--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

--- QUOTES [1 / 1 - 97 / 97] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

KEYS (10k)

   1 Ursula K Le Guin

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   2 William Lane Craig

   2 Robert G Ingersoll

   2 Neil Gaiman

   2 Jonathan Haidt

   2 G K Chesterton

   2 Brien Foerster

1:Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,

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1:It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief. ~ Alan Dean Foster

2:Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination. ~ Ruth Benedict

3:So much time is spent on belief. So little time is spent on love! ~ Akiane Kramarik

4:Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination. —Ruth Benedict ~ Anonymous

5:Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination. —Ruth Benedict ~ Lily King

6:Leowin: Don't worry Luthiel. 'Truth's existence never depended upon belief. ~ Robert Fanney

7:Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins. ~ H L Mencken

8:Ten Common Beliefs of the JPI Refugees are ignorant and have no formal education. ~ Mary Pipher

9:All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties. ~ Charles William Eliot

10:It's a very common belief [among Mormons] that the Constitution will hang by a thread and the Church will save it. ~ Jan Shipps

11:Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young. ~ Ursula K Le Guin

12:Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,

13:Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young. ~ W Somerset Maugham

14:Democracy's my idea. I do not agree with communists, my acts prove. Free press in Cuba - free ideas, freedom religion belief. ~ Fidel Castro

15:You want to be a passionate leader who makes decisions that are based on belief and principle over those that are based on feeling. ~ Jon Gordon

16:In the EU you have half a billion people who share a common belief in democracy, in rights, in the kind of economic life we want. ~ Catherine Ashton

17:(On belief in miracles) - "The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder. ~ David Hume

18:Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare. ~ Anthony Burgess

19:Eddy dreamed of owning her own restaurant. It was a common belief that women like her, the descendant of slaves, had no right to dream. ~ Beverly Jenkins

20:I don't believe you.' 'That doesn't make any difference. Whether you believe it or not doesn't change the facts. It doesn't depend on belief. ~ Simon Mawer

21:The common belief that everyone can do anything if they just try hard enough is a formula for inefficiency at best and for complete failure at worst. ~ W J King

22:Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. ~ G K Chesterton

23:A common belief among Indians is that if you spend too much time around someone experiencing bad luck, their energy can transfer to you. Their bad luck may become yours. ~ Sejal Badani

24:Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education. ~ Sam Harris

25:The soul is subject to health and disease, just as is the body. The health and disease of both . . . undoubtedly depend upon beliefs and customs, which are peculiar to mankind. ~ Maimonides

26:A true proposition is a proposition belief which would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

27:Many decisions are based on beliefs concerning the likelihood of uncertain events such as the outcome of an election, the guilt of a defendant, or the future value of the dollar. ~ Daniel Kahneman

28:Catholicism is contrary to human liberty. Catholicism bases salvation upon belief. Catholicism teaches man to trample his reason under foot. And for that reason it is wrong. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

29:In this room we understand why this war might be fought...it's about our common belief that no one has the right to tell two creatures that they cannot love each other--no matter what their species. ~ Deborah Harkness

30:Washington’s hair was reddish brown, and contrary to a common belief, he never wore a wig. The illusion that he did so derived from the powder that he sprinkled on his hair with a puffball in later life. ~ Ron Chernow

31:Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: “It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.”61 ~ Jonathan Haidt

32:People do not only live on interests; they also live on beliefs, especially in very ideological areas. Unless you understand the ideological aspect of the region, you cannot understand what is happening. ~ Bashar al Assad

33:Every presidential candidate highlights patriotism, but Mr. Romneys is backed by the Mormon belief that the United States was chosen by God to play a special role in history, its Constitution divinely inspired. ~ Jodi Kantor

34:The gospel transforms culture by permeating it like yeast, and long after the people abandon belief they tend to live by habits of the soul. Once salted and yeasted, society is difficult to un-salt and un-yeast. ~ Philip Yancey

35:I had some hesitations about philosophy because, if you worked out a philosophical theory, it was hard to know whether you were going to be able to prove it or whether other theories had just as good a claim on belief. ~ Stephen Cole Kleene

36:The grand phenomenon which we are now witnessing represents a new and possibly final division of Mankind, based no longer on wealth but on belief in progress. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Great Event Foreshadowed - The Planetization of Mankind

37:A strong tie binds novelists to their mother tongue. Though novelists can and do write in languages other than their own, there is a common belief that a novel has a special, almost mystical affinity with the novelist's mother tongue. ~ Minae Mizumura

38:It is impossible to connect with other people without believing each other and we can’t believe each other unless we have some common beliefs. A common belief is like a common language through which we communicate at an emotional level. ~ Awdhesh Singh

39:The simple fact that the Christian fellowship, founded on belief in Jesus' resurrection, came into existence and flourished in the very city where he was executed and buried is powerful evidence for the historicity of the empty tomb. ~ William Lane Craig

