ABC 1. "computer" {Atanasoff-Berry Computer}. 2. "language" An {imperative language} and programming environment from {CWI}, Netherlands. It is interactive, structured, high-level, and easy to learn and use. It is a general-purpose language which you might use instead of {BASIC}, {Pascal} or {AWK}. It is not a systems-programming language but is good for teaching or prototyping. ABC has only five data types that can easily be combined; {strong typing}, yet without declarations; data limited only by memory; refinements to support top-down programming; nesting by indentation. Programs are typically around a quarter the size of the equivalent {Pascal} or {C} program, and more readable. ABC includes a programming environment with {syntax-directed} editing, {suggestions}, {persistent variables} and multiple workspaces and {infinite precision} arithmetic. An example function words to collect the set of all words in a document: HOW TO RETURN words document: PUT {} IN collection FOR line in document: FOR word IN split line: IF word not.in collection: INSERT word IN collection RETURN collection {Interpreter}/{compiler}, version 1.04.01, by Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens, Steven Pemberton "Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl". ABC has been ported to {Unix}, {MS-DOS}, {Atari}, {Macintosh}. {(http://cwi.nl/cwi/projects/abc.html)}. {FTP eu.net (ftp://ftp.eu.net/programming/languages/abc)}, {FTP nluug.nl (ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/programming/languages/abc)}, {FTP uunet (ftp://ftp.uu.net/languages/abc)}. Mailing list: "abc-list-request@cwi.nl". E-mail: "abc@cwi.nl". ["The ABC Programmer's Handbook" by Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens and Steven Pemberton, published by Prentice-Hall (ISBN 0-13-000027-2)]. ["An Alternative Simple Language and Environment for PCs" by Steven Pemberton, IEEE Software, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1987, pp. 56-64.] (1995-02-09) 2. "language" Argument, Basic value, C?. An {abstract machine} for implementation of {functional languages} and its intermediate code. [P. Koopman, "Functional Programs as Executable Specifications", 1990]. (1995-02-09)
ABC ::: 1. (computer) Atanasoff-Berry Computer.2. (language) An imperative language and programming environment from CWI, Netherlands. It is interactive, structured, high-level, and easy to learn Pascal or AWK. It is not a systems-programming language but is good for teaching or prototyping.ABC has only five data types that can easily be combined; strong typing, yet without declarations; data limited only by memory; refinements to support top-down programming; nesting by indentation. Programs are typically around a quarter the size of the equivalent Pascal or C program, and more readable.ABC includes a programming environment with syntax-directed editing, suggestions, persistent variables and multiple workspaces and infinite precision arithmetic.An example function words to collect the set of all words in a document: HOW TO RETURN words document:PUT {} IN collection ABC has been ported to Unix, MS-DOS, Atari, Macintosh. . , , .Mailing list: .E-mail: .[The ABC Programmer's Handbook by Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens and Steven Pemberton, published by Prentice-Hall (ISBN 0-13-000027-2)].[An Alternative Simple Language and Environment for PCs by Steven Pemberton, IEEE Software, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1987, pp. 56-64.] (1995-02-09)2. (language) Argument, Basic value, C?.An abstract machine for implementation of functional languages and its intermediate code.[P. Koopman, Functional Programs as Executable Specifications, 1990]. (1995-02-09)
ADESA. ::: Impulsion; inner command. The Divine speaks to us in many ways and it is not always the imperative ādeśa that comes. When it does, it is clear and irresistible, the mind has to obey and there is no question possible, even if what comes is contrary to the preconceived ideas of the mental intelligence. But more often what is said is an intuition or even less, a mere indication, which the mind may not follow because it is not impressed with its imperative necessity. It is something offered but not imposed, perhaps something not even offered but only suggested from the Truth above.
"All true law is the right motion and process of a reality, an energy or power of being in action fulfilling its own inherent movement self-implied in its own truth of existence. This law may be inconscient and its working appear to be mechanical, — that is the character or, at least, the appearance of law in material Nature: it may be a conscious energy, freely determined in its action by the consciousness in the being aware of its own imperative of truth, aware of its plastic possibilities of self-expression of that truth, aware, always in the whole and at each moment in the detail, of the actualities it has to realise; this is the figure of the law of the Spirit.” *The Life Divine
“All true law is the right motion and process of a reality, an energy or power of being in action fulfilling its own inherent movement self-implied in its own truth of existence. This law may be inconscient and its working appear to be mechanical,—that is the character or, at least, the appearance of law in material Nature: it may be a conscious energy, freely determined in its action by the consciousness in the being aware of its own imperative of truth, aware of its plastic possibilities of self-expression of that truth, aware, always in the whole and at each moment in the detail, of the actualities it has to realise; this is the figure of the law of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
ana ::: a term used in the last dated entry of 1920 for a plane of consciousness whose arrangement "on the lower levels of the ideal thought-powers" had then begun; in view of evidence for the connection of the term imperative with revelation or dr.s.t.i, imperative vijñana is perhaps the same as the earlier seer ideality, whose "deputed power" in the logistic ideality was mentioned in 1919.
ana [Greek and Sanskrit] ::: a term used in October 1920 for three levels encompassing much of what was formerly called logistic ideality; applied more specifically to the highest of these levels, also termed highest representative ideality, which corresponds to full revelatory ideality and "has to deal with three movements": actualities, potentialities and the "imperatives of the infinite".
As against the faulty ethical procedures of the past and of his own day, therefore, Kant very early conceived and developed the more critical concept of "form," -- not in the sense of a "mould" into which content is to be poured (a notion which has falselv been taken over by Kant-students from his theoretical philosophy into his ethics), but -- as a method of rational (not ratiocinative, but inductive) reflection; a method undetermined by, although not irrespective of, empirical data or considerations. This methodologically formal conception constitutes Kant's major distinctive contribution to ethical theory. It is a process of rational reflection, creative construction, and transition, and as such is held by him to be the only method capable if coping with the exigencies of the facts of hunnn experience and with the needs of moral obligation. By this method of creative construction the reflective (inductive) reason is able to create, as each new need for a next reflectively chosen step arises, a new object of "pure" -- that is to say, empirically undetermined -- "practical reason." This makes possible the transition from a present no longer adequate ethical conception or attitude to an untried and as yet "indemonstrable" object. No other method can guarantee the individual and social conditions of progress without which the notion of morality loses all assignable meaning. The newly constructed object of "pure practical reason" is assumed, in the event, to provide a type of life and conduct which, just because it is of my own construction, will be likely to be accompanied by the feeling of self-sufficiency which is the basic pre-requisite of any worthy human happiness. It is this theory which constitutes Kant's ethical formalism. See also Autonomy, Categorical Imperative, Duty, End(s), Freedom, Happiness, Law, Moral, Practical Imperative, Will. -- P. A.S.
asya ::: same as primary / simple dasya, also called personal dasya, the form of dasya in which "between the various impulses of Prakriti, we have the sense of choosing, of an active & constant freedom, & although we choose what we understand to be God"s will, it is still our choice that determines the action in the adhara & not His direct and imperative Will".
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
away ::: adv. --> From a place; hence.
Absent; gone; at a distance; as, the master is away from home.
Aside; off; in another direction.
From a state or condition of being; out of existence.
By ellipsis of the verb, equivalent to an imperative: Go or come away; begone; take away.
On; in continuance; without intermission or delay; as, sing
AXLE ::: An early string processing language. Program consists of an assertion table which specifies patterns, and an imperative table which specifies replacements. AXLE: An Axiomatic Language for String Transformations, K. Cohen et al, CACM 8(11):657-661 (Nov 1965).
AXLE "language" An early {string processing} language in which a program consists of an "assertion table" specifying patterns and an "imperative table" specifying replacements. ["AXLE: An Axiomatic Language for String Transformations", K. Cohen et al, CACM 8(11):657-661, Nov 1965]. (2009-02-10)
Babism: An initially persecuted and later schismatizing religious creed founded in Persia prior to the middle of the last century. International in its appeal the number of its followers increased largely in America. As a development against orthodox Mohammedanism, the Babis deny the finality of any revelation. The sect's former extreme pantheistic tendency and metaphysical hairsplittings have been effectively subordinated to more pronounced ethical imperatives. -- H.H.
(b) any ethical judgment, especially judgments of good and bad, right, wrong, and duty (see ethics). For Kant a moral judgment or imperative is one which enjoins a categorical imperative as contrasted with the hypothetical imperatives of skill and prudence. -- W.K.F.
B. Generically "an absolute" or "the absolute" (pl. "absolutes") means the real (thing-in-itself) as opposed to appearance; substance, the substantival, reals (possessing aseity or self-existence) as opposed to relations; the perfect, non-comparative, complete of its kind; the primordial or uncaused; the independent or autonomous. Logic. Aristotelian logic involves such absolutes as the three laws of thought and changeless, objectively real classes or species, In Kantian logic the categories and principles of judgment are absolutes, i.e. a priori, while the Ideas of reason seek absolute totality and unity, In the organic or metaphysical logic of the Hegelian school, the Absolute is considered the ultimate terminus, referent, or subject of every judgment. Ethics and Axiology. Moral and axiological identified with the Real values, norms, principles, maxims, laws are considered absolutes when universally valid objects of acknowledgment, whether conditionally or unconditionally (e.g. the law of the best possible, the utilitarian greatest happiness principle, the Kantian categorical imperative).
imperative ::: a. --> Expressive of command; containing positive command; authoritatively or absolutely directive; commanding; authoritative; as, imperative orders.
Not to be avoided or evaded; obligatory; binding; compulsory; as, an imperative duty or order.
Expressive of commund, entreaty, advice, or exhortation; as, the imperative mood.
imperative {imperative language}
imperative ::: (in 1920) being of the nature of a "revealingly imperative power of the spirit"s knowledge by identity", the element in the logos vijñana or highest representative ideality (see full revelatory ideality) that deals with "the imperatives of the infinite", connected with revelation in much the same way as representative with intuition and interpretative with inspiration, and evidently entering into the logistic ideality from a higher plane of imperative vijñana; (in early 1927) a plane related to, but higher than, the imperative vijñana of 1920, apparently occupying a position between the supreme supramental and the supreme supermind, for one of its forms "acts as an intermediary force, lifting the former into the latter". The forms of "the imperative" in 1927 are perhaps the "intuitive forms" which by January of that year had been arranged "in the gnosis", making them part of what at the end of October is called the overmind system. imperative vij ñana
imperative language ::: (language) Any programming language that specifies explicit manipulation of the state of the computer system, not to be confused with a procedural language, which specifies an explicit sequence of steps to perform.An example of an imperative (but non-procedural) language is a data manipulation language for a relational database management system. This specifies changes to the database but does not necessarily require anyone to specify a sequence of steps.(2003-06-23)
imperative language "language" Any {programming language} that specifies explicit manipulation of the state of the computer system, not to be confused with a {procedural language}, which specifies an explicit sequence of steps to perform. An example of an imperative (but non-procedural) language is a {data manipulation language} for a {relational database management system}. This specifies changes to the database but does not necessarily require anyone to specify a sequence of steps. Both contrast with {declarative languages}, which specify neither explicit state manipulation nor a sequence of steps. (2007-10-02)
imperatively ::: adv. --> In an imperative manner.
imperative ::: n. 1. An action, etc. involving or expressing a command; a command. 2. Something that demands attention or action; an unavoidable obligation or requirement; necessity. 3. The verbal mood (or any form belonging to it) which expresses a command, request, or exhortation. adj. **4. Absolutely necessary or required; unavoidable. 5. Of the nature of or expressing a command; commanding. imperatives.**
imperative programming {imperative language}
But reason is not limited to its theoretical use. Besides objects of cognition and thought, there are also those of will and feeling. Kant's "practical philosophy", the real foundation of his system of transcendental idealism, centers in a striking doctrine of freedom. Even in its theoretical use. reason is a law-giver to Nature, in that the data of sense must conform to the forms of the sensibility and understanding if Nature is to be known at all. But in moral experience, as Kant shows in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the will of a rational being is directly autonomous -- a law unto itself. But the unconditional moral law, "duty" or "categorical imperative", the validity of which Kant does not question, is possible only on the supposition that the will is really free. As phenomenal beings we are subject to the laws of nature and reason, but as pure rational wills we move in the free, noumenal or intelligible realm, bound only by the self-imposed rational law "to treat humanity in every case as an end, never as a means only."
capt ::: Tehmi: “This passage is about the Kings of Thought. They come as the crown or overlie the imperatives. They go higher than the imperatives.”
Categorical Imperative: (Kant. Ger. kategorischer Imperativ) The supreme, absolute moral law of rational, self-determining beings. Distinguished from hypothetical or conditional imperatives which admit of exceptions. Kant formulated the categorical imperative as follows "Act on maxims which can at the same time have for their object themselves as universal laws of nature." See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Conditional Morality: Any system of morals which has for its basic principle what Kant calls a hypothetical imperative, e.g., a system of morals which reasons that we should act in certain ways because such actions will bring us happiness, assuming that we want happiness. See Hypothetical imperatives. -- W.K.F.
constraint programming ::: A programming paradigm wherein relations between variables are stated in the form of constraints. Constraints differ from the common primitives of imperative programming languages in that they do not specify a step or sequence of steps to execute, but rather the properties of a solution to be found.
counter transference: as part of psychoanalytic therapy, the therapist may transfer feelings or conflicts they may have about their own life, or significant others in it, onto the client. It is imperative that the therapist recognises this possibility and guards against it.
Criterion ethical: In ethics the main problem is often said to be the finding of a criterion of virtue, or of rightness, or of goodness, depending on which of these concepts is taken as basic; and the quest for a moral standard, or for an ethical first principle, or for a summum bonum may generally be construed as a quest for such a criterion (e.g., Kant's first form of the categorical imperative may be interpreted as a criterion of rightness). Hence to find a criterion of, say, goodness is to find a characteristic whose presence, absence, or degree may be taken as a mark of the presence, absence, or degree of goodness. Thus hedonists hold pleasantness to be such a characteristic. Often, finding a criterion of a characteristic is taken as equivalent to finding a definition of that characteristic. Strictly, this is not the case, for a characteristic may serve as a criterion of another with which it is not identical. Pleasantness might be a criterion of goodness without being identical with it, if only the above relation held between pleasantness and goodness. However, the discovery of a definition of a characteristic does normally furnish a criterion of that characteristic. Vide the definition of a right act as an act conducive to the greatest happiness.
DACTL ::: Declarative Alvey Compiler Target Language.An intermediate language from the University of East Anglia, used in the Flagship project. DACTL is based on a form of graph rewriting which can be used to implement functional languages, logic languages and imperative languages. The current version is Dactl0.[DACTL - A Computational Model and Compiler Target Language Based on Graph Reduction, J.R.W. Glauert et al, ICL Tech J 5(3) (1987)]. (1994-09-22)
DACTL Declarative Alvey Compiler Target Language. An intermediate language from the {University of East Anglia}, used in the {Flagship} project. DACTL is based on a form of {graph rewriting} which can be used to implement {functional languages}, {logic languages} and {imperative languages}. The current version is Dactl0. ["DACTL - A Computational Model and Compiler Target Language Based on Graph Reduction", J.R.W. Glauert et al, ICL Tech J 5(3) (1987)]. (1994-09-22)
declarative language "language" Any {relational language} or {functional language}. These kinds of {programming language} describe relationships between variables in terms of {functions} or {inference rules}, and the language executor ({interpreter} or {compiler}) applies some fixed {algorithm} to these relations to produce a result. Declarative languages contrast with {imperative languages} which specify explicit manipulation of the computer's internal state; or {procedural languages} which specify an explicit sequence of steps to follow. The most common examples of declarative languages are {logic programming} languages such as {Prolog} and {functional languages} like {Haskell}. See also {production system}. (2004-05-17)
declarative language ::: (language) Any relational language or functional language. These kinds of programming language describe relationships between variables in terms of functions or inference rules, and the language executor (interpreter or compiler) applies some fixed algorithm to these relations to produce a result.Declarative languages contrast with imperative languages which specify explicit manipulation of the computer's internal state; or procedural languages which specify an explicit sequence of steps to follow.The most common examples of declarative languages are logic programming languages such as Prolog and functional languages like Haskell.See also production system.(2004-05-17)
dele ::: imperative sing. --> Erase; remove; -- a direction to cancel something which has been put in type; usually expressed by a peculiar form of d, thus: /. ::: v. t. --> To erase; to cancel; to delete; to mark for omission.
To deal; to divide; to distribute.
determine ::: v. t. --> To fix the boundaries of; to mark off and separate.
To set bounds to; to fix the determination of; to limit; to bound; to bring to an end; to finish.
To fix the form or character of; to shape; to prescribe imperatively; to regulate; to settle.
To fix the course of; to impel and direct; -- with a remoter object preceded by to; as, another&
die! (imperative) This word is used in the traditional saying mūtū qabla an tamūtū, which means die before you die. (mutu qabla an tamutu was in some texts as mutu kabla anta mutu)
emotivism ::: The non-cognitivist meta-ethical theory that ethical judgments are primarily expressions of one's own attitude and imperatives meant to change the attitudes and actions of another. It is heavily associated with the work of A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson, and it is related to the prescriptivism of R. M. Hare.
