression eventually mutilates justice even though he thinks he is serving it from
this point of view we shall deny to the very end that a press is true because it is
revolutionary it will be revolutionary only if it is true and never otherwise man
is the only creature who refuses to be what he is

[Music] you're worried about getting things successfully done in order to attain
some degree of self-worth your soul is for sale you most likely deceive yourself in
order to convince yourself letting go equals failing isn't that right and you
forget outstandingly well don't you

You forget that it takes admirable courage not only to try but also to gracefully
give up men are never convinced of your reasons of your sincerity of the
seriousness of your sufferings except by your death so long as you are alive your
case is doubtful you have a right only to their skepticism beauty is unbearable

Drives us to despair offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity we should

like to stretch out over the whole of time we all carry with us places of exile our
crimes our ravages our task is not to unleash them onto the world it is to
transform them in ourselves and others we rarely confide in those who are
Better than we rather we are more inclined to flee their society most often on the
other hand we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses hence
we don't want to improve ourselves and be better for we should first have to be
judged in default we merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have
chosen in short we should like at the same time

To cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves every
time i hear a political speech or i read those of our leaders i am horrified at
having for years heard nothing which sounded human it is always the same words
telling the same lies and the fact that men accept this that the people's anger has
not destroyed these hollow clowns

Strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed
that they gamble yes gamble with a whole part of their life and their so-called
vital interests [Music] i see many people die because they judge that life is not
worth living i see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions
that give them a reason for living

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying i
therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions when i
shall be dead the principles of which i am composed will still perform their part
in the universe and will be equally useful in the grand fabric as when they compose
this individual creature

The difference to the whole will be no greater betwixt my being in a chamber and in
the open air the one change is of more importance to me than the other but not more
so to the universe he is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more
excellent who can suit his temper to his circumstance beauty is no quality in
things

Themselves it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them and each mind
perceives a different beauty one person may even perceive deformity where another
is sensible beauty and each individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment
without pretending to regulate those of others to seek the real beauty or real
deformity is as fruitless in inquiry as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet

Or real bitter be a philosopher but amidst all of your philosophy be still a man
heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men the good and the bad but the
greatest part of mankind float between vice and virtue [Music] men's view of things
are the result of their understanding alone

Their conduct is regulated by their understanding their temper and their passions
the identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one established by the
mind not a peculiar nature belonging to what we're talking about generally speaking
the errors in religion are dangerous those in philosophy

Only ridiculous when men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken
giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure
them from the grossest absurdities [Music] epicurus's old questions are still
unanswered is he god willing to prevent evil but not able

Then he is impotent is he able but not willing then he is malevolent is he both

able and willing then why evil if we take in our hand any volume of divinity or
school metaphysics for instance let us ask does it contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number no does it contain any experimental

Reasoning concerning matter of fact in existence no committed then to flames for it

can contain nothing but self-history and illusion i may venture to affirm of the
rest of mankind but they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different
perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in

Perpetual flex and movement the sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads to
the avenues of science and learning and whoever can either remove any obstructions
in this way or open up any new prospect ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to
mankind it is an absurdity to believe that the deity has human passions and one of
the lowest of human passions

A restless appetite for applause and while the body is confined to one planet along
which it creeps with pain and difficulty the thought can in an instant transport us
to the most distant regions of the universe or even beyond the universe into the
unbound chaos where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion what never was
seen or heard or may yet

Be conceived not is anything beyond the power of thought except what implies an
absolute contradiction all sentiment is right because sentiment has a reference to
nothing beyond itself and is always real wherever a man is conscious of it but all
determinations of the understanding are not right because they have a reference to
something beyond themselves to wit

Real matter of fact and are not always conformable to that standard in our
reasonings concerning matter of fact there are all imaginable degrees of assurance
from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence a wise man
therefore proportions his belief to the evidence does a man of sense run after
every

Silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies and canvas particularly the evidence i never
knew anyone that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it
before the end of his inquiries we make allowance for a certain degree of
selfishness in men because we know it to be inseparable from human nature and
inherent in our frame and constitution by this reflection we correct those

Sentiments of blame which so naturally arise upon any opposition nothing appears
more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than
the easiness with which the many are governed by the few and the implicit
submission which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their
rulers when we inquire by what means this wonder is affected we shall find that as

Force is always on the side of the governed the governors have nothing to support
them but opinion it is therefore an opinion only that government is founded and
this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to
the most free and most popular the soldier of egypt or the emperor of rome might
drive his harmless subjects like

Brute beasts against their sentiments and inclination but he must at least have led
his mamaloo so pratorian bands like men by their opinion for my part when i enter
most intimately into what i call myself i always stumble onto some particular
perception or other of heat or cold light or shade love or hatred pain or pleasure
i never

Can catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observe anything
but the perception if anyone upon serious and unprejudiced reflection thinks he has
a different notion of himself i must confess i can reason no longer with him all i
can allow him is that he may be in the right as well as i and that we are
essentially different in this particular he may perhaps perceive

Something simple and continued which he calls himself though i am certain there is
no such principle in me you