40:Teresa [of Avila]'s story dismantles the common belief that all those chosen for sainthood are flawless in personality and character. Indeed, she would want us to consider her contradictions and struggles as integral to her sainthood. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt

41:They won’t accept reasonable things with their minds but the fantastic things they’ll swallow whole when their emotions are brought into play. Because the emotions have no limits on belief. The emotions will swallow anything—and they do. ~ Richard Matheson

42:We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them. ~ Carl Levin

43:Fundamental assumptions in general and scientific assumptions in particular are so hard to overturn because they are based on belief. Beliefs are so hard to overcome because they are irrational and therefore do not yield to logical argument. ~ Thomas Campbell

44:Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton

45:June in Delhi illustrates the common belief that a Delhiwala, like a cockroach, can survive anything, for such are the vicissitudes of weather, conditioning and deprivation that the human spirit here has soared to new heights of indomitability to survive. ~ Namita Gokhale

46:There is a common belief that under modern conditions peace cannot be assured except on the basis of an equal balance of armaments...[but] true and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust. ~ Pope John XXIII

47:Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day. ~ Chin Ning Chu

48:No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept. ~ Henry George

49:Even if the disciples had believed in the resurrection of Jesus, it is doubtful they would have generated any following. So long as the body was interred in the tomb, a Christian movement founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man would have been an impossible folly. ~ William Lane Craig

50:It has come to be a dreadfully common belief in the Christian Church that the only man who has a “call” is the man who devotes all his time to what is called “the ministry,” whereas all Christian service is ministry, and every Christian has a call to some kind of ministry or another. ~ Charles Spurgeon

51:Churches provide a place of gathering for people who share common beliefs, support and encouragement for each other in faith, a place to find insight into and teaching about God's Word, and they provide a time and place where people can leave the world behind and focus only on their spiritual relationship with God. ~ Mary C Neal

52:Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end of the day in a state of some exhaustion. ~ G K Chesterton

53:Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

54:The implication of the free-will doctrine are not realized by those who hold it. We say “why did you do it?” and expect the answer to mention beliefs and desires which caused action. When a man does not himself know why he acted as he did, we may search his unconscious for a cause, but it never occurs to us that there may have been no cause. ~ Bertrand Russell

55:Derek Sivers, one of my favorite thinkers, says he’s a slow thinker: “It’s a common belief that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s triggering a knee-jerk emotional response to something that happened long ago. ~ Darius Foroux

56:Contrary to the common belief, the regular course of events, governed by the laws of physics, is never the consequence of one well-ordered configuration of atoms – not unless that configuration of atoms repeats itself a great number of times, either as in the periodic crystal or as in a liquid or in a gas composed of a great number of identical molecules. ~ Erwin Schr dinger

57:The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called 'faith. ~ Robert G Ingersoll

58:The common belief that coaches must be abusive to be successful is a myth. Research shows that if you find a task fun, you'll perform better. If more coaches took . . . a Golden Rule approach to coaching, treating their players the way they themselves would like to be treated, fewer athletes would drop out of sports in their teens, and more athletes at every level would be happier and more satisfied. ~ Ralph Nader

59:Americans can be proud of this very substantive identity; it is based on belief in the common political principles of constitutionalism, the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the principle that “all men are created equal” (now interpreted to include all women). These political ideas come directly out of the Enlightenment and are the only possible basis for unifying a modern liberal democracy that has become de facto multicultural ~ Francis Fukuyama

60:Despite differences of age, sexual orientation, social class, region, and religion, U.S. Black women encounter societal practices that restrict us to inferior housing, neighborhoods, schools, jobs, and public treatment and hide this differential consideration behind an array of common beliefs about Black women's intelligence, work habits, and sexuality. These common challenges in turn result in recurring patterns of experiences for individual group members. ~ Patricia Hill Collins

61:Religion is not based on belief or faith: religion is based on awe, religion is based on wonder. Religion is based on the mysterious that is your surround. To feel it, to be aware of it, to see it, open your eyes and drop the dust of the ages. Clean your mirror! and see what beauty surrounds you, what tremendous grandeur goes on knocking at your doors. Why are you sitting with closed eyes? Why are you sitting with such long faces? Why can't you dance? and why can't you laugh? ~ Rajneesh

62:Plato’s sense that this was the only religion that would hold up nowadays was thoroughgoing. The only religion that could be really believed by anyone in his time, he said, is based on belief that the stars have intelligence, and that we and they have immortal souls of some sort.18 The more we learn—and mathematics is the queen of the soul’s subjects—the more we will ascend toward self-knowledge and universal truth. This ascension is the drama of Plato’s religion. ~ Jennifer Michael Hecht

63:In a 2007 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology,3 researchers asked eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds which criteria they felt were most indicative of adulthood. Their criteria were, in order of importance: (1) accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions; (2) establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult; (3) being financially independent from parents; and (4) deciding on beliefs/values independently of parents/other influences. ~ Julie Lythcott Haims