Faithfulness to the Light and the Call — to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say, “ I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail ” ; to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply, “ I am a child of Immortality chosen by the Divine ; I have but to be true to myself and to Him — the victory is sure ; even if I fell, I would rise again " ; to all impulses to depart and serve some smaller ideal, to reply, "This is the greatest, this is the Truth that alone can satisfy the soul within me ;
for loop ::: (programming) A loop construct found in many imperative programming languages which repeatedly executes some instructions while a condition is true.In C, the for loop is written in the form; for (INITIALISATION; CONDITION; AFTER)STATEMENT; statement including a compound statement within braces .. that is executed if CONDITION is true.For example: int i;for (i = 0; i 10; i++) prints Hello 10 times.The for loop is an alternative way of writing a while loop that is convenient because the loop control logic is collected in a single place. It is also closely related to the repeat loop. (1999-07-07)
full revelatory ideality ::: the highest scale of revelatory logistis, also called the full dras.t.a luminous reason, whose three forms are described as (1) "revelation with interpretation but the front representative",(2) "the front interpretative with intuition involved in the drishti", and (3) "the whole drishti with the two other powers taken into the drishti"; these three forms are also referred to as the representative, interpretative and imperative elements of representative vijñana in the higher sense (highest representative ideality or logos vijñana). future trik trikaladrsti
FX-87 Effects. A {polymorphic} language based on {Scheme}, allowing {side effects} and {first-class} functions. It attempts to integrate functional and {imperative programming}. Expressions have types, side effects (e.g. reading, writing or allocating) and regions (stating where the effects may occur). Versions: FX-89, {FX-90}. {(ftp://brokaw.lcs.mit.edu/)}. ["The FX-87 Reference Manual", D.K. Gifford "gifford@lcs.mit.edu" et al, MIT/LCS/TR-407, Oct 1987]. (1995-01-31)
FX-87 ::: Effects. A polymorphic language based on Scheme, allowing side effects and first-class functions. It attempts to integrate functional and imperative programming. Expressions have types, side effects (e.g. reading, writing or allocating) and regions (stating where the effects may occur).Versions: FX-89, FX-90. .[The FX-87 Reference Manual, D.K. Gifford (1995-01-31)
G ::: 1. (language) [G: A Functional Language with Generic Abstract Data Types, P.A.G. Bailes, Computer Langs 12(2):69-94 (1987)].2. (language) A language developed at Oregon State University in 1988 which combines functional programming, object-oriented programming, relational, imperative and logic programming (you name it we got it).[The Multiparadigm Language G, J. Placer, Computer Langs 16:235-258(1991)].3. (unit) The abbreviated form of giga-.[Jargon File] (1996-08-12)
G 1. "unit" The abbreviated form of {giga-}. 2. "language" ["G: A Functional Language with Generic Abstract Data Types", P.A.G. Bailes, Computer Langs 12(2):69-94, 1987]. 3. "language" A language developed at {Oregon State University} in 1988 which combines {functional programming}, {object-oriented programming}, relational, {imperative programming} and {logic programming} (you name it we got it). ["The Multiparadigm Language G", J. Placer, Computer Langs 16:235-258, 1991]. [{Jargon File}] (1996-08-12)
gee ::: v. i. --> To agree; to harmonize.
To turn to the off side, or from the driver (i.e., in the United States, to the right side); -- said of cattle, or a team; used most frequently in the imperative, often with off, by drivers of oxen, in directing their teams, and opposed to haw, or hoi. ::: v. t.
Glasgow Haskell Compiler ::: (language) (GHC) A Haskell 1.2 compiler written in Haskell by the AQUA project at Glasgow University, headed by Simon Peyton Jones can take advantage of features of gcc such as global register variables and has an extensive set of optimisations.GHC features an extensible I/O system based on a monad, in-line C code, fully fledged unboxed data types, incrementally-updatable arrays, mutable reference types, generational garbage collector, concurrent threads. Time and space profiling is also supported.It requires GNU gcc 2.1+ and Perl.GHC runs on Sun-4, DEC Alpha, Sun-3, NeXT, DECstation, HP-PA and SGI.Latest version: 4.01, as of 1998-11-30. . .[Imperative functional programming, Peyton Jones & Wadler, POPL '93].[Unboxed data types as first-class citizens, Peyton Jones & Launchbury, FPCA '91].[Profiling lazy functional languages, Sansom & Peyton Jones, Glasgow workshop '92].[Implementing lazy functional languages on stock hardware, Peyton Jones, Journal of Functional Programming, Apr 1992].E-mail: . (1999-01-05)
Glasgow Haskell Compiler "language" (GHC) A {Haskell} 1.2 compiler written in Haskell by the AQUA project at {Glasgow University}, headed by Simon Peyton Jones "simonpj@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk" throughout the 1990's [started?]. GHC can generate either {C} or {native code} for {SPARC}, {DEC} {Alpha} and other platforms. It can take advantage of features of {gcc} such as global register variables and has an extensive set of optimisations. GHC features an extensible I/O system based on a "{monad}", in-line {C} code, fully fledged {unboxed} data types, incrementally-updatable {arrays}, {mutable reference types}, {generational garbage collector}, {concurrent} {threads}. Time and space {profiling} is also supported. It requires {GNU} gcc 2.1+ and {Perl}. GHC runs on {Sun-4}, {DEC Alpha}, {Sun-3}, {NeXT}, {DECstation}, {HP-PA} and {SGI}. {Glasgow FTP (ftp://ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk/pub/haskell/glasgow/)}. {Yale (ftp://nebula.cs.yale.edu/pub/haskell/glasgow/)}. {Sweden (ftp://ftp.cs.chalmers.se/pub/haskell/glasgow/)}. {Papers (ftp://ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk/pub/glasgow-fp)}. ["Imperative functional programming", Peyton Jones & Wadler, POPL '93]. ["Unboxed data types as first-class citizens", Peyton Jones & Launchbury, FPCA '91]. ["Profiling lazy functional languages", Sansom & Peyton Jones, Glasgow workshop '92]. ["Implementing lazy functional languages on stock hardware", Peyton Jones, Journal of Functional Programming, Apr 1992]. E-mail: "glasgow-haskell-request@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk". (1999-01-05)
gnosis ::: "a power above mind working in its own law, out of the direct identity of the supreme Self", a faculty superior to buddhi or intellect, possessing not only the "concentrated consciousness of the infinite Essence", but "also and at the same time an infinite knowledge of the myriad play of the Infinite"; (in 1919-20) the supra-intellectual consciousness (also called ideality or vijñana) with its three planes of logistic, hermetic and seer gnosis, each successive level being more "intense and large in light, imperative, instantaneous, the scope of the active knowledge larger, the way nearer to the knowledge by identity, the thought more packed with the luminous substance of self-awareness and all-vision"; (in most of 1927 before 29 October) a plane of consciousness usually referred to as above the supreme ...64 supermind and descending into it to form supreme supermind gnosis, also rising to the "invincible Gnosis of the Divine"; (in April 1927) a term encompassing three degrees of supramental gnosis (corresponding to planes later redefined as parts of the overmind system) and a fourth degree of divine gnosis; (from 29 October 1927 onwards) equivalent to "divine gnosis", a grade of consciousness above overmind (but sometimes distinguished from supermind, which occupies a similar position) and descending into it to form gnostic overmind or gnosis in overmind.
God: In metaphysical thinking a name for the highest, ultimate being, assumed by theology on the basis of authority, revelation, or the evidence of faith as absolutely necessary, but demonstrated as such by a number of philosophical systems, notably idealistic, monistic and dualistic ones. Proofs of the existence of God fall apart into those that are based on facts of experience (desire or need for perfection, dependence, love, salvation, etc.), facts of religious history (consensus gentium, etc.)), postulates of morality (belief in ultimate justice, instinct for an absolute good, conscience, the categorical imperative, sense of duty, need of an objective foundation of morality, etc.)), postulates of reason (cosmological, physico-theological, teleological, and ontological arguments), and the inconceivableness of the opposite. As to the nature of God, the great variety of opinions are best characterized by their several conceptions of the attributes of God which are either of a non-personal (pantheistic, etc.) or personal (theistic, etc.) kind, representing concepts known from experience raised to a superlative degree ("omniscient", "eternal", etc.). The reality, God, may be conceived as absolute or as relative to human values, as being an all-inclusive one, a duality, or a plurality. Concepts of God calling for unquestioning faith, belief in miracles, and worship or representing biographical and descriptive sketches of God and his creation, are rather theological than metaphysical, philosophers, on the whole, utilizing the idea of God or its linguistic equivalents in other languages, despite popular and church implications, in order not to lose the feeling-contact with the rather abstract world-ground. See Religion, Philosophy of. -- K.F.L.
Handel "language" An {imperative language} with {primitives} for controlling {parallel programs}. Used by Wayne Luk for work in compilation of programs to hardware ({FPGAs}). (1995-02-28)
Handel ::: (language) An imperative language with primitives for controlling parallel programs.Used by Wayne Luk for work in compilation of programs to hardware (FPGAs). (1995-02-28)
Hermes "language" An experimental, very high level, integrated language and system from the {IBM} {Watson Research Centre}, produced in June 1990. It is designed for implementation of large systems and distributed applications, as well as for general-purpose programming. It is an {imperative language}, {strongly typed} and is a {process-oriented} successor to {NIL}. Hermes hides distribution and heterogeneity from the programmer. The programmer sees a single {abstract machine} containing processes that communicate using calls or sends. The {compiler}, not the programmer, deals with the complexity of data structure layout, local and remote communication, and interaction with the {operating system}. As a result, Hermes programs are portable and easy to write. Because the programming paradigm is simple and high level, there are many opportunities for optimisation which are not present in languages which give the programmer more direct control over the machine. Hermes features {threads}, {relational tables}Hermes is, {typestate} checking, {capability}-based access and {dynamic configuration}. Version 0.8alpha patchlevel 01 runs on {RS/6000}, {Sun-4}, {NeXT}, {IBM-RT}/{BSD4.3} and includes a {bytecode compiler}, a bytecode-"C compiler and {run-time support}. {0.7alpha for Unix (ftp://software.watson.ibm.com/pub/hermes)}. E-mail: "hermes-request@watson.ibm.com", Andy Lowry "lowry@watson.ibm.com". {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.lang.hermes}. ["Hermes: A Language for Distributed Computing". Strom, Bacon, Goldberg, Lowry, Yellin, Yemini. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1991. ISBN: O-13-389537-8]. (1992-03-22)
Hermes ::: (language) An experimental, very high level, integrated language and system from the IBM Watson Research Centre, produced in June 1990. It is well as for general-purpose programming. It is an imperative, strongly typed and process-oriented successor to NIL.Hermes hides distribution and heterogeneity from the programmer. The programmer sees a single abstract machine containing processes that communicate using calls opportunities for optimisation which are not present in languages which give the programmer more direct control over the machine.Hermes features threads, relational tablesHermes is, typestate checking, capability-based access and dynamic configuration.Version 0.8alpha patchlevel 01 runs on RS/6000, Sun-4, NeXT, IBM-RT/BSD4.3 and includes a bytecode compiler, a bytecode->C compiler and run-time support. .E-mail: , Andy Lowry .Usenet newsgroup: comp.lang.hermes.[Hermes: A Language for Distributed Computing. Strom, Bacon, Goldberg, Lowry, Yellin, Yemini. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1991. ISBN: O-13-389537-8]. (1992-03-22)
Heteronomy: (Gr. hetero, other + nomos, law) See Autonomy. Heteronomy of Ends: (Kant) Just as autonomy of the will is that state of affairs in the life of a rational being in which the will is determined in its choices by no ends other than itself, so heteronomy of the will is the state in which the will is determined by ends other than itself, e.g. happiness or gain either for self or others. In autonomy the will is its own end, and is determined only by its own laws. Autonomy of the will is the supreme principle of morality, Kant affirms, and heteronomy is the source of all spurious principles of morality. For in heteronomy the will, being attracted by external ends, is obeying laws not of its own making. In autonomy, however, the will obeys only its own laws, it makes only those choices of action which may also be regarded as instances of laws of its own choosing. The principle of the Autonomy of the Will, and the Categorical Imperative, are thus one and the same thing. -- F.L.W.
highest representative ideality ::: in October 1920, equivalent to logos vijñana in the sense of full revelatory ideality; also called representative vijñana, which is said to have three elements: representative, interpretative and imperative. The meaning of "representative" earlier . 68 in 1920, when it referred to the highest intuitive revelatory logistis, was preserved at this time in the definition of logos reason as the "lower representative idea".
hush ::: v. t. --> To still; to silence; to calm; to make quiet; to repress the noise or clamor of.
To appease; to allay; to calm; to soothe. ::: v. i. --> To become or to keep still or quiet; to become silent; -- esp. used in the imperative, as an exclamation; be still; be silent or
Hypothetical imperatives: Term due to Kant which designates all statements of the form, "If you desire so and so, you must, should, or ought to do such and such " In such cases the obligatoriness of the action enjoined depends on the presence in the agent of the desire mentioned. See Categorical imperative. -- W.K.F.
Hypothetical morality: In ethics, any moral imperative stated in hypothetical form. For instance, if thou dost not desire certain consequences, thou shalt not commit adultery. Kant's categorical imperative, stated in hypothetical form. See Hypothesis, Morality. -- J.K.F.
Ich: (Ger. I, myself, me, the ego (q.v.)) In the German idealistic movement from Kant through Schopenhauer, the Ich, the final, ultimate conscious subject, plays a central and dynamic role. Kant discredited the traditional Cartesian conception of a simple, undecomposable, substantial I, intuitively known. On his view, the Ich is not a substance, but the functional, dynamic unity of consciousness -- a necessary condition of all experience and the ultimate subject for which all else is object. This "transcendental unity of apperception," bare consciousness as such, is by its very nature empty, it is neither a thing nor a concept. For the pute transcendental I, my empirical self is but one experience among others in the realm of phenomena, and one of which Kant does not seek an adequate definition. The stress on the pure I as opposed to the empirical self is carried over into his practical philosophy, where the moral agent becomes, not the concrete personality, but a pure rational will, i.e., a will seeking to act in accordance with an absolute universal law of duty, the categorical imperative (q.v.).
imperatival ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the imperative mood.
imperatorial ::: a. --> Commanding; imperative; authoritative.
Of or pertaining to the title or office of imperator.
imperatory ::: a. --> Imperative.
imperious ::: a. --> Commanding; ascendant; imperial; lordly; majestic.
Haughly; arrogant; overbearing; as, an imperious tyrant; an imperious manner.
Imperative; urgent; compelling.
interpellate ::: v. t. --> To question imperatively, as a minister, or other executive officer, in explanation of his conduct; -- generally on the part of a legislative body.
interpellation ::: n. --> The act of interpelling or interrupting; interruption.
The act of interposing or interceding; intercession.
An act of interpellating, or of demanding of an officer an explanation of his action; imperative or peremptory questioning; a point raised in a debate.
A official summons or citation.
interpretative imperative ::: (c. 1920) a form of logos vijñana formed by a combination of its interpretative and imperative elements; (in early 1927) an intermediate form of "the imperative", evidently interpretative ideality taken up into imperative vijñana and that again elevated to one of the lower planes of what by the end of 1927 was called overmind. interpretative logistical vijñana
interpretative ::: (in 1920) being of the nature of an "ideative vision and thought" that "interpret . . . the illimitable unity and variety of the Infinite", the characteristic of the hermetic ideality or srauta vijñana, the plane of vijñana whose essence is sruti, also attributed to the highest forms of logistic ideality containing an element of inspiration; specifically, pertaining to the highest form of inspired revelatory logistis, called interpretative revelatory vijñana, to the second element in the highest representative ideality or to the srauta vijñana itself, from which these derive; (in 1927) short for interpretative imperative. interpretative dr drsti
In the interest, the attraction or the endeavour. There has been an experiment, perhaps even an eager experiment, but not a total self-giving to an imperative need of the soul or to an unforsakablc ideal. Even such imperfect yoga has not been wasted ; for no upward effort is made in vain. Even if it fails
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
“Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings’’. When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” The Life Divine
Islamism ::: A set of political ideologies derived from various religious views of Muslim fundamentalists, which hold that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system that governs the legal, economic, and social imperatives of the state. Islamist movements seek to re-shape the state by implementing a conservative formulation of Sharia law. Islamists regard themselves as Muslims rather than Islamists, while moderate Muslims reject this notion.
ISWIM "language" (If You See What I Mean) An influential but unimplemented computer programming language described in the article by {Peter J. Landin} cited below. Landin attempted to capture all known programming language concepts, including {assignment} and control operators such as {goto} and {coroutines}, within a single {lambda calculus} based framework. ISWIM is an {imperative language} with a functional core, consisting of {sugared} {lambda calculus} plus {mutable variables} and {assignment}. A powerful control mechanism, Landin's {J operator}, enables capture of the current {continuation} (the {call/cc} operator of {Scheme} is a simplified version). Being based on lambda calculus ISWIM had {higher order functions} and {lexically scoped} variables. The {operational semantics} of ISWIM are defined using Landin's {SECD machine} and use {call-by-value} ({eager evaluation}). To make ISWIM look more like mathematical notation, Landin replaced {ALGOL}'s semicolons and begin end blocks with the {off-side rule} and scoping based on indentation. An ISWIM program is a single {expression} qualified by "where" clauses (auxiliary definitions including equations among variables), conditional expressions and function definitions. With {CPL}, ISWIM was one of the first programming languages to use "where" clauses. New {data types} could be defined as a (possibly recursive) {sum of products} like the {algebraic data types} found in modern functional languages. ISWIM variables were probably {dynamically typed} but Landin may have planned some form of {type inference}. Concepts from ISWIM appear in Art Evan's {PAL} and John Reynold's {Gedanken}, Milner's {ML} and purely functional languages with lazy evaluation like {SASL}, {Miranda} and {Haskell}. [{"The Next 700 Programming Languages" (http://www.cs.utah.edu/~wilson/compilers/old/papers/p157-landin.pdf)}, P.J. Landin, CACM 9(3):157-166, Mar 1966]. (2007-03-20)
JAM Programming Language "language" (JPL) A string-based {imperative language} from {JYACC Corporation}, part of the JAM tool for developing screen (non-window) applications. (2007-10-02)
JPL ::: JAM Programming Language. Imperative string-based language, part of the JAM tool for developing screen (non-window) applications. JYACC Corporation
Kaleidoscope ::: (language) An object-oriented language which mixes imperative and constraint-oriented features. Kaleidoscope was written by Freeman-Benson of the University of Washington, Universite de Nantes, 1989; University of Victoria, 1992. It is similar to Siri and vaguely related to Prose.Versions: Kaleidoscope '90 and Kaleidoscope '91.[Kaleidoscope: Mixing Objects, Constraints and Imperative Programming, B.N. Freeman-Benson, SIGPLAN Notices 25(10):77-88 (OOPSLA/ECOOP '90) (Oct 1990)].[Constraint Imperative Programming, B.N. Freeman-Benson, Ph.D. Thesis, TR 91-07-02, U Wash (1991)].[Constraint Imperative Programming, Freeman-Benson et al, IEEE Conf on Comp Lang, Apr 1992]. (1994-11-09)
Kaleidoscope "language" An {object-oriented} language which mixes {imperative programming} and {constraint}-oriented features. Kaleidoscope was written by Freeman-Benson of the {University of Washington}, {Universite de Nantes}, 1989; {University of Victoria}, 1992. It is similar to {Siri} and vaguely related to {Prose}. Versions: Kaleidoscope '90 and Kaleidoscope '91. ["Kaleidoscope: Mixing Objects, Constraints and Imperative Programming", B.N. Freeman-Benson, SIGPLAN Notices 25(10):77-88 (OOPSLA/ECOOP '90) (Oct 1990)]. ["Constraint Imperative Programming", B.N. Freeman-Benson, Ph.D. Thesis, TR 91-07-02, U Wash (1991)]. ["Constraint Imperative Programming", Freeman-Benson et al, IEEE Conf on Comp Lang, Apr 1992]. (1994-11-09)
Kingdom of ends: Kant's notion of the systematic union of different rational beings by common laws. Cf. also the Practical Imperative. -- P.A.S.