64:Take, say, the solidarity movement in Central America, which I think is what you probably had in mind. To a large extent, it comes out of mainstream Christianity, based on beliefs that have had outrageous human consequences in the past, and that I think are totally indefensible. In this case, they happen to lead to some of the most courageous, heroic, and honourable human action that's taking place anywhere in the world. Well, that's how life is, I guess. It doesn't come in neat little packages. ~ Noam Chomsky

65:We speak of self-fulfilling prophecies, but any belief that is acted on makes the world in its image. Beliefs matter. And so do the facts behind them. The astonishing gap between common beliefs and actualities about disaster behavior limits the possibilities, and changing beliefs could fundamentally change much more. Horrible in itself, disaster is sometimes a door back into paradise, that paradise at least in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sister's and brother's keeper. ~ Rebecca Solnit

66:She needed a confessor! Would she find it there, in the world of the artists? All over the world they had their meeting places, their affiliations, their rules of membership, their kingdoms, their chiefs, their secret channels of communication. They established common beliefs in certain painters, certain musicians, certain writers. They were the misplaced persons too, unwanted at home usually, or repudiated by their families. But they established new families, their own religions, their own doctors, their own communities. ~ Ana s Nin

67:But as almost all objects differ in some qualities and almost all have some qualities in common, it follows that, contrary to common belief, there is no one classification absolutely essential to any group of objects. An infinite number of classifications may be made, because every object has an infinite number of attributes, depending on the aspect we take of it. Nor is any one aspect of a thing "truer" than any other. The aspect we take depends entirely on the purpose we have in mind or the problem we wish to solve. ~ Henry Hazlitt

68:And scholars of the mystical, or esoteric, or inner teachings of the world’s Great Traditions are fairly unanimous in saying that although the outer teachings of each tradition are considerably different, often even contradictory, the inner esoteric teachings, the teachings based not on beliefs but on direct spiritual experiences of Waking Up, show a remarkable similarity in what they say, which is why the mystics of virtually all the world’s religions have great ease in understanding each other, even as their exoteric brethren argue themselves silly. ~ Ken Wilber

69:We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas. ~ Howard Zinn

70:The evidence cited here represents only an infinitesimally small fraction of the total number of interactions operating every moment in our bodies. Clearly, the common belief that we can investigate the effects of a single nutrient or drug, unmindful of the potential modifications by other chemical factors, is foolhardy. This evidence should also make us extremely hesitant to “mega-dose” on nutrients isolated from whole foods. Our bodies have evolved to eat whole foods, and can therefore deal with the combinations and interactions of nutrients contained in those foods. ~ T Colin Campbell

71:One of the major reasons why it’s hard for us to get over dysfunctional paradigms is our habit of selective attention. We’re more likely to register experiences that support our beliefs, and forget about—or just not see—those that run counter to what we want to believe. The basic principle of interpersonal psychotherapy, a highly respected method, is this: The reason it’s so difficult to change problem behavior is that the behavior is based on beliefs and attitudes that are continually validated by other people and by selective inattention to results that contradict those beliefs. ~ Richard O Connor

72:If we don't accept any common beliefs, we can't exist in spacetime. But when we don't believe in age, at least we don't have to die because our numbers change. [...] When you don't believe in birthdays, the idea of aging turns a little foreign to you. You don't fall into trauma over your sixteenth birthday or your thirtieth or the big Five-Oh or the deadly Century. You measure your life by what you learn, not by counting how many calendars you've seen. If you're going to have trauma, better it be the shock of discovering the fundamental principle of the universe that some date predictable as next July. ~ Richard Bach

73:It’s like bees and honey. Each bee makes only a tiny, tiny drop of honey. It takes thousands of them, millions perhaps, all working together to make the pot of honey you have on your breakfast table. Now imagine that you could eat nothing but honey. That’s what it’s like for my kind of people…we feed on belief, on prayers, on love. It takes a lot of people believing just the tiniest bit to sustain us. That’s what we need, instead of food. Belief.” “And Soma is…” “To take the analogy further, it’s honey wine. Mead.” He chuckled. “It’s a drink. Concentrated prayer and belief, distilled into a potent liqueur. ~ Neil Gaiman

74:I wanted to create a forum, a loosely-structured cabal for the productive aliens, not misfits who need to depend on a group. After the re-organization, I was free to be more selective. I would much rather attract and lend support to those individuals who use their alienation—just as most leaders are usually different or distinctive in some way. Groups encourage dependence on beliefs and delusions to reinforce their omnipotence. Instead of fostering self-sufficiency and honest skepticism, I saw my group lapsing into blind belief and unhealthy anthropomorphism. That’s not what I intended and I had to make moves to get the Church of Satan back on track. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