Leda "language" A multi-paradigm language supporting {imperative programming}, {declarative programming}, {procedural programming}, {functional programming}, {logic programming} and {object-oriented programming} developed by Tim Budd "budd@cs.orst.edu" at Oregon State University in 1990-1993. ["Blending Imperative and Relational Programming", Tim Budd, IEEE Software 8(1):58-65 (Jan 1991)]. Forthcoming book. {(ftp://cs.orst.edu/pub/budd/leda/)}. (2007-10-02)
Maya, are extraordinarily skilful ; the reason is an insufficient guide and often turns traitor ; vital desire is always with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this yoga we insist so much on what we call samarpaifa — rather inadequately rendered by the English word surrender. If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question ; all is safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge. It is only a few who are exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself, by identity or represents the Divine is in this difficult endeavour imperative and indispensable.
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
Object-Oriented Turing "language" An extension of {Turing} and a replacement for {Turing Plus} by R.C. Holt "holt@csri.toronto.edu", U Toronto, 1991. Object-Oriented Turing supports {imperative programming}, {object-oriented programming} and {concurrent programming}. It has {modules}, {class}es, {single inheritance}, processes, {exception handling} and optional machine-dependent programming. There is an integrated environment under the {X Window System} and {a demo version (ftp://turing.toronto.edu/pub/turing)}. Versions exist for {Sun-4}, {MIPS}, {RS-6000} and others. E-mail: "ootinfo@turing.toronto.edu". ["A Conceptual Framework for Software Development", Mancoridis et al, eds, ACM SIGSCE Conference, Feb 1993, Indianapolis]. ["Turing Reference Manual", 1992, ISBN 0-921598-15-7]. (2000-04-21)
Object-Oriented Turing ::: (language) An extension of Turing and a replacement for Turing Plus by R.C. Holt , U Toronto, 1991. It is imperative, object-oriented and concurrent. It has modules, classes, single inheritance, processes, exception handling, optional machine-dependent programming.There is an integrated environment under the X Window System and . Versions exist for Sun-4, MIPS, RS-6000 and others.E-mail: .[A Conceptual Framework for Software Development, Mancoridis et al, eds, ACM SIGSCE Conference, Feb 1993, Indianapolis]. [Turing Reference Manual, 1992, ISBN 0-921598-15-7].(2000-04-21)
“Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation….” The Life Divine
port ::: 1. (networking) A logical channel or channel endpoint in a communications system. The Transmission Control Protocol and User Datagram Protocol transport (demultiplex) different logical channels on the same network interface on a computer.Each application program has a unique port number associated with it, defined in /etc/services or the Network Information Service services database. Some protocols, e.g. telnet and HTTP (which is actually a special form of telnet) have default ports specified as above but can use other ports as well.Some port numbers are defined in RFC 3232 (which replaces RFC 1700). Ports are now divided into: Well Known or Privileged, and Ephemeral or Unprivileged (comprising Registered, Dynamic, Private).(2004-12-30)2. (operating system, programming) To translate or modify software to run on a different platform, or the results of doing so. The portability of the software determines how easy it is to port.3. (language) An imperative language descended from Zed from Waterloo Microsystems (now Hayes Canada) ca. 1979.[Port Language document in the Waterloo Port Development System].(2002-06-19)
port 1. "networking" A logical channel or channel endpoint in a communications system. The {Transmission Control Protocol} and {User Datagram Protocol} {transport layer} protocols used on {Ethernet} use port numbers to distinguish between (demultiplex) different logical channels on the same {network interface} on a computer. Each {application program} has a unique port number associated with it, defined in /etc/services or the {Network Information Service} "services" database. Some {protocols}, e.g. {telnet} and {HTTP} (which is actually a special form of telnet) have default ports specified as above but can use other ports as well. Some port numbers are defined in {RFC 3232} (which replaces RFC 1700). Ports are now divided into: "Well Known" or "Privileged", and "Ephemeral" or "Unprivileged" (comprising "Registered", "Dynamic", "Private"). (2004-12-30) 2. "operating system, programming" To translate or modify {software} to run on a different {platform}, or the results of doing so. The {portability} of the software determines how easy it is to port. 3. "language" An {imperative language} descended from {Zed} from {Waterloo Microsystems} (now {Hayes} Canada) ca. 1979. ["Port Language" document in the Waterloo Port Development System]. (2002-06-19)
Practical Imperative: (in Kant's ethics) Kant's famous dictum: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only." -- P.A.S.
prescriptivism ::: A meta-ethical theory about the semantical content of moral statements, introduced by the philosopher R. M. Hare in his book The Language of Morals. It holds that moral statements functions similarly to imperatives. For example, according to prescriptivism, the statement "Killing is wrong" means something like "You shouldn't kill". What it expresses is an imperative.
procedural language "language" Any {programming language} in which the programmer specifies an explicit sequences of steps to follow to produce a result (an {algorithm}). The term should not be confused with "{imperative language}" - a language that specifies explicit manipulation of state. An example (non-imperative) procedural language is {LOGO}, which specifies sequences of steps to perform but does not have an internal state. Other procedural languages include {Basic}, {Pascal}, {C}, and {Modula-2}. Both procedural and imperative languages are in contrast to {declarative languages}, in which the programmer specifies neither explicit steps nor explicit state manipulation. (2004-05-17)
procedural language ::: (language) Any programming language in which the programmer specifies an explicit sequences of steps to follow to produce a result.The term should not be confused with imperative language. An example (non-imperative) procedural language is LOGO, which specifies sequences of steps to perform but does not have an internal state.Other procedural languages include Basic, Pascal, C, and Modula-2.Both these types of language are in contrast to declarative languages, in which the programmer specifies neither explicit sequences of actions nor internal state manipulation.(2004-05-17)
PROgrammed Graph REwriting Systems ::: (language) (PROGRES) A very high level language based on graph grammars, developed by Andy Scheurr and Albert Zuendorf of RWTH, Aachen in 1991.PROGRES supports structurally object-oriented specification of attributed graph structures with multiple inheritance hierarchies and types of types (for imperative programming of composite graph transformations (with built-in backtracking and cancelling arbitrary sequences of failing graph modifications).It is used for implementing abstract data types with graph-like internal structure, as a visual language for the graph-oriented database GRAS, and as a rule-oriented language for prototyping nondeterministically specified data/rule base transformations.PROGRES has a formally defined semantics based on PROgrammed Graph Rewriting Systems. It is an almost statically typed language which additionally offers down casting operators for run time checked type casting/conversion (in order to avoid severe restrictions concerning the language's expressiveness).Version RWTH 5.10 includes an integrated environment.[A. Scheurr, Introduction to PROGRES, an Attribute Graph Grammar Based Specification Language, in Proc WG89 Workshop on Graphtheoretic Concepts in Computer Science, LNCS 411, Springer 1991]. (1993-11-02)
PROgrammed Graph REwriting Systems "language" (PROGRES) A very high level language based on {graph grammars}, developed by Andy Scheurr "andy@i3.informatik.rwth-aachen.de" and Albert Zuendorf "albert@i3.informatik.rwth-aachen.de" of {RWTH}, Aachen in 1991. PROGRES supports structurally {object-oriented specification} of {attributed graph} structures with {multiple inheritance} hierarchies and types of types (for {parametric polymorphism}). It also supports declarative/relational specification of derived attributes, node sets, binary relationships (directed edges) and {Boolean} {constraints}, rule-oriented/visual specification of parameterised graph rewrite rules with complex application conditions, {nondeterministic} and {imperative programming} of composite graph transformations (with built-in {backtracking} and cancelling arbitrary sequences of failing graph modifications). It is used for implementing {abstract data types} with graph-like internal structure, as a visual language for the {graph-oriented database} {GRAS}, and as a rule-oriented language for prototyping {nondeterministic}ally specified data/rule base transformations. PROGRES has a formally defined {semantics} based on "PROgrammed Graph Rewriting Systems". It is an almost {statically typed} language which additionally offers "down casting" operators for run time checked type casting/conversion (in order to avoid severe restrictions concerning the language's expressiveness). Version RWTH 5.10 includes an integrated environment. [A. Scheurr, "Introduction to PROGRES, an Attribute Graph Grammar Based Specification Language", in Proc WG89 Workshop on Graphtheoretic Concepts in Computer Science", LNCS 411, Springer 1991]. {(ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Unix/PROGRES/)} for {Sun-4}. (1993-11-02)
programming language ::: (language) A formal language in which computer programs are written. The definition of a particular language consists of both syntax (how the various symbols of the language may be combined) and semantics (the meaning of the language constructs).Languages are classified as low level if they are close to machine code and high level if each language statement corresponds to many machine code instructions level). A roughly parallel classification is the description as first generation language through to fifth generation language.The other major classification of languages distinguishes between imperative languages, procedural language and declarative languages. .(2004-05-17)
programming language "language" A {formal language} in which {computer programs} are written. The definition of a particular language consists of both {syntax} (how the various symbols of the language may be combined) and {semantics} (the meaning of the language constructs). Languages are classified as low level if they are close to {machine code} and high level if each language statement corresponds to many machine code instructions (though this could also apply to a low level language with extensive use of {macros}, in which case it would be debatable whether it still counted as low level). A roughly parallel classification is the description as {first generation language} through to {fifth generation language}. The other major classification of languages distinguishes between {imperative languages}, {procedural language} and {declarative languages}. {Programming languages in this dictionary (/contents/language.html)}. {Programming languages time-line/family tree (http://levenez.com/lang/history.html)}. (2004-05-17)
quaere ::: v. imperative. --> Inquire; question; see; -- used to signify doubt or to suggest investigation.
RAISE Specification Language "language" (RSL) (RAISE = Rigorous Approach to Industrial Software Engineering). A wide-spectrum specification and design language developed by {ESPRIT} Project 315 at {CRI} A/S, Denmark. Systems may be modular, {concurrent} and {nondeterministic}. Specifications may be {applicative} or {imperative}, explicit or implicit, abstract or concrete. ["The RAISE Specification Language", RAISE Language Group, P-H 1992, ISBN 0-13-752833-7]. (2007-10-02)
repeat loop ::: (programming) (Or do loop) A loop construct found in many imperative programming languages which repeatedly executes some instructions while a condition is true.It is found in Pascal, BASIC and C (do form). The condition may be tested with a while or until keyword.In constrast to a while loop, the loop body is executed once before the condition is tested. This is useful when the condition depends on the action of the loop body. In the following BASIC loop Hello is printed once despite the fact that the condition is false; i = 2 repeat (1999-05-06)
repeat loop ::: (programming) (Or do loop) A loop construct found in many imperative programming languages which repeatedly executes some instructions while a condition is true.It is found in Pascal, BASIC and C (do form). The condition may be tested with a while or until keyword.In constrast to a while loop, the loop body is executed once before the condition is tested. This is useful when the condition depends on the action of the loop body. In the following BASIC loop Hello is printed once despite the fact that the condition is false; i = 2repeat (1999-05-06)
representative imperative ::: (c. 1920) a form of logos vijñana formed by a combination of its representative and imperative elements; (in early 1927) the lowest form of "the imperative", evidently representative vijñana taken up into imperative vijñana and that again elevated to one of the lower planes of what by the end of 1927 was called overmind.
representative ::: (in 1920) being of the nature of a luminous thoughtrepresentation of truth which is "a partial manifestation of a greater knowledge existing in the self but not at the time present to the immediately active consciousness", related to smr.ti and its faculty of intuition in its power of "recalling as it were to the spirit"s knowledge the truth that is called out more directly by the higher powers" of interpretative and purely revelatory vision; specifically, pertaining to the highest form of intuitive revelatory logistis, called representative revelatory vijñana, or to the lowest element in the highest representative ideality; (in 1927) short for representative imperative. representative highest vijñana
requirement ::: n. --> The act of requiring; demand; requisition.
That which is required; an imperative or authoritative command; an essential condition; something needed or necessary; a need.
RSL ::: RAISE Specification Language. (RAISE = Rigorous Approach to Industrial Software Engineering). A wide-spectrum specification and design language developed by nondeterministic. Specifications may be applicative or imperative, explicit or implicit, abstract or concrete.[The RAISE Specification Language, RAISE Language Group, P-H 1992, ISBN 0-13-752833-7].
shall ::: v. i. & auxiliary. --> To owe; to be under obligation for.
To be obliged; must.
As an auxiliary, shall indicates a duty or necessity whose obligation is derived from the person speaking; as, you shall go; he shall go; that is, I order or promise your going. It thus ordinarily expresses, in the second and third persons, a command, a threat, or a promise. If the auxillary be emphasized, the command is made more imperative, the promise or that more positive and sure. It is
Sollen (German) Ought; duty, moral obligation, so used by Kant in his theory of the categorical imperative, where he distinguishes between I ought and I wish, refusing to define duty as a form of expediency. The feeling of obligation, one of the noblest moral or ethical instincts, is not a phenomenon but an expression of the inner transcendental self, and greatly dignifies the mind which entertains and contains it.
Standard ML ::: (language) (SML) Originally an attempt by Robin Milner ca. 1984 to unify the dialects of ML, SML has at AT&T, and A. W. Appel .SML is functional, with imperative features. It is environment based and strict. It adds to ML the call-by-pattern of Hope, recursive data types, reference types, typed exceptions, and modules. (The core language excludes the modules).Standard ML is polymorphically typed and its module system supports flexible yet secure large-scale programming. Standard ML of New Jersey is an optimising documentation; Concurrent ML (CML); eXene - an elegant interface to X11 (based on CML); SourceGroup - a separate compilation and make facility.Implementations: SML/NJ, POPLOG ML, Poly/ML, Edinburgh SML, ANU ML, Micro ML, lazy sml2c.sml2c compiles to C. See also ML Kit.Version 0.93 runs on 68000, SPARC, MIPS, HPPA, RS/6000, Intel 386, Intel 486 and Macintosh. . . .Mailing list: [A Proposal for Standard ML, R. Milner, ACM Symp on LISP and Functional Prog 1984, pp. 184-197]. (1995-12-24)
Standard ML "language" (SML) Originally an attempt by Robin Milner "rm@lfcs.edinburgh.ac.uk" ca. 1984 to unify the dialects of {ML}, SML has evolved into a robust general-purpose language. Later versions have been maintained by D. B. MacQueen, Lal George "george@research.att.com", and J. H. Reppy "jhr@research.att.com" at AT&T, and A. W. Appel "appel@princeton.edu". SML is {functional}, with {imperative programming} features. It is environment based and {strict}. It adds to ML the {call-by-pattern} of {Hope}, {recursive data types}, {reference types}, typed {exceptions}, and {modules}. (The "core" language excludes the modules). Standard ML is {polymorphic}ally typed and its module system supports flexible yet secure large-scale programming. {Standard ML of New Jersey} is an optimising {native-code compiler} for Standard ML that is written in Standard ML. It runs on a wide range of architectures. The distribution also contains: an extensive library - The Standard ML of New Jersey Library, including detailed documentation; {Concurrent ML} (CML); {eXene} - an elegant interface to {X11} (based on {CML}); {SourceGroup} - a {separate compilation} and "{make}" facility. Implementations: {SML/NJ}, {POPLOG ML}, {Poly/ML}, {Edinburgh SML}, {ANU ML}, {Micro ML}, {lazy sml2c}. {sml2c} compiles to {C}. See also {ML Kit}. Version 0.93 runs on {68000}, {SPARC}, {MIPS}, {HPPA}, {RS/6000}, {Intel 386}, {Intel 486} and {Macintosh}. {Manual (http://dcs.napier.ac.uk/course-notes/sml/manual.html)}. {FTP from ATT (ftp://research.att.com/dist/ml/)}. {FTP from Suny SB (ftp://sbcs.sunysb.edu/)}. Mailing list: sml-request@cs.cmu.edu. ["A Proposal for Standard ML", R. Milner, ACM Symp on LISP and Functional Prog 1984, pp. 184-197]. (1995-12-24)
supreme supramental mind in the supreme supermind ::: (in January 1927) a grade of consciousness apparently experienced as a result of the supreme supramental being lifted into the supreme supermind by a form of the imperative acting "as an intermediary force", a process also described as "the supreme supermind taking up the supreme supramental supermind"; perhaps equivalent to supramentalised mind in overmind in the terminology adopted for the overmind system later in the same year.
"The call of God is imperative and cannot be weighed against any other considerations.” Essays on the Gita*
“The call of God is imperative and cannot be weighed against any other considerations.” Essays on the Gita
the state, condition, or fact of being compelling or of requiring immediate action; pressing importance; imperativeness.
Though Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had propounded doctrines of virtues, they were concerned essentially with Good rather than with rightness of action as such. The Stoics were the first to develop and popularize the notion that man has a duty to live virtuously, reasonably and fittingly, regardless of considerations of human happiness. Certain elements in Rabbinical legalism and the Christian Gospel strained in the same direction, notably the concept of the supreme and absolute law of God. But it was Kant who pressed the logic of duty to its final conclusion. The supreme law of duty, the categorical imperative (q.v.), is revealed intuitively by the pure rational will and strives to determine the moral agent to obey only that law which can be willed universally without contradiction, regardless of consequences.
Tiantai bajiao. (J. Tendai hakkyo; K. Ch'ont'ae p'algyo 天台八教). In Chinese, "The Eight [Classes of] Teachings according to the TIANTAI." According to the TIANTAI ZONG's system of doctrinal classification (JIAOXIANG PANSHI), the entirety of the Buddhist canon and its teachings can be divided into two groups of four teachings each. The first group of four was called "the four modes of transformative teachings" (huafa sijiao), which categorizes Buddhist teachings based on the content of their teachings and different doctrinal themes and their scriptural bases. The second group of four was called "the four styles of transformative edification" or "four modes of exposition" (huayi sijiao), which categorizes different strands of Buddhism primarily according to their means of conversion or pedagogical styles. ¶ The first group of four teachings, the transformative teachings (huafa sijiao), classifies Buddhism into four categories based on content: (1) zangjiao, the "TRIPItAKA teachings," the basic teachings that are foundational to the HĪNAYĀNA schools, such as the notions of impermanence, suffering, and no-self, and the imperative of attaining NIRVĀnA; (2) tongjiao, the "joint" or "common teachings," a basic strand of MAHĀYĀNA teaching that shares many of the preceding doctrinal themes jointly with the "hīnayāna teachings," the main difference being that it additionally embraces the BODHISATTVA aspiration of helping others; (3) biejiao, the "distinct" or "separate teachings," so named because, unlike the previous category, this strand of Mahāyāna includes notions exclusive to that tradition and not shared with the "hīnayāna"; (4) yuanjiao, the "consummate" or "perfect teaching," which is the exclusive domain of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, the main scripture the Tiantai school itself espouses. ¶ The second group of four teachings, the modes of exposition or conversion (huayi sijiao), contains the following divisions based on pedagogical style: (1) dunjiao, the "sudden teachings" or a direct pedagogical style. Epitomized by the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, this mode of teaching is characterized by a direct revelation of the stage of buddhahood, circumventing the gradual, and more conventional, stages of beginning bodhisattva practices and the "hīnayāna" tradition. (2) Jianjiao, the "gradual teachings" or pedagogical style. Representing these sequential, step-by-step soteriological approaches and pedagogical styles are the ĀGAMAs, the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras, and the VAIPULYA sutras. (3) Budingjiao, the "indefinite teachings" or pedagogical style. The same utterance of the Buddha might be given without differentiation to various members of the audience, but the depth to which they were able to penetrate to that message, and the different interpretations they gave to it, varied depending on their spiritual maturity. (4) Mimijiao, the "esoteric teachings" or pedagogical style. Not to be confused with tantric teachings, "esoteric" here refers to the Tiantai belief that the Buddha sometimes preached in such a way that his same utterance resonated differently with various members within the audience, so that each received the instruction most suitable to his needs and temperament; with this pedagogical style, the Buddha essentially left members of the audience free to fathom an inexhaustibly elastic teaching and be benefited from it according to their unique conditions. See also WUSHI; CH'oNT'AE SAGYO ŬI.
TRUTH. ::: An inherent imperative truth of things unseen by us capable of manifold manifestation This inherent Truth governs automatically all the processes In the universe. The Supra-
viddhi ::: know. [imperative]
vide ::: --> imperative sing. of L. videre, to see; -- used to direct attention to something; as, vide supra, see above.
volti ::: imperative. --> Turn, that is, turn over the leaf.
while ::: (programming) The loop construct found in nearly all imperative programming languages which executes one or more instructions (the loop body) loop, the loop body will not be executed at all if the condition is false on entry to the while.For example, in C, a while loop is written while (expr>) statement>; (1995-03-14)
worth ::: v. i. --> To be; to become; to betide; -- now used only in the phrases, woe worth the day, woe worth the man, etc., in which the verb is in the imperative, and the nouns day, man, etc., are in the dative. Woe be to the day, woe be to the man, etc., are equivalent phrases. ::: a. --> Valuable; of worthy; estimable; also, worth while.
KEYS (10k)
12 Sri Aurobindo
1 Pope Pius XII
1 Mage the Ascension
1 Kenneth Schmitz
1 Israel Regardie
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6 Sri Aurobindo
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4 T Harv Eker
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4 Lewis Mumford
4 Jack London
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3 Woodrow Wilson
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1:Development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, #KEYS
2:In all action there is an imperative of existence that seeks to be fulfilled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
3:The ethical imperative comes not from around, but from within him and above him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Good, #KEYS
4:A stripped imperative of conceptual phrase
Architectonic and inevitable
Translated the unthinkable into thought: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
5:It is imperative…to release interiority from its modern prison in human subjectivity and restore to natural things the appropriate kind of interiority which they have in a metaphysics of being, where they are not mere objects standing before the human subject. ~ Kenneth Schmitz, #KEYS
6:The crisis we are experiencing is unique in history. It is a world which must burst out of a crucible in which so many different energies are working. Let us thank God that He makes us live among the present problems... it is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre. All men have the imperative duty to remember that they have a mission to fulfill, that of doing the impossible. ~ Pope Pius XII, #KEYS
7: The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species. ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, Intro, #KEYS
8:Hermetic philosophy is complex and many-layered. At the heart, the Hermetics profess the drive to perfection. This drive manifests through trials, tests, self-discovery, and the rejoining of fragmented patterns like disparate languages or mathematical conundrums. Ideally, each individual has a Word, a divine imperative that drives the figure's revelations. By exploring the boundaries of that Word and all of its meanings, the individual rises to his inner nature, then beyond. Each step in the process is a challenge that requires a leap of perception but also opens the way to the next path. Eventually, the human passes far enough to become something cosmically divine. ~ Mage the Ascension, Order of Hermes, #KEYS
9:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
10:If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned into this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.
It is the inner offering of the heart's adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This is the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 165, [T2],#KEYS
11:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#KEYS
12:What your reasoning ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine - something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I seek you for this, I seek you for that" changes to a sheer "I seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna."
The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and He is He. That is all about it.
I have written all that only to explain what we mean whenwe speak of seeking the Divine for himself and not for anything else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being - for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Seeking the Divine,#KEYS
13:But this is not always the manner of the commencement. The sadhaka is often led gradually and there is a long space between the first turning of the mind and the full assent of the nature to the thing towards which it turns. There may at first be only a vivid intellectual interest, a forcible attraction towards the idea and some imperfect form of practice. Or perhaps there is an effort not favoured by the whole nature, a decision or a turn imposed by an intellectual influence or dictated by personal affection and admiration for someone who is himself consecrated and devoted to the Highest. In such cases, a long period of preparation may be necessary before there comes the irrevocable consecration; and in some instances it may not come. There may be some advance, there may be a strong effort, even much purification and many experiences other than those that are central or supreme; but the life will either be spent in preparation or, a certain stage having been reached, the mind pushed by an insufficient driving-force may rest content at the limit of the effort possible to it. Or there may even be a recoil to the lower life, - what is called in the ordinary parlance of Yoga a fall from the path. This lapse happens because there is a defect at the very centre. The intellect has been interested, the heart attracted, the will has strung itself to the effort, but the whole nature has not been taken captive by the Divine. It has only acquiesced in the interest, the attraction or the endeavour. There has been an experiment, perhaps even an eager experiment, but not a total self-giving to an imperative need of the soul or to an unforsakable ideal. Even such imperfect Yoga has not been wasted; for no upward effort is made in vain. Even if it fails in the present or arrives only at some preparatory stage or preliminary realisation, it has yet determined the soul's future.
But if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call we have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there should be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration,#KEYS
14:complexity of the human constitution :::
There is another direction in which the ordinary practice of Yoga arrives at a helpful but narrowing simplification which is denied to the Sadhaka of the integral aim. The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self's depths and vastnesses behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple. A small but clamorous company of desires, some imperative intellectual and aesthetic cravings, some tastes, a few ruling or prominent ideas amid a great current of unconnected or ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly without or in spite of it, arranging these things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order, -- this is the material of his existence. The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, -- and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of' the soul, -- we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.
The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us -- intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart, the body-has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 74-75,#KEYS
15:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218, #KEYS
16:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.
The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.
Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.
And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,#KEYS
1:Does management resist the institutional imperative? ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 2:Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 3:Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 4:If you truly want to become a better you, it is imperative that you learn to feel good about yourself. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 5:Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 6:Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 7:Thinking carries a moral imperative. The searcher for truth must be ready to obey truth without reservation or it will elude him. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 8:Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 9:It is imperative to contest all factions for complete victory, so the army is not garrisoned and the profit can be total. This is the law of strategic siege. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 10:Why we are here is important, but to know where we are going is imperative. It's not what you've got, it's what you use, that makes a difference in how your life turns out. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 11:Nature does nothing in vain. Therefore, it is imperative for persons to act in accordance with their nature and develop their latent talents, in order to be content and complete. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 12:Desire and intent are different. Desire has attachment. Intent does not. It’s imperative that we harness the power of our pure intention— independent of the outcomes of our actions. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 13:The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function. ~ jony-ive, @wisdomtrove 14:I think that indigenous women's wisdom is crucial. So much of the care of the Earth has come from the mothers. I think it's imperative we turn to their wisdom in how to take care of the planet. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 15:War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 16:It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 17:Love is not an intellectual concept or a moral imperative or anything else. It is the background emotion that exists when one is connected to the energy available in the universe, which of course, is the energy of God. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 18:I believe that the imperative need of the day is not simply revival, but a radical reformation that will go to the root of our moral and spiritual maladies and deal with causes rather than with consequences, with the disease rather than with symptoms. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 19:A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 20:The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean, that, that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth. It is imperative that students learn the truth of our history. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 21:Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a conditional, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 22:In my experience, if you steer clear of dogma and muster up more love than you thought you had to give, then your vitality increases, satisfaction sets in, sweetness surfaces. I believe in the creative power of good feelings. I'm convinced that the desire to be real is everyone's divine imperative. ~ danielle-laporte, @wisdomtrove 23:While we are actually subjected to them, the & 24:In our course we teach that "no thought lives in your head rent-free." Each thought you have will either be an investment or a cost. It will either move you toward happiness and success or away from it. It will either empower you or disempower you. That's why it is imperative you choose your thoughts and beliefs wisely. ~ t-harv-eker, @wisdomtrove 25:Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 26:Forgiving ourselves for all the woulda-shoulda-couldas in life, and sometimes forgiving others for actions that we feel undercut or undermine our good, can be very challenging. But forgiveness of the past and mistakes, our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others, is imperative if we are to dwell fully in the present and experience the miracles that are only available to the forgiving and loving mind. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 27:... Every ego so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though is was a one-fold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us shares this delusion. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 28:In a world facing the revolt of ragged and hungry masses of God's children; in a world torn between the tensions of East and West, white and colored, individuals and collectivists; in a world whose cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind her technological capabilities that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation; in this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis, it is an imperative for action ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 29:We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 30:It is imperative to exercise over big business a control and supervision which is unnecessary as regards small business. All business must be conducted under the law, and all business men, big or little, must act justly. But a wicked big interest is necessarily more dangerous to the community than a wicked little interest. & 31:Above all, it is imperative to extirpate the idea that any fantastic, mysterious practices are required for the attainment of higher knowledge. It must be clearly realized that a start has to be made with the thoughts and feelings with which we continually live, and that these feelings and thoughts must merely be given a new direction. Everyone must say to himself: In my own world of thought and feeling the deepest mysteries lie hidden, only hitherto I have been unable to perceive them. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 32:I believe that we carry within us a divinely inspired moral imperative to love ... We have within us the ability to change for the better and to find dignity as individuals rather than as drones in one mass movement or another. We have the ability to love, the need to be loved, and the willingness to put our own lives on the line to protect those we love, and it is in these aspects of ourselves that we can glimpse the face of God; and through the exercise of these qualities, we come to a Godlike state. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 33:The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 34:We’re in the same position as any scientist. All we have to go on is experiential evidence. And sooner or later we have to trust our own experience, because that’s all we really have. Otherwise it’s a vicious circle. If I fundamentally distrust my experience, then I must distrust even my capacity to distrust, since that is also an experience. So sooner or later I have no choice but to trust, trust my experience, trust that the universe is not fundamentally and persistently going to lie to me. Of course we can be mistaken, and sometimes experiences are misleading, but on balance we have no choice but to follow them. It’s a type of phenomenological imperative. And especially mystical experiences—if anything, as you say, they are more real, not less real, than other experiences. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Obedience was imperative. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
2:A happy ending was imperative ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
3:A new mind-set became imperative: ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB
4:If there was no imperative, it was not love. ~ Rachel Kushner, #NFDB
5:I think optimism is a moral imperative. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
6:Does management resist the institutional imperative? ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
7:In a concurrent world, imperative is the wrong default! ~ Tim Sweeney, #NFDB
8:Of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater imperative. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
9:The imperative is to define what is right and do it. ~ Barbara Jordan, #NFDB
10:Control was imperative. But shit, I wanted to fuck her. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
11:Forming habits is imperative for the survival of many products. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
12:For many products, forming habits is an imperative for survival. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
13:Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
14:Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexcusable imperative. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
15:America is just so imperative that we have the right justices. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
16:Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. ~ Alec J Ross, #NFDB
17:When you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
18:A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
19:I believe that it is imperative that we learn from the mistakes. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
20:In fact, “grow or die” is the moral imperative of all existence. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
21:Innovation no longer remains a choice but has become an imperative. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
22:Well, that is very imperative to let North Korea open door to outside. ~ Kim Dae jung, #NFDB
23:The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
24:The aesthetical imperative: If you desire to see, learn how to act ~ Heinz von Foerster, #NFDB
25:Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
26:perhaps every imperative that seems to be categorical is tacitly hypothetical. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
27:cleantech was even more of a social phenomenon than an environmental imperative. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
28:The Green Party is no longer the alternative, the Green Party is the imperative ~ Rosa Clemente, #NFDB
29:Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
30:Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
31:The imperative is clear: stop sitting on your hands and start getting them dirty. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
32:The truth is that finding happiness in what you do every day is so imperative. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
33:To me, hope is a moral imperative. I have hope and faith in forces unseen. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
34:Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
35:Legislators consistently put the political imperative before the national interest. ~ Doug Bandow, #NFDB
36:You will never understand.” “You may be right. But it is my human imperative to try. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
37:Mistrust all those in whom the desire to punish is imperative - Goethe ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
38:It is imperative to realize that Muslim culture is inextricably wedded to the past ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy, #NFDB
39:Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember! ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
40:A basic moral imperative is in play here. If you can protect a child, you must. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
41:Creative freedom is an imperative for me, but it doesn't really exist in a Hollywood game. ~ Mira Nair, #NFDB
42:The typical imperative from biology is not "Thou shalt... ," but "If ... then ... else. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
43:Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
44:On climate change, there is a clear, definitive and ineluctable ethical imperative to act. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
45:The imperative of war is to kill, and thus all wars are exercises in sanctioned murder. ~ Joseph E Persico, #NFDB
46:what the imperative represents as necessary is just precisely that conformity of maxim to law. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
47:When you say yes to something, it’s imperative that you understand what you’re saying no to. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
48:It is imperative to base your life on yourself, to take responsibility for your own happiness. ~ Josei Toda, #NFDB
49:The imperative need of this nation at all times is the leadership of Uncommon Men or Women. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
50:each individual has a Word, a divine imperative that drives the figure's revelations ~ Mage, Order of Hermes, #NFDB
51:is a categorical imperative commanding you to absorb what it is you love and make it yours. ~ Thornton Wilder, #NFDB
52:"Faith" as an imperative is a veto against science-in praxi, it means lies at any price. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
53:It's not imperative that I graduate in four years, and it's not imperative that I get all A's. ~ Kellie Martin, #NFDB
54:Science is fundamentally a moral enterprise, following the moral imperative to seek the truth. ~ George Lakoff, #NFDB
55:There is, at this moment, imperative need for men possessing, like Aristotle, universal knowledge. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
56:when we are young, it’s hard to choose who to love. When we are older, it becomes an imperative. ~ Kelly Harms, #NFDB
57:It is imperative that we replace those who think they own this country, with those who built it. ~ Alec Baldwin, #NFDB
58:Taking responsible steps to reduce poverty is not merely a moral imperative but an economic one. ~ John Yarmuth, #NFDB
59:The music and the message, to me, is something that is imperative and that's what drives me know. ~ Robert Davi, #NFDB
60:Corporations are mandated, in effect, to 'grow or die,' a rule also called 'the growth imperative.' ~ Michele Simon, #NFDB
61:If I feel sure of one thing, it is that this kind of “health” imperative is not moral. It is grooming. ~ Mark Greif, #NFDB
62:The fight against terror is a common imperative for democracies and must become so for all nations. ~ Lionel Jospin, #NFDB
63:Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
64:It is imperative that we should not only master them, but also act upon them, and act very definitely. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
65:She really was pretty, for a grown-up, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
66:It is imperative that we move away from the concept of a self as an indivisible, rigid and limited reality. ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
67:categorical imperative: “So act that the maxim of your will can at the same time be a universal law” (Ak 4:402). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
68:Every man has his own destiny;the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
69:It wasn't always imperative to get 'Excellent'. Sometimes it was healthy to have something to work towards. ~ Melissa Nathan, #NFDB
70:The more we advance on the way, the more the need of the Divine presence becomes imperative and indispensable . ~ The Mother, #NFDB
71:The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
72:The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of self-interest. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
73:To play is to listen to the imperative inner force that wants to take form and be acted out without reason. ~ Michele Cassou, #NFDB
74:Everyman has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
75:Making the case (for same-sex marriage) from a conservative values perspective is an imperative, not an option. ~ Ken Mehlman, #NFDB
76:The willingness to listen and act on your inspiration is imperative if you're going to live the life you desire. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
77:Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
78:Development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, #NFDB
79:In all action there is an imperative of existence that seeks to be fulfilled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #NFDB
80:Reducing consumption is imperative, but it's pointless to cut out meat and cars while having lots of children. ~ Madeleine Bunting, #NFDB
81:Rich or poor, every child comes into the world with some imperative need of its own, which shapes its individuality. ~ Lucy Larcom, #NFDB
82:The entire socioeconomic system is based on production for profit and a growth imperative that cannot be sustained. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
83:The moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable...that what we take for granted may not be here for our children ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
84:Hamilton saw America’s essential nature being forged in the throes of battle, and that made honest action imperative. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
85:is imperative that WAC scholars account for the complex ways in which all students learn to write across the curriculum ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
86:It is not the imperative only to belong to oneself, but the pressure to achieve that causes exhaustive depression. ~ Byung Chul Han, #NFDB
87:Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
88:Faculty Meetings are held whenever the need to show off is combined with the imperative of accomplishing nothing. ~ Alexander Theroux, #NFDB
89:The profits of oil, coal, and natural gas companies will have to yield to the imperative of sustaining life on earth. ~ Robert Pollin, #NFDB
90:You can only be in one place at a time, odd one. So it's imperative that you be in the right place for the right reason ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
91:If you are really interested in knowing life in all its depth and dimension, it is imperative that you look inward, not out. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
92:The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
93:Faculty Meetings are held whenever the need to show off is combined
with the imperative of accomplishing nothing. ~ Alexander Theroux,#NFDB
94:Nobody can really be convinced of something he or she doesn't need to believe in through some biological imperative. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
95:The most important imperative to be questioned is the one that tells you to go the the art supply store to be a painter. ~ Mark Bradford, #NFDB
96:Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
97:Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative. ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
98:The ethical imperative comes not from around, but from within him and above him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Good, #NFDB
99:All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
100:In my spiritual and academic journeys, I have learned that it is imperative for Christians to pursue truth at all costs. ~ Daniel B Wallace, #NFDB
101:The unspoken imperative should be this: I want to understand you. And I want you to understand me—whether or not we ever agree. ~ Van Jones, #NFDB
102:Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself. ~ Igor Stravinsky, #NFDB
103:It is necessary to be #universal with our #love and universal humanitarianism is imperative for world peace." ~ BuddhaBrian #Peace #WeAreOne, #NFDB
104:They are also the celebrities and experts whose word is gospel. It’s imperative that you identify those people and get your ~ Keith Ferrazzi, #NFDB
105:Society cannot do without cultivated men. As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher wants become imperative. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
106:It is imperative to master the principles of the art of war and learn to be unmoved in mind even in the heat of the battle. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #NFDB
107:it imperative for him to run out the door.204 Between 9:15 and 9:30, the staff was busy arranging a return to Washington, while the ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
108:You're young, and the young tend to take everything personally. But it's imperative that you learn to separate self from duty. ~ Romina Russell, #NFDB
109:But if 2016 taught us anything, it should be that we have an urgent imperative to recapture a sense of common humanity. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
110:So you mean to say that you’ve become an accomplished thief.”