75:1983, Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University framed this enigma in the form of two alternative hypotheses. One was the common belief “that obesity is the result of a willful descent into self-gratification.” The other was the “alternative hypothesis that there is something ‘biologic’ about obesity, some alteration of hormones, enzymes or other biochemical control systems which leads to obesity.” Because no such biologic abnormality had been unambiguously identified, Hirsch believed, “it is perhaps better to maintain the illusion that obesity is not an illness. It is more pleasant to believe that it is no more than an error of good judgment and that better judgments and choices will eventually lead” to a better outcome. ~ Gary Taubes

76:Nurses on transplant wards often remarked that male transplant patients show renewed interest in sex. One reported that a patient asked her to wear something other than "that shapeless scrub" so he could see her breasts. A post-op who had been impotent for seven years before the operation was found holding his penis and demonstrating an erection. Another nurse spoke of a man who left the fly of his pajamas unfastened to show her his penis. Conclude Tabler and Frierson, "this irrational but common belief that the recipient will somehow develop characteristics of the donor is generally transitory but may alter sexual patterns.' Let us hope that the man with the chicken heart was blessed with a patient and open-minded spouse. ~ Mary Roach

77:Wednesday got comfortable, ordered himself a Jack Daniel’s. “My kind of people see your kind of people…” He hesitated. “It’s like bees and honey. Each bee makes only a tiny, tiny drop of honey. It takes thousands of them, millions perhaps, all working together to make the pot of honey you have on your breakfast table. Now imagine that you could eat nothing but honey. That’s what it’s like for my kind of people…we feed on belief, on prayers, on love. It takes a lot of people believing just the tiniest bit to sustain us. That’s what we need, instead of food. Belief.” “And Soma is…” “To take the analogy further, it’s honey wine. Mead.” He chuckled. “It’s a drink. Concentrated prayer and belief, distilled into a potent liqueur. ~ Neil Gaiman

78:From the time she opened her doors to the modern world in 1867, Japan has been consistently underrated by westerners, despite her successful defeats of China and then Russia in 1894 and 1905, respectively; despite Pearl Harbor; and despite her sudden emergence as an economic superpower and the toughest competitor in the world market of the 1970s and 1980s. A major reason, perhaps the major one, is the prevailing belief that innovation has to do with things and is based on science or technology. And the Japanese, so the common belief has held (in Japan as well as in the West, by the way), are not innovators but imitators. For the Japanese have not, by and large, produced outstanding technical or scientific innovations. Their success is based on social innovation. ~ Peter F Drucker

79:It is important to note that the acquisition of wealth, as the accepted standard of succes, does not refer to increasing material goods for sustenance purposes, or even for the purpose of increasing enjoyment. It refers rather to wealth as a sign of individual power, a proof of achievement and self-worth. Modern economic individualism, though based on belief in the free individual, has resulted in the phenomenon that increasingly large numbers of people have to work on the property (capital) of a few powerful owners. It is not surprising that such a situation should lead to widespread insecurity, for not only is the individual faced with a criterion of succes over which he has only partial control but also his opportunities for a job are in considerable measure out of his control. ~ Rollo May

80:Oral tradition accounts that the author was able to glean from living local experts are that the Spanish, upon first seeing the great wall of Sacsayhuaman in 1533, and shocked at its scale, asked the local Inca if their ancestors had built it. The answer was a simple, 'No,' that the wall was there when the Inca arrived about 500 years prior. Sacsayhuaman is a huge and complex site, and it is clear that varying techniques were used in its construction [...]. There is no practical reason why such huge blocks were required at Sacsayhuaman, and they are in fact the largest ever employed in the Americas. The common belief that it was a fortress of some kind constructed by the Inca is an idea that the Spanish came up with. For the Inca, it was in fact one of the most sacred of holy places. ~ Brien Foerster

81:The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith." What man, who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And yet, our entire system of religion is based upon that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the Christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few. It is hard to conceive how the human mind can give assent to such terrible ideas, or how any sane man can read the Bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration. ~ Robert G Ingersoll

82:The common belief is that religion is always opposed to material good. ‘One cannot act religiously in mercantile and such other matters. There is no place for religion in such pursuits; religion is only for attainment of salvation,’ we hear many worldly-wise people say. In my opinion the author of the Gita has dispelled this delusion. He has drawn no line of demarcation between salvation and worldly pursuits. On the contrary he has shown that religion must rule even our worldly pursuits. I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-today practice cannot be called religion. Thus, according to the Gita, all acts that are incapable of being performed without attachment are taboo. This golden rule saves mankind from many a pitfall. According to this interpretation murder, lying, dissoluteness and the like must be regarded as sinful and therefore taboo. Man’s life then becomes simple, and from that simpleness springs peace. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

83:Classical education was only half the old system of European education--below it and above it there was the religious education that was common to the whole people, and the higher theological education that was peculiar to the clergy, who provided the majority of the teachers in both the other departments of education. Now the lowest level of this structure, which has been least studied and least regarded, was the most important of them all. It is true that it differed considerably in different parts of Europe, but for the religious rather than material reasons. In Protestant Europe it was founded on the Bible and the catechism, whereas in Catholic Europe it was based on the liturgy and on religious art and drama and mime, which made the Church the school of the people. But in either case it provided a system of common beliefs and moral standards, as well as the archetypal patterns of world history and sacred story which formed the background of their spiritual world. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson

84:Would I be happy if I discovered that I could go to heaven forever? And the answer is no. Consider this argument. Think about what is forever. And think about the fact that the human mind, the entire human being, is built to last a certain period of time. Our programmed hormonal systems, the way we learn, the way we settle upon beliefs, and the way we love are all temporary. Because we go through a life's cycle. Now, if we were to be plucked out at the age of 12 or 56 or whenever, and taken up and told, "Now you will continue your existence as you are. We're not going to blot out your memories. We're not going to diminish your desires." You will exist in a state of bliss - whatever that is - forever. [...] Now think, a trillion times a trillion years. Enough time for universes like this one to be born, explode, form countless star systems and planets, then fade away to entropy. You will sit there watching this happen millions and millions of times and that will be just the beginning of the eternity that you've been consigned to bliss in this existence. ~ Edward O Wilson

85:The sheer size of some of the limestome foundation blocks [at Baalbek] are the largest ever quarried on the planet, conservatively estimated at 800 to 1200 tons, and the common belief that the Romans chose to do this work on such a massive scale to 'impress the locals' is absolutely ludicrous. Nowhere else in the Roman world is there any evidence of the quarrying of blocks of this size, so we can clearly presume that they were there when the Romans first appeared, and were used as foundational material. A group of three horizontally lying giant stones which form part of the podium of the Roman Jupiter Temple of Baalbek, Lebanon, go by the name 'trilithon.' Each one of these stones is 70 feet long, 14 feet high, 10 feet thick, and weighs around 800 tons. These three stone blocks are the largest building blocks ever used by any human beings anywhere in the world. The supporting stone layer beneath features a number of stones that are still in the order of 350 tons and 35 feet wide. No one knows how these blocks were moved, cut, placed, and fit perfectly together. ~ Brien Foerster

86:All schools of Buddhism place great emphasis on the importance of practice. Yet most of them have come to rely on a dogmatic rather than a skeptical foundation for that practice. At the risk of making too broad a generalization, let me suggest that religious Buddhists tend to base their practice on beliefs, whereas secular Buddhists tend to base their practice on questions. If one believes—pace the second noble truth of Buddhism, that craving is the origin of suffering—then your practice will be motivated by the intention to overcome craving in order to eliminate suffering. The practice will be the logical consequence of your belief. But if your experience of birth, sickness, aging, and death raises fundamental questions about your existence, then your practice will be driven by the urgent need to come to terms with those questions, irrespective of any theory about where birth, sickness, aging, and death originate. Such a practice is concerned with finding an authentic and autonomous response to the questions that life poses rather than confirming any doctrinal article of faith. ~ Stephen Batchelor

87:There are, however, more profound reasons for protecting the ‘nakedness’ of others and for concealing our own. As was suggested earlier, few personalities are unified and all of a piece. For a man to try to cover and inhibit those elements within himself which he would like to overcome and to bring forward those which he would like to see triumphant is not ‘hypocrisy’. If he would like to be better than he is, then he deserves to be encouraged in this aim, and there is something very peculiar about the contemporary tendency to regard a person’s worst qualities as representing his ‘true’ self, although it goes hand in hand with the common belief that ugliness is in some strange way more ‘real’ than beauty and that to discover a shameful secret is to discover the truth. Perhaps a saner point of view is suggested by a story which Muslims tell about Jesus. It is said that he was walking one day with his disciples when they passed the carcass of a dog. ‘How it stinks!’ said the disciples; but Jesus said: ‘How white its teeth are!’ No one was ever damned for thinking too well of people. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

88:Once, I was having lunch with the president of another movie studio, who told me that his biggest problem was not finding good people; it was finding good ideas. I remember being stunned when he said that—it seemed patently false to me, in part because I’d found the exact opposite to be true on Toy Story 2. I resolved to test whether what seemed a given to me was, in fact, a common belief. So for the next couple of years I made a habit, when giving talks, of posing the question to my audience: Which is more valuable, good ideas or good people? No matter whether I was talking to retired business executives or students, to high school principals or artists, when I asked for a show of hands, the audiences would be split 50-50. (Statisticians will tell you that when you get a perfect split like this, it doesn’t mean that half know the right answer—it means that they are all guessing, picking at random, as if flipping a coin.) People think so little about this that, in all these years, only one person in an audience has ever pointed out the false dichotomy. To me, the answer should be obvious: Ideas come from people. ~ Ed Catmull