“I mean to say that stealing is sometimes a moral imperative. ~ David R Gillham,#NFDB
111:As we enter into the 110th Congress, it is imperative that we address ethics reforms needed to make this institution run correctly. ~ Jo Ann Davis, #NFDB
112:The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
113:It's lawmakers know better than anyone that laws are more a matter of practical compromise than any kind of moral imperative. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
114:It's tougher for me. But I don't think that's imperative to me starting a new movement, or revive an old movement, to help people. ~ Lance Armstrong, #NFDB
115:I live for my death. While it is important how you perceive me now, It is more imperative how generations to come would perceive me ~ Sahndra Fon Dufe, #NFDB
116:He frowns. “How else am I supposed to be? If there’s one thing I’ve learned about human nature, is that it is imperative to be who you are. ~ T J Klune, #NFDB
117:My conscience is informed by reason. It's like Kant's categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
118:What tense would you choose to live in? I want to live in the imperative of the future passive participle – in the ‘what ought to be. ~ Osip Mandelstam, #NFDB
119:For a light and airy cake, it’s imperative that the egg yolks and sugar are slightly thickened before incorporating the chocolate. Mom ~ Ellie Alexander, #NFDB
120:Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
121:If you want to create wealth, it is imperative that you believe that you are at the steering wheel of life, especially your financial life. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
122:Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
123:For one who knows not God – Mighty and Glorious!- silence is imperative, and for one who knows God Most High silence is prescribed. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #NFDB
124:How do we represent female pain without producing a culture in which this pain has been fetishized to the point of fantasy or imperative? ~ Leslie Jamison, #NFDB
125:It's absolutely imperative that you speak forth the Word concerning you, because until you do, it will have no power and it won't work! ~ Chris Oyakhilome, #NFDB
126:It’s absolutely imperative that you speak forth the Word concerning you, because until you do, it will have no power and it won’t work! ~ Chris Oyakhilome, #NFDB
127:She smiled at us both, brightly. She really was pretty, for a grown-up, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
128:The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperative and her place in society. ~ Sandra Day O Connor, #NFDB
129:we really do acknowledge the validity of the categorical imperative and allow ourselves (while keeping a wary eye on it) only a few exceptions— ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
130:When quick results are imperative, the manipulation of the masses through symbols may be the only quick way of having a critical thing done. ~ John Grierson, #NFDB
131:A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
132:Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. Write only what you believe. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
133:In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt, #NFDB
134:Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
135:Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
136:The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world. ~ Don Richardson, #NFDB
137:You always say oh, that’s so unprofessional as though there’s some definition of professional that’s also a moral imperative for how to behave. ~ Miriam Toews, #NFDB
138:Your survival is imperative. With your death would come great loss. The supernatural world would be unable to recover itself for a millennium. ~ Amanda Carlson, #NFDB
139:Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others ~ Ezekiel Emanuel, #NFDB
140:It is imperative that the artist reveal through the medium in which he is happiest, what he sees, thinks and feels about his surroundings. ~ Franklin Carmichael, #NFDB
141:Treating other people as you would like to be treated. It is an ancient, universal ethical imperative. And it requires no supernatural beliefs. ~ Phil Zuckerman, #NFDB
142:Lives He In Any Other World
Lives he in any other world
My faith cannot reply
Before it was imperative
'Twas all distinct to me ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
143:Unknown objects are operating under intelligent control... It is imperative that we learn where UFOs come from and what their purpose is. ~ Roscoe H Hillenkoetter, #NFDB
144:We're all agreed that climate change is one of the greatest and most daunting challenges of our age. We have a moral imperative to act and act now. ~ David Cameron, #NFDB
145:Globalization is now no longer an objective but an imperative, as markets open and geographic barriers become increasingly blurred and even irrelevant. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
146:He ceased to be able to distinguish between personal preference and moral imperative, and he ceased to accept that such a distinction was possible. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
147:In a world filled with mistrust, armed to the teeth and ready to explode, a realistic attitude might be to consider love as an imperative need. ~ Dominique de Menil, #NFDB
148:This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
149:It is imperative to contest all factions for complete victory, so the army is not garrisoned and the profit can be total. This is the law of strategic siege. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
150:God's command 'Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature' was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
151:I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film. ~ David Duchovny, #NFDB
152:No matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret is a terrible force. ~ T a Obreht, #NFDB
153:Humor is imperative, more important than food. You have a choice when someone dies. You can lie down or get back into life. Do something for someone else. ~ Doris Roberts, #NFDB
154:It is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
155:It is imperative for US to parent our children and educate them outside of the school systems, as our education system was not designed to lift US out of oppression. ~ T I, #NFDB
156:The message that "we can't take in everybody" is imperative. At the same time, the decision as to who has a right to asylum needs to be made in Brussels. ~ Paolo Gentiloni, #NFDB
157:Proselytizing is a moral imperative and feeds the marketplace of ideas. I want to hear everyone tell the truth as they see it. I want to learn from everyone. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
158:It is therefore imperative that you identify your work as both personally interesting and, at the same time, integrally connected to the well-being of others. ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
159:Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
160:It was, Eliza Hamilton Holly noted pointedly, the imperative duty that Eliza had bequeathed to all her children: Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
161:Maura had decided sometime before Blue's birth that it was barbaric to order children about, and so Blue had grown up surrounded by imperative question marks. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
162:Maura had decided sometime before Blue’s birth that it was barbaric to order children about, and so Blue had grown up surrounded by imperative question marks. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
163:The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden. ~ William James, #NFDB
164:Man is the highest essence of man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
165:There is no economic imperative that will condemn us to deplete our vital resource base, but neither is there an invisible hand that will prevent us from doing so. ~ Jeffrey Sachs, #NFDB
166:For me, study is a divine and daily imperative, and I study a page of Talmud daily so that I am not only teaching. My teaching is constantly being fed by my learning. ~ Erica Brown, #NFDB
167:No rest for me anywhere. No rest from writing, awareness, insights, memories, fantasies, analogies, free associations. Writing becomes imperative for a surcharged head. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
168:I wake up every day with a single imperative: live. By any means necessary. The only way Death will ever get his slimy bastard hands on me is over my dead body. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
169:There is no economic imperative that will condemn us to deplete our vital resource base, but neither is there an invisible hand that will prevent us from doing so. ~ Jeffrey D Sachs, #NFDB
170:The pain is what you make of it. You have to find something in it that yields. I understood my guiding imperative as: keep bleeding, but find some love in the blood. ~ Leslie Jamison, #NFDB
171:It is absolutely imperative that we protect, preserve and pass on this genetic heritage for man and every other living thing in as good a condition as we received it. ~ David R Brower, #NFDB
172:It is imperative that we do not fear challenges that we have attracted to promote our growth. Every obstacle we encounter is an opportunity for spiritual evolution. ~ Dannion Brinkley, #NFDB
173:Maura had decided sometime before Blue’s birth that it was barbaric to order children about, and so Blue had grown up surrounded by imperative question marks. Blue ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
174:In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new commandment of late-modern labor society. ~ Byung Chul Han, #NFDB
175:The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
176:[39] So there is only one categorical imperative, and this is it: ·Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law·. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
177:The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve. ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
178:I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments. ~ William Hague, #NFDB
179:I liked taking the elements of roadside advertising out of context because it removes the imperative and just goes to the essence of it - the pure heart of advertising. ~ Stanley Donwood, #NFDB
180:When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, that is when we join the fashionable madmen. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
181:As our country increasingly relies on electronic information storage and communication, it is imperative that our Government amend our information security laws accordingly. ~ Jo Ann Davis, #NFDB
182:"Government gets things right" does not encourage sales. "Government makes another blunder" does encourage sales, so there's a commercial imperative that pushes sensationalism. ~ John Major, #NFDB
183:To Jane Jacob’s three traditional urban values of civic space, human scale and diversity, the current environmental imperative adds two more: conservation and regionalism. ~ Peter Calthorpe, #NFDB
184:I probably should work harder on relationships, but I don't, and there's not the same kind of imperative as when you have all the right equipment to make a human being together. ~ Guy Branum, #NFDB
185:I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence. ~ Rick Bass, #NFDB
186:It is imperative that the Christian, at the beginning of his pursuit to understand what true worship is, gets it clear that the object of our worship is to be God and God alone. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
187:Nature does nothing in vain. Therefore, it is imperative for persons to act in accordance with their nature and develop their latent talents, in order to be content and complete. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
188:A stripped imperative of conceptual phrase
Architectonic and inevitable
Translated the unthinkable into thought: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#NFDB
189:Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor—if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
190:Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor -if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
191:Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative” says that individual actions are to be judged according to whether we would be pleased if everyone in society took the same action. ~ Tom Butler Bowdon, #NFDB
192:The reforms of the 1960s gave Americans a third chance to build a truly multiethnic democracy. It is imperative that we succeed, extraordinarily difficult though the task is. ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
193:Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor - if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American Imperative. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
194:Our entire precarious life is submitted to this one imperative: competition. All of our collective energies are enlisted to one goal: to fight against all others in order to survive. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
195:There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape. ~ Oriana Fallaci, #NFDB
196:Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it's imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
197:The unconscious mind governs our decision-making, and much of our communications. It's imperative, if you want to be a successful leader, to become aware of these key human actions. ~ Nick Morgan, #NFDB
198:I am loaded down to the guards with educational, benevolent, and other miscellaneous public work, I must not attempt to do more. I cannot without neglecting imperative duties. ~ Rutherford B Hayes, #NFDB
199:I have frequently experienced myself the mood in which I felt that all is vanity; I have emerged from it not by any philosophy, but owing to some imperative necessity of action. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
200:when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
201:Advertising is an expression of an irrational economy that has depended for survival on a fantastically high standard of living incorporated into the American mind as a moral imperative. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
202:It is imperative that good people, men and women of principle, be involved in the political process; otherwise we abdicate power to those whose designs are almost entirely selfish. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
203:It's absolutely imperative for the parents and the typical kids to have time by themselves, to go out to dinner or even go on vacation while someone else cares for the autistic child. ~ Jenny McCarthy, #NFDB
204:You're just looking for the thing that makes this scene sort of imperative, why you have to know what changes by the end of the scene so you're really looking to find the essence of it. ~ Oliver Parker, #NFDB
205:A parallel imperative cause for accepting the message was the Messenger himself, a man who was, they were certain, too full of truth to deceive and too full of wisdom to be self-deceived. ~ Martin Lings, #NFDB
206:Death lends everything a metaphoric imperative. Mundane objects become fetishes when the departed no longer need them, and breakfast conversations grow runic and wise from behind the shadows. ~ A A Gill, #NFDB
207:There’s the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you’re a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
208:I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
209:It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and His gospel as Jesus was in His own time and place. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
210:If we are to remain mission focused, as we must be if we are to be relevant in an uncertain age, the abandoning those things that do not further the mission is a leadership imperative. ~ Frances Hesselbein, #NFDB
211:I would be strongly committed to working with the FOMC to continue promoting a robust economic recovery ... I consider it imperative that we do what we can to promote a very strong recovery. ~ Janet Yellen, #NFDB
212:This is all disgraceful and underscores how imperative it is that Obamacare be fully repealed and that the newly elected GOP Congress get a backbone and stand up to this cadre of scofflaws. ~ David Limbaugh, #NFDB
213:I am not alone is doubting the imperative to respect cultures, as opposed to persons; and I believe we can respect persons only inasmuch as we consider them as abstract rights-holders. ~ Kwame Anthony Appiah, #NFDB
214:Weren’t the revolutionary times we were living in an imperative to stand up for yourself? Did this not require women to change their attitudes not only toward their husbands but, indeed, all men? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
215:I think that indigenous women's wisdom is crucial. So much of the care of the Earth has come from the mothers. I think it's imperative we turn to their wisdom in how to take care of the planet. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
216:It is imperative that one approaches a spiritual master, for by such association one proportionately develops his consciousness towards the Supreme Personality of Godhead. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, #NFDB
217:Too often our leaders cannot work for the greater good because they acknowledge no good greater than politics. But if that's truly our prime directive and highest imperative, God help us all. ~ Leonard Pitts, #NFDB
218:We live in a permanent state of bad faith, a mutual representation of ourselves to one another for the sake of remaining sane and following our biological imperative to continue as a species. ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
219:Functional programming has excellent support for writing imperative programs, with the added benefit that such programs can be reasoned about equationally because they're referentially transparent. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
220:Interchanges between the senses are frequent and astonishing: One knows the smell of a low B flat, the sound of green, the taste of the categorical imperative (which is something like veal).” No ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
221:It is also vital that our relationship with nature and the environment be included in our education systems. This is not longer something cute or nice to do; it is now a singular imperative. ~ Lawrence Anthony, #NFDB
222:The question is being asked, 'Are we alone?' And though we now focus on that question we need to think beyond that to what if we're not alone? Then what becomes the next imperative question? ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
223:We simply must look beyond partisan goals and find common ground as Americans. It is imperative that the Members of Congress recognize that partisanship will not serve the American people. ~ Michael Dean Crapo, #NFDB
224:By letting go of our imperative mindset, we are left a much better separation of concerns and a clear solution that is very close to the expression of the problem that happens to be more generic. ~ Chas Emerick, #NFDB
225:Did you know, in an undirected self-evolving timeline where nothing matters, the closest I’ve ever come to a rational objective— a duty, you’d call it—is the imperative to minimize suffering? ~ Jonathan Strahan, #NFDB
226:The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function. ~ Jonathan Ive, #NFDB
227:The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
228:God is weaving His tapestry according to his own grand design. All flesh is in His hands. We have no need to fear. We have no need to worry. Our imperative need is to be found doing our duty. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
229:The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous. ~ Margot Fonteyn, #NFDB
230:It is better to control oneself, if one can, and not hit back. But on certain occasions, it is imperative to defend oneself. I don't think it's fair to ask anybody not to defend herself or himself. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
231:Let those only return to their homes who are called by the imperative duties which they owe to their families, and those who by their glorious wounds have deserved the credit of their country. ~ Giuseppe Garibaldi, #NFDB
232:Our current model sets both food and movement as a negative. Eating food (a biological imperative) makes us feel guilty, and we turn movement (also a biological imperative) into punishment. Atonement ~ Katy Bowman, #NFDB
233:When it is proclaimed that one must become more “sensitive” to various ethnic, linguistic, sexual, or lifestyle groups, neither a reason nor a definition usually accompanies this opaque imperative. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
234:He was entirely rid of his nervous misgivings, of his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desire to show himself different from his surroundings. He felt now that his surroundings explained him. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
235:It is not enough to simply listen to student voice. Educators have an ethical imperative to do something with students, and that is why meaningful student involvement is vital to school improvement. ~ Adam Fletcher, #NFDB
236:There are good people, who are in politics - in both parties - who hold this at arm's length, because if they acknowledge it and recognize it, then the moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
237:The work that stirs the greatest passion is also the work that creates around it the greatest silence, the strongest imperative to stand back and admire and let others admire, without interfering. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
238:War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
239:While our nation faces many challenges that must be met regarding homeland security and our military readiness, it is imperative that we live within our means and wisely spend taxpayer dollars. ~ Michael Dean Crapo, #NFDB
240:A key difference between Christianity and Islam is that Muslims believe that the Koran contains verbatim the word of God; it is written in the imperative. This precludes a comparison with Christianity. ~ Geert Wilders, #NFDB
241:Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
242:A sustained engagement with the world, a sense of how it was and how it ought to be, and what has been lost, is imperative to good writing - I just don't know how you can be a serious writer without it. ~ Pankaj Mishra, #NFDB
243:Being overly smart is obnoxious, being wise is a turn on. There’s something irresistible about someone you can learn from. The need for banter and witty conversation is more imperative than you may believe, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
244:He believed in mission. But . . . he did not believe in it as an intellectual imperative, or even as a professional standard. Mission . . . was an abstract notion that took meaning in concrete situations. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
245:High bankruptcy rates, increased credit card debt, and identity theft make it imperative that all of us take an active role in providing financial and economic education during all stages of one's life. ~ Ruben Hinojosa, #NFDB
246:It just seems so fundamental to me. I'm able to marry the person I wanted to marry. That's the fundamental human imperative. Those of us who have been lucky enough should expand these rights to others. ~ Chelsea Clinton, #NFDB
247:When you decide to make a film, it's imperative that it's a story you just have to tell...no matter what. If so, then dive in. It won't be 'work'...it will be a thrilling, deeply satisfying experience. ~ Dori Berinstein, #NFDB
248:Human beings are not meant to live alone. There is a fundamental biological imperative that propels you and every organism on this planet to be in a community, to be in relationship with other organisms. ~ Bruce H Lipton, #NFDB
249:It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction. ~ Stephen Harper, #NFDB
250:It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
251:Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control. ~ Shoshana Zuboff, #NFDB
252:It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content… it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
253:it was imperative to preserve history—be it noble or ignoble. Truth and learning, in Frazier’s mind, swayed the future. Lying about or hiding any event was wrong. Man could only learn through his mistakes. ~ Heather Graham, #NFDB
254:Whether you believe it a moral imperative or in the rich world's enlightened self-interest, securing the conditions that will lead to a healthy, prosperous future for everyone is a goal I believe we all share. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
255:We've got the science, we've had the debate. The moral imperative is on the table. Great creativity is needed to take it all, make it simple and sharp. To make it connect. To make it make people want to act. ~ Andy Hobsbawm, #NFDB
256:Achievement requires continuous feedback. And if you’re going to get the most out of your people, it’s imperative that you be the one who is the most up on what the numbers are and what they mean. Motivators ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
257:It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion. ~ Rene Daumal, #NFDB
258:Now it wasn't just important that I won. It was imperative. And I had to trust that I could do it; that I was more than just the Pale Dreamer, the White Binder's protegee, the slave rebel, the dreamwalker. ~ Samantha Shannon, #NFDB
259:Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
260:If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and the failure memorable. ~ T Coraghessan Boyle, #NFDB
261:This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planet's living billions. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
262:There is no progress: there is perpetual movement, displacement, which is circular, spiral, endless. Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it lead him. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
263:Becoming aware of fragility, of temporality, of the fact that we will surely all be lost to one another, sooner or later, mandates a clear imperative to be totally kind and loving to each other always [p.119]. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
264:Fights are much taxonomised. They have been subject over centuries to a complex, exhaustive categoric imperative. Humans like nothing more than to pigeonhole the events & phenomena that punctuate their lives. ~ China Mi ville, #NFDB
265:I do think it imperative that you recover from fear of rejection. Forgive me, but that is the sin of pride, and you must avoid that particular manifestation of the sin if you are to reach the goal . . . you hope for. ~ John Farrar, #NFDB
266:Improvement in the teaching of science is imperative; for students of latent scientific ability are particularly vulnerable to high school teaching which fails to awaken interest or to provide adequate instruction. ~ Vannevar Bush, #NFDB
267:Open-mindedness is celebrated as the ultimate virtue, though it’s imperative to note that the only time you can’t be open-minded is if you’re open to the possibility of there being only one God with one gospel. That ~ Kelly Minter, #NFDB
268:Collective responsibility, a sense of the greater good versus just one’s own good, and a strong set of collective values are imperative for improving society. These are the aims of all these pieces about our society. ~ Chetan Bhagat, #NFDB
269:The people you spend time with make a significant impact on your state of mind and how you feel about yourself. Let this be the imperative of your business: Choose your clients as carefully as you choose your friends. ~ Michael Port, #NFDB
270:In Holland I have seen well-meaning, principled people blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, while ignoring criminal abuse of women and girls. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
271:I promised myself that I would maintain momentum.
"Maintain momentum" was the imperative that echoed all the way downtown.
In fact I had no idea what would happen if I lost it.
In fact I had no idea what it was. ~ Joan Didion,#NFDB
272:I think it's imperative to follow your heart and choose a profession you're passionate about, and if you haven't found that 'spark' yet, if you're not sure what you want to do with your lives - be persistent until you do. ~ Steve Kerr, #NFDB
273:Neither god, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical that promises success. ~ Henry Highland Garnet, #NFDB
274:First, it is imperative that you create a private Sacred Space and set up an altar with a photo of yourself as a child, a candle, or anything else that speaks to you. I have a picture of the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey. ~ Fannie Flagg, #NFDB
275:Introducing the Bennu bird in ancient Egypt on top of the capstone was probably an imperative to put an end to the heresy that the 'tidings' could also be fulfilled in any other location other than the Pyramid itself. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
276:Love is not an intellectual concept or a moral imperative or anything else. It is the background emotion that exists when one is connected to the energy available in the universe, which of course, is the energy of God. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
277:This doesn’t mean that blame is never justified. If, after investigation, it turns out that a person was genuinely negligent, then punishment is not only justifiable, but imperative. Professionals themselves demand this. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
278:You are no more likely to get screwed over by a huge company than you are by a small one. I’m not saying you won’t get screwed over. I’m saying that there is no moral imperative towards smaller companies not screwing you. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
279:It is imperative to bear in mind that human creativity is not a claim or a right on the part of man, but God's claim on and call to man. God awaits man's creative act, which is the response to the creative act of God. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev, #NFDB
280:The fundamental imperative about idolatry was that worship was not to be paid to any created thing such as a messenger, a planet, a star, one of the four elements, or to anything produced from them. ~ Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (c. 1180), #NFDB
281:This we can all bear witness to, living as we do plagued by unremitting anxiety . It becomes more and more imperative that the life of the spirit be avowed as the only firm basis upon which to establish happiness and peace. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
282:We take too much for granted when it comes to separations and reunions, and pay the price for not understanding the natural human imperative to make and continually remake secure connections with our most important others. ~ Stan Tatkin, #NFDB
283:She felt above all, as a sort of categorical imperative, the desire to set Hannah free, to smash up all her eerie magical surroundings, to let the fresh air in at last; even if the result should be some dreadful suffering. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
284:(‘Why did you have children?’ Bertie asked, later in their lives. ‘Was it just the biological imperative to breed?’ ‘That’s why everyone has children,’ Viola said. ‘They just dress it up as something more sentimental.’) Viola ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
285:Do not let your thoughts take flight, flutter, and climb. Simply cleave and cling to Christ. It is imperative to remain solely with the Person of Christ. If you have that, you have all; but if you lose that, you have lost all. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
286:I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it was an imperative duty, knowing what I know, and having seen what I have seen, to do all that lies in my power to show the dangers and the evils of this frightful institution. ~ Fanny Kemble, #NFDB
287:I'm very fatalistic about life. Whatever happens, happens. The imperative for me is that I do my contribution for my people, for my culture. I still want to make films for them. I still want to make films that confront our struggles. ~ Lav Diaz, #NFDB
288:Love is the greatest apologetic. It is the essential component in reaching the whole person in a fragmented world. The need is vast, but it is also imperative that we be willing to follow the example of Jesus and meet the need. ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
289:A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
290:It’s imperative to practice conscious, moment-by-moment awareness. Otherwise, you’re operating out of old encrusted beliefs, beliefs you downloaded before you were five years old. Do you really want a five-year-old running your life? ~ Pam Grout, #NFDB
291:There's an evolutionary imperative why we give a crap about our family and friends, and there's an evolutionary imperative why we don't give a crap about anybody else. If we loved all people indiscriminately, we couldn't function. ~ David Foster, #NFDB
292:And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
293:All we have done is replaced the burden of conformity to traditions (like marriage, religious community, or ethnic heritage) with the imperative — at least as burdensome — of creating, sustaining, and expressing a ‘personal culture. ~ Mark Regnerus, #NFDB
294:The root of the matter is a very simple and old fashioned thing... love or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
295:The urgency to mate persists in all people as in all other mammals because of the evolutionary drive to continue the species, the inborn imperative for genes to reproduce and hormonal differences that evolved over millions of years. ~ Lynn Margulis, #NFDB
296:adds a strong imperative to act upon what has happened, a continuing invitation in which the one who is healed is meant to participate. Jesus instructs the healed one to go forth with some special intent, made possible by the healing. ~ Gerald G May, #NFDB
297:If we want to avoid the disaster of one-world-government, if we wish to preserve our priceless national sovereignty and live through all time as free men, then it is imperative that the American people read The Shadows of Power. ~ Meldrim Thomson Jr, #NFDB
298:In other words, we can ground human values and morals not just in philosophical principles such as Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Kant’s categorical imperative, Mill’s utilitarianism, or Rawls’s fairness ethics, but in science as well. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
299:The ongoing changes in the distribution of global power and mounting global strife make it all the more imperative that America not retreat into an ignorant garrison-state mentality or wallow in self-righteous cultural hedonism ~ Zbigniew Brzezi ski, #NFDB
300:While a strong presence on our southern border is imperative, the border cannot be secured unless we enforce our internal laws and stop ignoring the open complicity of U.S. companies and foreign nations to promote illegal activities. ~ Elton Gallegly, #NFDB
301:If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
302:... forgiveness is a religious imperative: forgive those who trespass against you. But it is also a very practical strategy based on the belief that there are profound limits to what the formal mechanisms of retribution can accomplish. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
303:Judging from the array of swords and axes and daggers and bows and other implements of killing and dismemberment that they carried around, she gathered that manual dexterity was an imperative.
The better to kill you with, my dears. ~ Laini Taylor,#NFDB
304:This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: "Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
305:This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
306:Thus, as the ego develops, it is imperative to prevent a situation from arising in which the dynamic-emotional component of an unconscious image or archetype would drive the ego into an instinctive reaction and so overwhelm consciousness. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
307:Two presidents pursued human rights policies that were serious and effective, Reagan and George W. Bush. They understood that American support for human rights activists is a moral imperative for us and also makes the world safer for us. ~ Elliott Abrams, #NFDB
308:The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour. ~ Thorstein Veblen, #NFDB
309:The Lourie Center is an important model to consider...(in) mental health care... It is imperative that we use this knowledge to help ensure that every young child in our society has the opportunity to get an emotionally healthy start in life. ~ Tipper Gore, #NFDB
310:Command of English, spoken or written, ranks at the top in business. Our main product is words, so a knowledge of their meaning and spelling and pronunciation is imperative. If a man knows the language well, he can find out about all else. ~ William Feather, #NFDB
311:In an interview in 1992, Leary stated, “It is a genetic imperative to explore the brain. Because it’s there. If you’re carrying around in your head 100 billion mainframe computers, you just have to get in there and learn how to operate them. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
312:Other people do better going on to grad school and others yet are naturally inclined and do just fine without any formal training at all. Everyone is different. The only things I think are imperative are focus, determination and hard work. ~ Toks Olagundoye, #NFDB
313:reactions and think. That is important. We will always have emotions of fear and greed. From here on in, it’s imperative for you to use those emotions to your advantage, and for the long term to not let your emotions control your thinking. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
314:The new way of thinking was, rather, not this or that. It was, simply, must we? Is this essential? Is this imperative? Will this bend us? Will we break? If forward was wholeness and backward was brokenness, would this decision move us forward? ~ Erin Loechner, #NFDB
315:Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened. Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
316:It is imperative, too, that every strategy takes into account an analysis and understanding of the global financial and economic environment marked by slower growth, increased competition, altered consumer behavior, and more government intervention. ~ Ram Charan, #NFDB
317:repeatedly give up their own health or their own time or their own best interests on behalf of what they perceive as the greater good—perhaps in order to consistently reinforce an imperative sense of specialness, of chosenness, of connection. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
318:Managing complexity is the most important technical topic in software development. In my view, it's so important that Software's Primary Technical Imperative has to be managing complexity. Complexity is not a new feature of software development. ~ Steve McConnell, #NFDB
319:I have no argument with those who see in organized religion a template or an imperative to live life according to a prescribed set of beliefs. Just give others the room, within the laws of civil society, to believe or not believe whatever they like. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
320:Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
321:After the first establishment of identity there comes the imperative need to lose this new-found sense of separateness and to belong to something larger and more powerful than the weak, lonely self. The sense of moral isolation is intolerable to us. ~ Carson McCullers, #NFDB
322:All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
323:At a time when U.S. jobs are heading overseas at a record pace, and amidst increased sanctions on our manufacturers and producers from other countries, it's imperative that we do all we can to provide our businesses a climate to operate successfully. ~ Blanche Lincoln, #NFDB
324:It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie, #NFDB
325:The Burning Imperative is a sharply defined, intensely shared, and purposefully urgent understanding from each of the team members of what they are “supposed to do, now,” and how this works with the larger aspirations of the team and the organization. ~ George B Bradt, #NFDB
326:For the world order to be one of peace and justice, for the global village to be a theater of right livelihood, it is imperative that a new and proactive spiritual vision commensurate to the challenges of the emerging world order be enunciated without delay. ~ Agnivesh, #NFDB
327:It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content…it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion. —René Daumal (1908–1944), French poet and critic ~ Meg Cabot, #NFDB
328:The UN Commission on Human Rights, whose membership in recent years has included countries - such as Libya and Sudan - which have deplorable human rights records, and the recent Oil-for-Food scandal, are just a few examples of why reform is so imperative. ~ John Linder, #NFDB
329:Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it's an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts. ~ Joanna Macy, #NFDB
330:Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form, colour and mood of a picture. ~ Lyonel Feininger, #NFDB
331:What? It's not my fault I stab all the fanged people. They shouldn't look like Daimons. (Tabitha) I didn't look like a Daimon, but you stabbed me. (Valerius) Yeah, well, you looked like a lawyer so I had to kill you. It was a moral imperative. (Tabitha) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
332:Collaborate or perish” is perhaps the single most urgent rallying cry for our times. The ability to collaborate at extreme scales isn’t just a competitive advantage in business or in life anymore. Increasingly, it’s a survival imperative for the human race. ~ Jane McGonigal, #NFDB
333:Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened.
Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
That was the business of hiding a Jew. ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
334:Be that as it may, we were--and no doubt, still are--held under scrutiny, with that whole Phoenix Society brouhaha. It is imperative we remain on our best behaviour, a feat that you did not exactly manage effortlessly with your shenanigans in Edinburgh. ~ Philippa Ballantine, #NFDB
335:I do think music and the arts are imperative for our kids for their creative learning and their emotional education, which breeds better adults. I'm doing what I can to try and pick up the slack and I applaud anyone who tries to give back to their community. ~ Sarah McLachlan, #NFDB
336:If I still remember that all realities are neurological constructs and relative to the observer, I am nonetheless committed now to one reality above all alternatives: the reality of Jesus and Buddha, in which reverence for life is the supreme imperative. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
337:Remember that it is not right to take a passage out of its context and to draw inferences from it. It is imperative to take into consideration the preceding and following statements in order to fathom the writer’s meaning and purpose before making any deductions. ~ Maim nides, #NFDB
338:Cats’ source of Mojo is unquestioned ownership of their territory and having an important job to do within that territory. That job is a biological imperative that cats inherited from their wildcat ancestors, and I call it: Hunt, Catch, Kill, Eat, Groom, Sleep. ~ Jackson Galaxy, #NFDB
339:What? It's not my fault I stab all the fanged people. They shouldn't look like Daimons. (Tabitha)
I didn't look like a Daimon, but you stabbed me. (Valerius)
Yeah, well, you looked like a lawyer so I had to kill you. It was a moral imperative. (Tabitha) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
340:A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
341:Euphemism. A form of irony that makes bad things sound good—or at least not as bad. Personification. Pretending things are human: another role-playing trope. Kindergarten Imperative. Issues a command in terms of a personal need. Yogism. A foolishly wise expression. ~ Jay Heinrichs, #NFDB
342:It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
343:A high-speed connection is no more an essential civil right than 3G cell phone service or a Netflix account. Increasing competition and restoring academic excellence in abysmal public schools is far more of an imperative to minority children than handing them iPads. ~ Michelle Malkin, #NFDB
344:the lifting of the imperative that for centuries hustled nearly all (non-enslaved) women, regardless of their individual desires, ambitions, circumstances, or the quality of available matches, down a single highway toward early heterosexual marriage and motherhood. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
345:But it is imperative, for our own survival, that we avoiid one another, and what more successful means of avoidance are there than words? Language will keep us safe from human onslaught, will express for us our regret at being unable to supply groceries or love or peace. ~ Janet Frame, #NFDB
346:The underlying message of all these rules is that inheritance tends to work against the primary technical imperative you have as a programmer, which is to manage complexity. For the sake of controlling complexity, you should maintain a heavy bias against inheritance. ~ Steve McConnell, #NFDB
347:Religious myths are powerless if they aren’t seen as true. Unlike traditional cultures, we subject our mythical intuitions to scrutiny of reason...If our lives are to be colored by religious myths again, it is imperative we rationally understand how & why they can be true ~ Kastrup, #NFDB
348:To play is to listen to the imperative inner force that wants to take form and be acted out without reason. It is the joyful, spontaneous expression of one's self. The inner force materializes the feeling and perception without planning or effort. That is what play is. ~ Michele Cassou, #NFDB
349:Where did parental fear come from, and what were the forces that sustained it? How had a biological imperative become a labyrinth of societal anxieties? How had we managed to take this thing—raising a child—that’s already next to impossible, and make it even fucking harder? ~ Kim Brooks, #NFDB
350:He had to feel those lips on him again. Had. To. This wasn’t a mild expression of preference. This was an imperative. His body was insistent. To continue his
existence on this earth, he now needed the following: food, water, shelter, clothing, and Minerva Highwood’s lips. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
351:They are the gateway for our modern esthetic development, the prophets of the new time. They are most of all, the primitives of the way they have begun; they have voiced most of all the imperative need of essential personalism, of direct expression of direct experience. ~ Marsden Hartley, #NFDB
352:He's [Louis Brandais] so suspicious of bigness in government as well as business that he mistrusts even really top-down reforms at the state level. The most inspiring part of his legacy to me is his belief in the imperative and duty of self-education on behalf of citizens. ~ Jeffrey Rosen, #NFDB
353:I believe it is imperative to see modern English grammar as a rich and diverse linguistic system deposited on our [England's] shores 1,500 years ago, and left with us unweakened, though substantially changed by the social and political events of the intervening period. ~ Robert Burchfield, #NFDB
354:There's an imperative to make sure you distinguish fiction from the fact, because if the fact is doing the work, why did you do fiction? And once you raise the question of why - why do fiction? - then you have to answer it in your text as a kind of enactment of the answer. ~ Fred D Aguiar, #NFDB
355:This is now a global war on terror and, indeed, it is important, it is imperative that we win in the battles in Afghanistan and that we win in the battles in Iraq. And as the gentleman from Georgia has mentioned, this is not something that is going to be quick and easy. ~ Marsha Blackburn, #NFDB
356:It was equally imperative that this chain of reactions should always tend to dampen, to die out. It must not build up, or the uranium mass would explode within a time interval too short to be measured by any means whatsoever. Nor would there be anyone left to measure it. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
357:Kant provided an abstract rule from which (he claimed) all other valid moral rules could be derived. He called it the categorical (or unconditional) imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”22 ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
358:Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism... When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work. ~ Clay Shirky, #NFDB
359:As a leader, it is so important that your words equal your actions. It is imperative that you make sure that you go through a self-evaluation process on an almost daily basis to make sure that your actions are in line with your words. You must do what you say and say what you do. ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
360:It is imperative to create luxury products that are also functional. My vision for fashion precludes frivolous, fantasy-only designs. That said, fashion does tend to move more quickly than interior design. One doesn't change their couch every season as one does their wardrobe. ~ Giorgio Armani, #NFDB
361:The gospel is not about... pie-in-the-sky when they die. ... It is imperative that the up and coming generation recognize that the biblical Jesus was committed to the realization of a new social order in this world.... Becoming a Christian, therefore, is a call to social action. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
362:To fight against the confirmation bias, try writing down your beliefs – whether in terms of worldview, investments, marriage, healthcare, diet, career strategies – and set out to find disconfirming evidence. Axeing beliefs that feel like old friends is hard work, but imperative. ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
363:She really was pretty, for a grown-up, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. I wonder what I would have done if she had smiled at me like that now: whether I would have handed my mind or my heart or my identity to her for the asking, as my father did. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
364:The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
365:If the United States is to produce a nation of investors-as we must if we are to gain financial world-leadership-it is imperative that boards of directors be so constituted as to adequately represent the interests and inspire the complete confidence of investors of moderate substance. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
366:This Apostolic Church never turned from the way of truth nor held any kind of error. It is imperative that nothing of the truths which have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but that they be preserved intact in word and meaning. This is the true rule of faith. ~ Pope Agatho, #NFDB
367:And yet is not this transitoriness a reminder that challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives? It certainly is, and hence my imperative: Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. In ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
368:Egypt is indeed deeply divided. Without reconciliation we have no future. The Muslim Brotherhood is an important part of our society. I very much hope that it will participate in the next round of talks. I will be the first to protest if the imperative of fairness isn't adhered to. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei, #NFDB
369:Bertie, it is imperative that you marry."