89:Electromagnetism is the force that causes the interaction of electrically charged particles in our world, which takes place in an electrically charged field. Other than gravity, nothing affects our existence more than electromagnetism. Electric fields, electric currents, generators, motors, batteries, transformers, magnetic fields, magnets, and the magnetosphere that surrounds the Earth are all forms of electromagnetism. It’s the force responsible for holding electrons and protons together in atoms, so it’s a building block for molecules and all life as we know it. If there’s one constant relationship in paranormal research it’s the connection between EMF and spirits, either intelligent or residual. Almost every time paranormal activity happens, there is an increase in EMF, so it’s imperative that we understand how it works with spirits and their energy. The leading theory is that ghosts emit electromagnetic energy and cause spikes in electromagnetic fields (EMF). The common belief is that they gather energy in and send EMF out. So there is a directly proportional relationship between spirits and EMF and a simultaneous inversely proportional relationship between spirits and available energy. ~ Zak Bagans

90:An NBA clutch player can either improve his percentage success (which would indicate a sharpening of performance) or shoot more often with the same percentage (which suggests no improvement in skill but rather a change in the number of attempts). So we looked separately at whether the clutch players actually shot better or just more often. As it turned out, the clutch players did not improve their skill; they just tried many more times. Their field goal percentage did not increase in the last five minutes (meaning that their shots were no more accurate); neither was it the case that nonclutch players got worse. At this point you probably think that clutch players are guarded more heavily during the end of the game and this is why they don’t show the expected increase in performance. To see if this were indeed the case, we counted how many times they were fouled and also looked at their free throws. We found the same pattern: the heavily guarded clutch players were fouled more and got to shoot from the free-throw line more frequently, but their scoring percentage was unchanged. Certainly, clutch players are very good players, but our analysis showed that, contrary to common belief, their performance doesn’t improve in the last, most important part of the game. ~ Dan Ariely

91:When the family of Pharaoh found him in the river by the tree, Pharaoh called him Musa. Mu is water in Coptic and sha is tree. He named him by where he found him, for the ark stopped by the tree in the river. Pharaoh wanted to kill him. His wife, speaking by divine articulation in what she said to Pharaoh about Musa since Allah had created her for perfection as Allah said about her when He testified that she and Maryam, daughter of 'Imran, have the perfection which men have (8) - said, "he may be a source of delight for me and for you." (28:9) She would be consoled by him with the perfection which she received as we have said. The consolation of Pharaoh was with the belief Allah gave him when he was drowning. So Allah took him pure and purified. There was no impurity in him since He took him in his belief before he had acquired any wrong actions. Islam effaces what was before it. He made him a sign of His concern so that none might despair of the mercy of Allah, for "no one despairs of solace from Allah except for the unbelievers." (12:87) If Pharaoh been of those who despair, he would not have embarked on belief. Musa, peace be upon him, was, as the wife of Pharaoh said, "a source of delight for me and for you. Do not kill him. It may well be that he will be of use to us." That is what happened. Allah gave them use of Musa, although they were not aware that he was a prophet who would destroy the kingdom of Pharaoh and his family. ~ Ibn Arabi

92:Even working within the laws of physics, researchers with an anti-God bias often make blind leaps of faith to escape any evidence of God’s involvement in the universe. For centuries Christians were criticized for their God-of-the-gaps arguments. Sometimes that criticism was deserved. Christians tended to use gaps in understanding or data to build a case for God’s miraculous intervention. Then, when scientific discoveries uncovered a natural explanation for the “divine phenomenon,” ridicule was heaped not only on those proposing the divine explanation but also on belief in God’s existence. In the twenty-first century we see the reverse of the God-of-the-gaps arguments. Nontheists, confronted with problems when ample research leads to no natural explanations and instead points to the supernatural, utterly reject the possibility of the supernatural and insist on a natural explanation even if it means resorting to absurdity. For example, steady state models were supported by an imagined force of physics for which there was not one shred of observational or experimental evidence. The oscillating universe model depended on an imagined bounce mechanism for which there was likewise not one shred of observational or experimental evidence. Similar appeals to imagined forces and phenomena have been the basis for all the cosmological models proposed to avoid the big bang implications about God (see chs. 8 and 9). The disproof of these models and the ongoing appeal by nontheists to more and more bizarre unknowns and unknowables seem to reflect the growing strength of the case for theism (see chs. 8, 9, 13, and 16). ~ Hugh Ross

93:Yet some would say, why women's history at all? Surely men and women have always shared a world, and suffered together all its rights and wrongs? It is a common belief that whatever the situation, both sexes faced it alike. But the male peasant, however cruelly oppressed, always had the right to beat his wife. The black slave had to labor for the white master by day, but he did not have to service him by night as well. This grim pattern continues to this day, with women bearing an extra ration of pain and misery whatever the circumstances, as the sufferings of the women of war-torn Eastern Europe will testify. While their men fought and died, wholesale and systematic rape—often accompanied by the same torture and death that the men suffered— was a fate only women had to endure. Women's history springs from moments of recognition such as this, and the awareness of the difference is still very new. Only in our time have historians begun to look at the historical experience of men and women separately, and to acknowledge that for most of our human past, women's interests have been opposed to those of men. Women's interests have been opposed by them, too: men have not willingly extended to women the rights and freedoms they have claimed for themselves. As a result, historical advances have tended to be "men only" affairs. When history concentrates solely on one half of the human race, any alternative truth or reality is lost. Men dominate history because they write it, and their accounts of active, brave, clever or aggressive females constantly tend to sentimentalize, to mythologize or to pull women back to some perceived "norm." As a result, much of the so-called historical record is simply untrue. ~ Rosalind Miles