"But, dash it all..."
"Yes! You should be breeding children to..."
"No, really, I say, please!" I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women's clubs, and she keeps forgetting she isn't in the smoking-room. ~ P G Wodehouse,#NFDB
370:It didn’t seem to matter that he was married to a beautiful woman who loved him; that they’d had a child, a son; that by moving to Sonoma he was acting on a moral imperative, living a life he felt called to answer; or that, at last, he was supporting himself and his family as a writer. ~ Timothy Denevi, #NFDB
371:She really was pretty, for a grown-up person, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. I wonder what I would have done if she had smiled at me like that now: whether I would have handed my mind or my heart or my identify to her for the asking, as my father did. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
372:The music is the imperative. It has the upper hand. I think all music, even though it's an abstraction, does motivate a particular meaning. Then it's the job of the musician to honor that meaning and to somehow implement lyrical material that can accommodate that emotional environment. ~ Sufjan Stevens, #NFDB
373:While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, sombre desolation are flung at you. Make what you can of them, if you must make at all. The only imperative that nature utters is, 'Look. Listen. Attend. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
374:The message that an active sex life was not simply a new freedom but, in fact, an imperative, a form of validating the worth of young women, has been one of the more convoluted messages to emerge in the century since Balch objected to the notion that sex had been made to mean too much. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
375:And this is the great challenge of our time, the evolutionary imperative for the masculine to see through and overcome its hubris and one-sidedness, to own its own unconscious shadow, to choose to enter into a fundamentally new relationship of mutuality with the feminine in all its forms. ~ Richard Tarnas, #NFDB
376:I believe in previous lives and the Muse—and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
377:no thought lives in your head rent-free.” Each thought you have will either be an investment or a cost. It will either move you toward happiness and success or away from it. It will either empower you or disempower you. That’s why it is imperative you choose your thoughts and beliefs wisely. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
378:The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean, that, that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth. It is imperative that students learn the truth of our history. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
379:Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a conditional, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
380:My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test. ~ Ellen Goodman, #NFDB
381:The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given. ~ Elizabeth Bowen, #NFDB
382:Controlled, universal disarmament is the imperative of our time. The demand for it by the hundreds of millions whose chief concern is the long future of themselves and their children will, I hope, become so universal and so insistent that no man, no government anywhere, can withstand it. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
383:Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the Cold War and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
384:The exact same text was slightly different to read when viewed on the printed pages rather than on the word processor's screen. The feel of the words he chose would change depending on whether he was writing them on paper in pencil or typing them on the keyboard. It was imperative to do both. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
385:The English social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1965 Death, Grief, and Mourning, had described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new “ethical duty to enjoy oneself,” a novel “imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
386:Morality was not relative, they claimed, nor even existing solely in the realm of human condition. No, they proclaimed morality was an imperative of all life, a natural law that was neither the brutal acts of beasts nor the lofty ambitions of humanity, but something other, something unassailable ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
387:The act of writing should not be accompanied by the sense of an audience, someone peering over your shoulder, but in nonfiction I think it’s almost imperative that you identify an audience so you can confirm or challenge or undermine whatever ideas or prejudices they might have about your subject. ~ Pankaj Mishra, #NFDB
388:A fraudulent vote is a stolen vote. It steals a vote from the thin air and nullifies the legal and legitimate vote of a tax-paying citizen, whose rights to a fair election shouldn’t be tampered with. Winning an election is important, but winning it honestly is imperative in a Constitutional Republic. ~ Mike Huckabee, #NFDB
389:Morality was not relative, they claimed, nor even existing solely in the realm of the human condition. No, they proclaimed morality as an imperative of all life, a natural law that was neither the brutal acts of beasts nor the lofty ambitions of humanity, but something other, something unassailable. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
390:If people who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
391:In order that there may be institutions, there must be a kind of will, instinct, or imperative, which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to the solidarity of chains of generations, forward and backward ad infinitum. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
392:This sometimes happened: from time to time, Dantès, driven out of solitude into the world, felt an imperative need for solitude. And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord? ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
393:It’s imperative that writing consists of not living up to your own taste. Of leaving the world behind so you can hold fast to what’s strange inside; what’s unlit. A soreness. A neglected joy. The way forward is perhaps not maintaining a standard for accuracy but appraising what naturally heaps. Writing ~ Durga Chew Bose, #NFDB
394:The United States is following at some distance down this same road, with Canada somewhere in between. If the situation is not to degenerate further, it is imperative that we shape the intellectual climate of our nation in such a way that Christianity remains a live option for thinking men and women. ~ William Lane Craig, #NFDB
395:As John Wesley once said, “God does nothing but in answer to prayer.”1* Prayer is therefore not an option for mankind but a necessity. If we don’t pray, heaven cannot interfere in earth’s affairs. It is imperative that we take responsibility for the earth and determine what happens here by our prayer lives. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
396:Finish discarding first.” I’m sure you know by now that this is a cardinal rule of the KonMari Method. If you start thinking about where to store this and that before you have completely finished throwing stuff away, you won’t get very far. That’s why it’s imperative to concentrate solely on discarding first. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
397:There's still massive racism in the United States today that is rooted in sexual fears, but it's at least considered unacceptable. In Israel it's a mainstream phenomenon that's encouraged and supported by the state because it supports Israel's demographic imperative in its ethnocratic political structure. ~ Max Blumenthal, #NFDB
398:Without miracles, the Kingdom of God is reduced to words, concepts and good works. Perceived through this paradigm, the Lions, Rotary and Moose clubs would be the ones contending for first place. While words, concepts and works are important, it is imperative that we demonstrate the power of our great King. ~ Kris Vallotton, #NFDB
399:Ancient India was a knowledge society and a leader in many intellectual pursuits, particularly in the fields of mathematics, medicine and astronomy. A renaissance is imperative for us to once again become a knowledge superpower rather than simply providing cheap labour in areas of high technology. Summary ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
400:This line of reasoning leads Kant to the second formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”23 This is the formula of humanity as an end. ~ Michael J Sandel, #NFDB
401:I was learning. In medicine, we have long faced a conflict between the imperative to give patients the best possible care and the need to provide novices with experience. Residencies attempt to mitigate potential harm through supervision and graduated responsibility. And there is reason to think patients actually ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
402:But even when the principle of equal treatment was betrayed, American leaders in every era have emphatically affirmed it, not so much out of hypocrisy as out of aspiration. Indeed, for those who were devoted to justice, the persistence of inequality was precisely what made equality before the law so imperative. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
403:Strong-willed children often grow into strong-willed adults who become world leaders, world shapers, and world changers. Parenting them peacefully is not only possible, it’s imperative because sowing peace in their hearts now while they’re in our care will grow a future of peace later when the world is in their care. ~ L R Knost, #NFDB
404:The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that
the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them
by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent
of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation
is imperative. ~ H l ne Cixous,#NFDB
405:An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
406:In the USA, where so many people compete for one and the same thing, where job opportunities, residential facilities, and food resources have to be spread over so many people, the question of justice becomes more imperative than ever before if communal and individual life is to be made possible and enjoyable. ~ Ndabaningi Sithole, #NFDB
407:prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription—the American imperative. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
408:Conscripting Jesus to a nationalistic agenda creates a grotesque caricature of Christ that the church must reject—now more than ever! Understanding Jesus as the Prince of Peace who transcends idolatrous nationalism and overcomes the archaic ways of war is an imperative the church must at last begin to take seriously. ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
409:In every other religion the indicative flows from the imperative. Which means, ‘because I do, therefore I am... because I do this, therefore I’m a child of God.’ But only in Christianity does the imperative flow from the indicative. ‘Because I am in Christ all these things, therefore I obey.’ Exactly the opposite. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
410:Healthy children are born from healthy, respected, well-nourished and educated mothers and it is imperative that they have a voice in the decisions which affect them. If you empower a mother and let her have her say towards a poverty-free future, the positive impact this would have on ending hunger will be immense. ~ Dionne Warwick, #NFDB
411:Respect for women is essential,” Jack tells him. “Women’s rights and economic development within a country are highly correlated. Treating women properly is not just a moral position—which it is—or an American value—which it is. It’s a strategic imperative, and you will always, always lead by example in this regard. ~ Gregg Hurwitz, #NFDB
412:While it’s a prerequisite to live a salty Christian life — to be highly potent and in relationship with others — that alone is not enough. God forbid that we stop there, because people end up in hell on that plan. It’s imperative that we also put the message into clear language our friends can understand and act upon. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
413:Polls show that most people in the world favor humbler, more compassionate solutions to our common problems. Not only favor them but, resolving to love in a more complete and final way, try to put them into action. A society based on universal compassion is not just our only hope; it is an evolutionary imperative. ~ Marc Ian Barasch, #NFDB
414:The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm's length because it's an inconvenient truth, because they don't want to accept that it's a moral imperative. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
415:when I have the thought categorical imperative, I know right away what it will contain. For all the imperative contains is the law, and the necessity that the maxim conform to the law; and the law doesn’t contain any condition limiting it (·comparable with the condition that is always part of a hypothetical imperative·). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
416:According to Ehrenberg, depression spreads when the commandments and prohibitions of disciplinary society yield to self-responsibility and initiative. In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new commandment of late-modern labor society. ~ Byung Chul Han, #NFDB
417:Caleb leaned forward in his seat. "So who's the meanest person you've ever arrested?"
"What are you doing?" Nick gasped.
Caleb cracked an evil grin. "You have things you can't resist doing. This is one that is a moral imperative to me." *Must rankle bullies.*
*You're going to get jack-slapped.* ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
418:In our course we teach that "no thought lives in your head rent-free." Each thought you have will either be an investment or a cost. It will either move you toward happiness and success or away from it. It will either empower you or disempower you. That's why it is imperative you choose your thoughts and beliefs wisely. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
419:I prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription – the American imperative. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
420:Whoever you are and wherever you find yourself as you seek your way in life, I offer you "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Wherever else you think you may be going, I ask you to "come unto Him" as the imperative first step in getting there, in finding your individual happiness and strength and success. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
421:It is imperative that the past of the pilgrims' progress be intentionally carried forward into the present as we work into our future. Without it we cannot know who we are, why we are here, or where we can go. Without a common past to live out of we become aimless and wandering individuals instead of a pilgrim people. ~ H Richard Niebuhr, #NFDB
422:She stayed beside me until I slept, waveringly, brilliantly, hooded in diaphanous scarlet, and occasionally she left an imperative written in lipstick on my dusty windowpane. BE AMOROUS! she exhorted one night and, another night, BE MYSTERIOUS! Some nights later, she scribbled: WHEN YOU BEGIN TO THINK, YOU LOSE THE POINT. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
423:The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion. ~ Charles Evans Hughes, #NFDB
424:But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral - it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. ~ Aaron Swartz, #NFDB
425:The desire to do it was strong, but stronger still was the imperative command of his nature not to do it. In spite of himself he was still faithful to Love. The old days of license and easy living were gone. He could not bring them back, nor could he go back to them, He was changed---how changed he had not realized until now. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
426:The desire to do it was strong, but stronger still was the imperative command of his nature not to do it. In spite of himself he was still faithful to Love. The old days of license and easy living were gone. He could not bring them back, nor could he go back to them. He was changed---how changed he had not realized until now. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
427:Both of our memories were deteriorating, and in recent years the effort required to recall a name or incident felt almost wearyingly physical, like clearing out an attic. Proper nouns were particularly elusive. Adverbs and adjectives would go next, until we were left with pronouns and imperative verbs. Eat! Walk! Sleep now! ~ David Nicholls, #NFDB
428:It is especially imperative for Congress to exercise careful judgment in this area, because of the difficulty under existing laws, in obtaining judicial review of Postal Service abuses. ...We strongly oppose the legislation's infringement of rights guaranteed under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. ~ John Shattuck, #NFDB
429:We should certainly honor the principle that all people are equal in God’s sight and entitled to equal protection of the laws as well as fair, courteous, and respectful treatment. But there is no moral imperative that we adopt the notion that all belief systems are equally true. There is a moral imperative that we do not. ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
430:It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
431:The only reason people compromise themselves is because they don’t feel strongly enough about themselves and are looking for another person to fix it for them, either sexually or emotionally. That’s why it is imperative that you get to a place where you like yourself, even if just for the added bonus of weeding out the creeps. ~ Greg Behrendt, #NFDB
432:There is utopia and utopia. The kind imposed by an elite in the name of a historical imperative—that utopia is hell. It must lead to terror and then, terror exhausted, to cynicism and torpor. But surely there is another utopia. It cannot be willed either into existence or out of sight, it speaks for our sense of what may yet be. ~ Irving Howe, #NFDB
433:It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
434:There is nothing wrong with projecting this false self to the outside world during these early striving years, so long as it isn’t too distant or disconnected from who we really are. Later, in the forties and fifties, it becomes imperative to find our way back to the truest things we know and to compose a more authentic self. Now ~ Gail Sheehy, #NFDB
435:While our responses to the problems facing us immediately are also important, we cannot forget to carve out the future of Japan ten or one hundred years into the future. In doing so, we must not resort to superficial measures. Instead, it is imperative to engage in true reforms that ascertain the state of society we seek to achieve. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
436:Communication between band-mates is imperative. Communication is the key to any healthy relationship. If I need to be checked, I expect to hear it put in plain words what my faults are, and give my band-mates the ultimate consideration by shutting up and listening, then acting on the advice given. Same goes for anyone else in any band. ~ Phil Anselmo, #NFDB
437:The fossil fuel industry will inevitably have to experience major cutbacks and, over the longer term, near-total demise. There is simply no choice in the matter if we believe the research produced by climate scientists. The profits of oil, coal, and natural gas companies will have to yield to the imperative of sustaining life on earth. ~ Robert Pollin, #NFDB
438:Our search for such [moral] principles can start with . . . the unconditional imperative to acknowledge every person as a person. If we ask for the contents given by this absolute, we find, first, something negative-the command not to treat a person as a thing. This seems little, but it is much. It is the core of the principle of justice. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
439:This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
440:I believe that what we get out of life is what we've set ourselves up to get, so there's no such thing as an inconsequential decision. Our destinies are the culmination of all the choices we've made along the way, which is why it's imperative to listen hard to your inner voice when it speaks up. Don't let anyone else's noise drown it out. ~ Megan McCafferty, #NFDB
441:We are the most illusioned society on the planet. We have to become adults. And it's hard; it's painful. I struggle with despair all the time. But I'm not going to let it win. It is incumbent upon all of us that at the same time we recognize how dark the future is, we also recognize the absolute imperative of resistance in every form possible. ~ Chris Hedges, #NFDB
442:Google offers to its “customers” is free. Internet searches are free. Email is free. The vast resources of the data centers, costing Google an estimated thirty billion dollars to build, are provided essentially for free. Free is not by accident. If your business plan is to have access to the data of the entire world, then free is an imperative. ~ George Gilder, #NFDB
443:I believe that what we get out of life is what we've set ourselves up to get, so there's no such thing as an inconsequential decision. Our destinies are the culmination of all the choices we've made along the way, which is why it's imperative to listen hard to your inner voice when it speaks up.