94:Practical advice.—People who read much must always keep it in mind that life is one thing, literature another. Not that authors invariably lie. I declare that there are writers who rarely and most reluctantly lie. But one must know how to read, and that isn't easy. Out of a hundred bookreaders ninety-nine have no idea what they are reading about. It is a common belief, for example, that any writer who sings of suffering must be ready at all times to open his arms to the weary and heavy-laden. This is what his readers feel when they read his books. Then when they approach him with their woes, and find that he runs away without looking back at them, they are filled with indignation and talk of the discrepancy between word and deed. Whereas the fact is, the singer has more than enough woes of his own, and he sings them because he can't get rid of them. L’uccello canta nella gabbia, non di gioia ma di rabbia, says the Italian proverb: "The bird sings in the cage, not from joy but from rage." It is impossible to love sufferers, particularly hopeless sufferers, and whoever says otherwise is a deliberate liar. "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But you remember what the Jews said about Him: "He speaks as one having authority!" And if Jesus had been unable, or had not possessed the right, to answer this skeptical taunt, He would have had to renounce His words. We common mortals have neither divine powers nor divine rights, we can only love our neighbours whilst they still have hope, and any pretence of going beyond this is empty swagger. Ask him who sings of suffering for nothing but his songs. Rather think of alleviating his burden than of requiring alleviation from him. Surely not—for ever should we ask any poet to sob and look upon tears. I will end with another Italian saying: Non è un si triste cane che non meni la coda... "No dog so wretched that doesn't wag his tail sometimes. ~ Lev Shestov

95:In their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell analyzed a variety of data sources to describe how religious and nonreligious Americans differ. Common sense would tell you that the more time and money people give to their religious groups, the less they have left over for everything else. But common sense turns out to be wrong. Putnam and Campbell found that the more frequently people attend religious services, the more generous and charitable they become across the board.58 Of course religious people give a lot to religious charities, but they also give as much as or more than secular folk to secular charities such as the American Cancer Society.59 They spend a lot of time in service to their churches and synagogues, but they also spend more time than secular folk serving in neighborhood and civic associations of all sorts. Putnam and Campbell put their findings bluntly: By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.60 Why are religious people better neighbors and citizens? To find out, Putnam and Campbell included on one of their surveys a long list of questions about religious beliefs (e.g., “Do you believe in hell? Do you agree that we will all be called before God to answer for our sins?”) as well as questions about religious practices (e.g., “How often do you read holy scriptures? How often do you pray?”). These beliefs and practices turned out to matter very little. Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon … none of these things correlated with generosity. The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It’s the friendships and group activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That’s what brings out the best in people. Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: “It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.”61 ~ Jonathan Haidt

96:It is a common belief that we breathe with our lungs alone, but in point of fact, the work of breathing is done by the whole body. The lungs play a passive role in the respiratory process. Their expansion is produced by an enlargement, mostly downward, of the thoracic cavity and they collapse when that cavity is reduced. Proper breathing involves the muscles of the head, neck, thorax, and abdomen. It can be shown that chronic tension in any part of the body's musculature interferes with the natural respiratory movements. Breathing is a rhythmic activity. Normally a person at rest makes approximately 16 to 17 respiratory incursions a minute. The rate is higher in infants and in states of excitation. It is lower in sleep and in depressed persons. The depth of the respiratory wave is another factor which varies with emotional states. Breathing becomes shallow when we are frightened or anxious. It deepens with relaxation, pleasure and sleep. But above all, it is the quality of the respiratory movements that determines whether breathing is pleasurable or not. With each breath a wave can be seen to ascend and descend through the body. The inspiratory wave begins deep in the abdomen with a backward movement of the pelvis. This allows the belly to expand outward. The wave then moves upward as the rest of the body expands. The head moves very slightly forward to suck in the air while the nostrils dilate or the mouth opens. The expiratory wave begins in the upper part of the body and moves downward: the head drops back, the chest and abdomen collapse, and the pelvis rocks forward. Breathing easily and fully is one of the basic pleasures of being alive. The pleasure is clearly experienced at the end of expiration when the descending wave fills the pelvis with a delicious sensation. In adults this sensation has a sexual quality, though it does not induce any genital feeling. The slight backward and forward movements of the pelvis, similar to the sexual movements, add to the pleasure. Though the rhythm of breathing is pronounced in the pelvic area, it is at the same time experienced by the total body as a feeling of fluidity, softness, lightness and excitement. The importance of breathing need hardly be stressed. It provides the oxygen for the metabolic processes; literally it supports the fires of life. But breath as "pneuma" is also the spirit or soul. We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss. That is why breathing is the dominant factor in the practice of Yoga. ~ Alexander Lowen

97:We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. ~ Neil Postman

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

6

   1 Science
   1 Philosophy
   1 Integral Yoga
   1 Christianity


   3 Sri Aurobindo

1.02_-_The_Three_European_Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral      Although then unaware of its full significance, the present writer saw the mountain years ago and sensed its attraction. Certainly this attraction must have been sensed by others as well; it is no accident that Petrarch's discovery of landscape occurred precisely in this region of France. Here, the Gnostic tradition had encouraged investigation of the world and placed greater emphasis on knowledge than On Belief; here, the tradition of the Troubadours, the Cathari, and the Albigensi remained alive. This is not to say that the affinity makes Petrarch a Gnostic, but merely points to the Gnostic climate of this part of douce France which is mentioned in the opening lines of France's first major poetic work, the Chanson de Roland (verse16): "Li empereres Carles de France dulce."

1.07_-_THE_GREAT_EVENT_FORESHADOWED_-_THE_PLANETIZATION_OF_MANKIND, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   now witnessing represents a new and possibly final division of Man-   kind, based no longer on wealth but On Belief in progress.

2.24_-_The_Evolution_of_the_Spiritual_Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Another untoward result or peril of the diffusive movement and the consequent invasion has been the intellectual formalisation of spiritual knowledge into dogma and the materialisation of living practice into a dead mass of cult and ceremony and ritual, a mechanisation by which the spirit was bound to depart in course of time from the body of the religion. But this risk had to be taken, for the expansive movement was an inherent necessity of the spiritual urge in evolutionary Nature.   Thus came into being the religions which rely mainly or in the mass on creed and ritual for some spiritual result, but yet hold because of their truth of experience, the fundamental inner reality that was initially present in them and persists so long as there are men to continue or renew it, a means for those who are touched by the spiritual impulse to realise the Divine and liberate the spirit. This development has led farther to a division into two tendencies, catholic and protestant, one a tendency towards some conservation of the original plastic character of religion, its many-sidedness and appeal to the whole nature of the human being, the other disruptive of this catholicity and insistent on a pure reliance On Belief, worship and conduct simplified so as to make a quick and ready appeal to the common reason, heart and ethical will. This turn has tended to create an excessive rationalisation, a discrediting and condemnation of most of the occult elements which seek to establish a communication with what is invisible, a reliance on the surface mind as the sufficient vehicle of the spiritual endeavour; a certain dryness and a narrowness and paucity of the spiritual life have been a frequent consequence. Moreover, the intellect having denied so much, cast out so much, has found ample room and opportunity to deny more until it denies all, to negate spiritual experience and cast out spirituality and religion, leaving only intellect itself as the sole surviving power. But intellect void of the spirit can only pile up external knowledge and machinery and efficiency and ends in a drying up of the secret springs of vitality and a decadence without any inner power to save the life or create a new life or any other way out than death and disintegration and a new beginning out of the old Ignorance.   It would have been possible for the evolutionary principle to have preserved its pristine wholeness of movement while pressing on, by an expansion and not a disruption of the wiser ancient harmony, to a greater synthesis of the principle of concentration and the principle of diffusion. In India, we have seen, there has been a persistence of the original intuition and total movement of evolutionary Nature. For religion in India limited itself by no one creed or dogma; it not only admitted a vast number of different formulations, but contained successfully within itself all the elements that have grown up in the course of the evolution of religion and refused to ban or excise any: it developed occultism to its utmost limits, accepted spiritual philosophies of all kinds, followed to its highest, deepest or largest outcome every possible line of spiritual realisation, spiritual experience, spiritual self-discipline. Its method has been the method of evolutionary Nature herself, to allow all developments, all means of communication and action of the spirit upon the members, all ways of communion between man and the Supreme or Divine, to follow every possible way of advance to the goal and test it even to its extreme. All stages of spiritual evolution are there in man and each has to be allowed or provided with its means of approach to the spirit, an approach suited to its capacity, adhikara.

class, #unset, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga     concepts (30+ per main subject.. it could be very interesting data to analyse)     chapters (go from 334 to (1k-7k), (the more chapters the more you can find like 50 chapters On Belief or concentration or meditation or maybe even goddesses. etc. but I guess makes sense to do TOCs first.)

r1914_06_12, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga       Subjective ananda has been upset to a slight extent by the failure of faith, but is now recovering itself independently of the faith. It is ceasing to depend On Belief in success & outward justification. This is necessary. Ananda must be entirely self-existent. To this rule there can be no exception or modification.

Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1, #unset, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   one has no experience of, there will be few beliefs. Indian mystics have always said that only by Yoga can you have experiences, otherwise you have   to take such matters On Belief.