Don't let anyone else's noise drown it out. ~ Megan McCafferty,#NFDB
444:Strategy is important. Execution is imperative. However, the most overlooked aspect in team sports, and what most coaches and leaders fail to grasp, is the fact that it is your culture that will determine whether your strategy works and is sustainable. It is the culture you create that is going to determine whether your players perform and execute. ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
445:Following the lead of Moses, Israel seizes upon this revelation as the clue to its future. Israel celebrates that Yahweh is this peculiar God of covenantal relatedness, even as Israel insists that Yahweh must be the God who is self-announced in this way. Israel "prays back" to Yahweh in an imperative, Yahweh's own words of self-announcement. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
446:To me, the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self-inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth, or heal our sick planet, is evidence of our immense capacity for self delusion. Rather, we need to protect ourselves from ourselves. ~ Lynn Margulis, #NFDB
447:Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan... Collect our own revenue from personal income tax... Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts... [E]ach province should raise its own revenue for health... It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta. ~ Stephen Harper, #NFDB
448:It's imperative to realize that it is not necessary to try to get rid of fear in order to succeed. Rich and successful people have fear, rich and successful people have doubts, rich and successful people have worries. They just don't let these feelings stop them. Unsuccessful people have fears, doubts, and worries, then let those feelings stop them. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
449:If we were immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever. [...] But in the face of death as absolute finis to our future and boundary to our possibilities, we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost, not letting the singular opportunities - whose "finite" sum constitutes the whole of life - pass by unused. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
450:It is imperative that the entire Christian community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church's public moral witness presented by a militant atheism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
451:The endless fights among the faithful had prompted Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, to write that “unity is a gospel imperative when we recognize that it opens us to change, to conversion: when we realize how our life with Christ is somehow bound up with our willingness to abide with those we think are sinful, and those we think are stupid. ~ Sara Miles, #NFDB
452:The methodological benefits of functional languages are well known [Bac78, Hug89, HJ94], but still the vast majority of programs are written in imperative languages such as C. This apparent contradiction is easily explained by the fact that functional languages have historically been slower than their more traditional cousins, but this gap is narrowing. ~ Chris Okasaki, #NFDB
453:No duty is more imperative for the government than the duty it ;owes the people to furnish them with a sound and uniform currency, an of regulating the circulation of the medium of exchange so that labor will be protected from a vicious currency [private bank-created, interest-bearing debt], and commerce will be facilitated by cheap and safe exchanges. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
454:True religion is heart-work. We may wash the outside of the cup and the platter as long as we please, but if the inward parts be filthy, we are filthy altogether in the sight of God, for our hearts are more truly ourselves than our hands are; the very life of our being lies in the inner nature, and hence the imperative need of purity within. The ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
455:Believing in the gospel isn’t optional. It is imperative, for those who don’t put their trust in Jesus will face eschatological humiliation (Rom 9:33; 10:11). Conversely, believers are the children of Abraham (Gal 3:6; cf. 3:8) and therefore the children of God (3:26). They belong to God’s family and are members of the true Israel of God (6:16). Those ~ Thomas R Schreiner, #NFDB
456:If I didn't know better, I'd think I suffer from some sort of Tourette's-autism hybrid, but Dr. Pat insists I can control the impulse to say whatever pops into my head. That it's, like, a defensive mechanism, not a biological imperative. Therapists think everything is a defense mechanism. Just my thinking that in my head, right now, is a defense mechanism. ~ Corey Ann Haydu, #NFDB
457:The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. The essence of this change is the emergence of what might best be called procedural epistemology-the study of the structure of knowledge from an imperative point of view, as opposed to the more declarative point of view taken by classical mathematical subjects. ~ Hal Abelson, #NFDB
458:The Christian ethic is based on an antithesis between what is and what ought to be. We view the world as fallen; an analysis of fallen human behavior describes what is
normal to the abnormal situation of human corruption. God calls us out of the indicative by His imperative. Ours is a call to nonconformity-to a transforming ethic that shatters the status quo. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
459:Adapting a recipe's ingredients is completely in your hands. But the method is what really matters. The techniques in cooking are rigorous and imperative: They are your passport to a successful dish. Cooks must practice, practice, practice. Anyone can learn, but you need focus, proper understanding, and to go at the right pace, not running before you can walk. ~ Gordon Ramsay, #NFDB
460:As soon as a woman's primary social value could no longer be defined as the attainment of virtuous domesticity, the beauty myth redefined it as the attainment of virtuous beauty. It did so to substitute both a new consumer imperative and a new justification for economic unfairness in the workplace where the old ones had lost their hold over newly liberated women. ~ Naomi Wolf, #NFDB
461:This is now a well-studied aspect of psychology. Social hierarchies inhibit assertiveness. We talk to those in authority in what is called ‘mitigated language’. You wouldn’t say to your boss: ‘It’s imperative we have a meeting on Monday morning.’ But you might say: ‘Don’t worry if you’re busy, but it might be helpful if you could spare half an hour on Monday.’5 ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
462:The ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is, then, imperative to develop a democratic technological culture. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
463:Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
464:Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible. ~ R D Laing, #NFDB
465:Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
466:Believe truth! Shun error!-these, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance. ~ William James, #NFDB
467:In contrast to the Kantian, the categorical imperative of the culture industry no longer has anything in common with freedom. It proclaims: you shall conform, without instruction as to what; conform to that which exists anyway as a reflex of its power and omnipresence. The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
468:Don’t you see the inevitability of this moment? I mean we’re talking serious process here, man. The perfect critic stepping forth from the demimonde of the war and blowing the heart of the painting to rubble, and then turning his weapon on the man whose actions have been the pure contrary of the work’s formal imperative.’ ‘I’m outta film,’ said the mestizo cameraman. ~ Lucius Shepard, #NFDB
469:I think it’s imperative that we continue confusing light with meaning. That’s how the human race evolves. Someone sees a light, names it God, goes toward it, goes up in flames. Same goes for moths. We’re all animals. There’s nothing revolutionary about evolution. The process itself relies solely on stupidity. We fuck up in the hopes that future fuckups will learn from us. ~ Kris Kidd, #NFDB
470:The problem with the finance sector is not that it has crashed (though that has done enormous damage around the world) but the damage that it did even in its pomp. It is for that reason that we must not go back to business as usual. Most of all it is imperative we reduce the dominance of finance. And that means economically, ideologically, and in terms of political voice. ~ Doreen Massey, #NFDB
471:Life being what it is, you won't get your names right the first time. In this situation you may well be tempted to leave it—after all it's only a name. That is the work of the evil demon Obfuscatis; don't listen to him. If you see a badly named method, it is imperative that you change it. Remember your code is for a human first and a computer second. Humans need good names. ~ Martin Fowler, #NFDB
472:Most ethics since Kant has sought to be democratic. Kant’s “categorical imperative” underwrote the assumption that all people could be moral without training since they had available to them all they needed insofar as they were rational. Kant’s project, therefore, was to free the moral agent from the arbitrary and contingent characters of our histories and communities. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
473:Working hard and doing doing great work is as imperative as breathing. Creating great work warms the heart and enriches the soul. Those of us lucky enough to spend our days doing something we love, something we're good at, are rich. If you do not work passionately (even furiously) at being the best in the world at what you do, you fail your talent, your destiny, and your god. ~ George Lois, #NFDB
474:The rapidly evolving global economy demands a dynamic and creative workforce. The arts and its related businesses are responsible for billions of dollars in cultural exports for this country. It is imperative that we continue to support the arts and arts education both on the national and local levels. The strength of every democracy is measured by its commitment to the arts. ~ Charles Segars, #NFDB
475:To be right we must think worthily of God. It is morally imperative that we purge from our minds all ignoble concepts of the Deity and let Him be the God in our minds that He is in His universe. The Christian religion has to do with God and man, but its focal point is God, not man. Man's only claim to importance is that he was created in the divine image; in himself he is nothing. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
476:He told himself it was unwise. She couldn’t stay in these woods indefinitely. He could use her to lead him to others of her kind. Humans are social animals. They cluster like bees. The attacks relied on this critical adaptation. The evolutionary imperative that drove them to live in groups was the opportunity to kill them by the billions. What was the saying? Strength in numbers. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
477:It is imperative that we find that vital element that brings us alive... the true vitality that waits beneath all occupations for us to tap into, if we can discover what we love. If you feel energy and excitement and a sense that life is happening for the first time, you are probably near your God-given nature. Joy in what we do is not an added feature; it is a sign of deep health. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
478:It is imperative that you have no further contact with Archer Cross."
I knew all of that. But there was something about having it actually said out loud that physically hurt. "I get it," I said,looking down. "I'm a demon, he's an Eye. If we got together, think of how awkward family holidays would be. Magic and daggers flying around, knocking over the Christmas tree... ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
479:Logan watched her speak. Her voice was the same, but her mouth was different. Why had Logan never noticed her mouth before? Her bottom lip was fuller, but the top lip was shaped like a little bow, and he couldn't decide which lip he liked more. He knew he was going to have to do a lot more looking in order to choose. And it suddenly felt imperative that Logan choose very, very well. ~ Ally Carter, #NFDB
480:Witchcraft can be seen as an art accomplished through the action of a set of three simple principles, namely: orientation, presence and imperative. These are the three phases which together create a mythic topography of witchcraft. Without these we have only the broken spars of folklore, misreadings of Christian apocrypha, and blind impulse. This is my narrow path into the dark wood. ~ Peter Grey, #NFDB
481:Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
482:The crisis we are experiencing is unique in history. It is a world which must burst out of a crucible in which so many different energies are working. Let us thank God that He makes us live among the present problems... it is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre. All men have the imperative duty to remember that they have a mission to fulfill, that of doing the impossible. ~ Pope Pius XII, #NFDB
483:When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
484:Running for the hills is not the way to go. We live in a time where there are actually fewer and fewer places left to run away to. Therefore, it’s imperative to find ways to use your energy to dive into—not run from—existing paths of livelihood. A hip-hop mogul or an oil executive are powerful already. There’s no reason they couldn’t be powerfully selfless and compassionate as well. ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
485:Just as we're all students throughout life, we're all teachers. In fact, we learn best by offering what we desire for ourselves to as many individuals as we can, as frequently as we can.....Following this line of thinking, it's imperative that we make deliberate effort to increase our inspirational energy, as this will lead us to being both a spiritual learner and teacher simultaneously. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
486:I think that it is useless to fight directly against natural weaknesses. One has to force oneself to act as though one did not have them in circumstances where a duty makes it imperative; and in the ordinary course of life one has to know these weaknesses, prudently take them into account, and strive to turn them to good purpose; for they are all capable of being put to some good purpose. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
487:While you may see yourself as a teacher of the subject music, you are so much more! You are a teacher of people; that is your true specialization, not just the subject of music. Yes, when students come to you, they want to learn a special set of skills but, as an imperative compliment to that specific skill set, you teach them how to learn, how to grow. What an incredible gift that is! ~ Nick Ambrosino, #NFDB
488:The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: 'Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings! ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
489:Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
490:But fighting to give women and girls a fighting chance isn’t a nice thing to-do. It isn’t some luxury that we get to when we have time on our hands to spend. This is a core imperative for every human being in every society. If we do not continue the campaign for women’s rights and opportunities, the world we want to live, the country we all love and cherish, will not be what it should be. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
491:The earth has enough knowledge and resources to eradicate this ancient scourge. Hunger has plagued the world for thousands of years. But ending it is a greater moral imperative now than ever before, because for the first time humanity has the instruments at hand to defeat this cruel enemy at a very reasonable cost. We have the ability to provide food for all within the next three decades. ~ George McGovern, #NFDB
492:The rapid growth of industry, the ever increasing population and the imperative need for a more varied, wholesome and nourishing foodstuff makes it all the more necessary to exhaust every means at our command to fill the empty dinner pail, enrich our soils, bring greater wealth and influence to our beautiful South land, which is synonymous to a healthy, happy and contented people. ~ George Washington Carver, #NFDB
493:To stimulate optimal size and strength increases, it's imperative that you regularly attempt the momentarily impossible. For example, if you can curl 100 pounds for a maximum of 10 reps, but never attempt the 11th, your body has no reason to enlarge upon its existing capacity. It is only by regularly attempting to go beyond your existing capacity that inroads are made into your body's reserves. ~ Mike Mentzer, #NFDB
494:All that existed was the blinding imperative to not think, to leave it all behind. To have it all fade to black in the throes of a truly good orgasm. To thrust and rock and pound until he came long and hard. To reach the pinnacle as fast as he could, to leap off the edge and truly leave all his earth-bound worries behind.
He was a cave man.
He was a Neanderthal.
He was fucking Cro-Magnon. ~ Amy Andrews,#NFDB
495:We must take him as he is. He was put into the army very young, and was very young when he came into possession of his own small fortune. He might have done better; but how many young men placed in such temptations do well? As it is, he has nothing left.” “I fear not.” “And therefore is it not imperative that he should marry a girl with money?” “I call that stealing a girl’s money, Lady Carbury. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
496:All I can say for certain is that, beneath the scrambled chaos of my memories, I feel a driving imperative, a sense of some vital task that I must complete, and which has not yet reached cessation. But I could be completely mistaken. Perhaps I was simply a tourist, ambling his way from sight to sight with no greater goal than to accumulate memories and experience - much like yourselves, in fact. ~ Alastair Reynolds, #NFDB
497:Never having been betrayed sets up poor preconditions for remaining faithful. Evolving into genuinely more loyal people requires us to suffer through some properly innoculative episodes, in which we feel for a time limitlessly panicked, violated and on the edge of collapse. Only then can the injunction not to betray our spouses evolve from a bland bromide into a permanently vivid moral imperative. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
498:We need to choose to release the past and forgive everyone, ourselves included. We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive, but the very fact that we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing process. It is imperative for our own healing that “we” release the past and forgive everyone. “I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
499:If we think that we can somehow gain control of the US government, bring it under popular, enlightened progressive control, preserve a habitable climate, and rein in the dangers of nuclear and other warfare, then we should. However, if we think it's more likely that California can achieve those goals by secession, then we should go down that path. There's no question. It's an absolute moral imperative. ~ David Swanson, #NFDB
500:the solution to racism lies in our ability to see its ubiquity but not to concede its inevitability. It lies in the collective and institutional power to make change, at least as much as with the individual will to change. It also lies in the absolute moral imperative to break the childish, deadly circularity of centuries of blindness to the shimmering brilliance of our common, ordinary humanity. ~ Patricia J Williams, #NFDB
501:I'm no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
502:In the technological world...it is no longer a question of dominating nature or society in order to be more free or more happy, but of mastery for mastery's sake, of domination for the sake of domination. Why? For no end, precisely, or rather: because it is quite simply impossible to do otherwise, given the nature of societies entirely governed by competition, by the absolute imperative to 'advance or perish'. ~ Luc Ferry, #NFDB
503:d'Artagnan wished to stop the young woman, seize her and gaze upon her, were it only for a minute; but quick as a bird she glided between his hands, and when he wished to speak to her, her finger placed upon her mouth, with a little imperative gesture full of grace, reminded him that he was under the command of a power which he must blindly obey, and which forbade him even to make the slightest complaint. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
504:We take too much for granted when it comes to separations and reunions, and pay the price for not understanding the natural human imperative to make and continually remake secure connections with our most important others. Don’t take my word for this. Check your own launchings and landings. Play with them. Perform them properly, and then improperly or not at all. Compare the difference. Experience for yourself. ~ Stan Tatkin, #NFDB
505:Anyone who realises what Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound, so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves, passed over in silence by others. ~ Edward Carpenter, #NFDB
506:Finally, this principle and its corollary lead to a conclusion, deduced as an imperative: that the objective of the exercise of power is to reinforce, strengthen and protect the principality, but with this last understood to mean not the objective ensemble of its subjects and territory, but rather the prince's relation with what he owns, with the territory he has inherited or acquired, and with his subjects. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
507:If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.
Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative. ~ Colson Whitehead,#NFDB
508:my father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit," Ridgeway said. "All these years late, I prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. One destiny by divine perscription--the American imperative. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
509:The absolute authority of market forces would be enshrined as the ultimate source of imperative control, displacing democratic contest and deliberation with an ideology of atomized individuals sentenced to perpetual competition for scarce resources. The disciplines of competitive markets promised to quiet unruly individuals and even transform them back into subjects too preoccupied with survival to complain. ~ Shoshana Zuboff, #NFDB
510:Matthew 28:19–20: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The imperative in those verses is “go.” But as we go, there are several sub-commands. We are to make disciples. We are to baptize. We are to teach. ~ Thom S Rainer, #NFDB
511:With control of the universe at stake, a crash program is imperative.We produced the A-bomb, under the huge Manhattan Project, in an amazingly short time. The needs, the urgency today are even greater. The Air Force should end UFO secrecy, give the facts to scientists,the public, to Congress. Once the people realize the truth, they would back, even demand a crash program...for this is one race we dare not lose. ~ Donald Keyhoe, #NFDB
512:Forgiving ourselves for all the woulda-shoulda-couldas in life, and sometimes forgiving others for actions that we feel undercut or undermine our good, can be very challenging. But forgiveness of the past and mistakes, our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others, is imperative if we are to dwell fully in the present and experience the miracles that are only available to the forgiving and loving mind. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
513:Man is not capable of thought in any high degree, and even the most spiritual and highly cultivated of men habitually sees the world and himself through the lenses of delusive formulas and artless simplifications--and most of all himself. For it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
514:To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one's powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it. ~ E C Riegel, #NFDB
515:Marrying the right girl is even more imperative today than it was when I was 23 years old because it's so much harder to get on as an imaginative writer like me now. You need to have somebody who believes in what you're doing and who never is skeptical about what you're doing. My wife thought it was a great thing for me to be a writer because in practical terms it freed her to do what she wanted to do, which was work. ~ Richard Ford, #NFDB
516:Equal pay is not yet equal. A woman makes $0.77 on a dollar and women of color make $0.67... We feel so passionately about this because we are not only running for office, but we each, in our own way, have lived it. We have seen it. We have understood the pain and the injustice that has come because of race, because of gender. And it's imperative that... we make it very clear that each of us will address these issues. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
517:It’s fantastic, these babies and my boobs. People don’t want to hear about that, don’t want to entertain it. Vast numbers will watch two naked girls online shit in a cup then eat it, but babies enjoying the living hell out of breasts as supreme source of endless free nourishment and good health for all remains taboo. Explain that to me in a way that does not skirt the historical imperative of misogyny. Go ahead. Try. I’m ~ Elisa Albert, #NFDB
518:By being what only I can be, I give humanity what only I can give. It is my uniqueness that allows me to contribute something unique to the universal heritage of humankind. I sum up the Jewish imperative, very simply—and it has been like this since the days of Abraham: to be true to your faith is a blessing to others regardless of their faith. That’s the big paradox when you really reach the very depth of particularity. ~ Krista Tippett, #NFDB
519:Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematised as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligising, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity. ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte, #NFDB
520:There are an incalculable—even infinite—number of situations in which we can practice forgiveness.
Expecting it to be a singular action—motivated by the sheer imperative to move on and forget—can be more damaging than the original feelings of anger.
Accepting forgiveness as pluralistic and as an ongoing, individualized process opens us up to realize the role that our own needs play in conflict resolution. ~ Sharon Salzberg,#NFDB
521:Healing a hurting humanity starts with a sacred pause, to listen, to learn, to understand, to accept, to forgive, to respect. That sacred pause transcends the fear-driven brutality of the primitive human survival intinct and makes way for a thoughtful, intentional, peaceful, humane response. Peaceful coexistence on this lovely planet is not impossible. It is imperative. Our future, our humanity, our very survival depends on it. ~ L R Knost, #NFDB
522:I have been thinking a lot about these things as I have come to the realization of the tremendous responsibilities which rest upon me. It is my conviction that the fundamental trouble with the people of the United States is that they have gotten too far away from Almighty God. I am bound to believe that in a tumultuous age like ours the most important and imperative duty is the reconstruction of humanity to Almighty God. ~ Warren G Harding, #NFDB
523:It is the incongruous thing in my entire life, this isolation.. ... My work requires it - but I myself have no need or use for it - Perhaps once on a time I found isolation imperative - I think all chrysalides do - all embryos go for the underside of the leaf in the time of body-change preparing for the final reassertion -resurrection - the establishment of the entity. But now I've come up tot the outside of my casements. ~ Marsden Hartley, #NFDB
524:You can’t go wrong in choosing anything, and I love people who dodge all the gender-imperative rubbish that society torments us all with. I love the fact that he didn’t think heterosexuality resolved anything at all, meaning, I assume, that he didn’t think it was enough just to be heterosexual. You read him and you are immediately convinced that the rest of the world is suffering a mass mental illness. I love writers like that. ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
525:If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamicsthat present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become. ~ Shoshana Zuboff, #NFDB
526:This psychology crap? I can guess where you're going with this tantrum, and in the interest of saving time — which seems to be an imperative for you — I would say that what is bullshit to you is a field of disciple that I've got a PhD is and will spend the rest of my life further researching, participating in, and advocating for. So if you're looking to persuade me that there isn't value in what I do, you're pushing water uphill. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
527:Kant’s ideas, as the contemporary philosopher Gordon Marino points out, fly in the face of the current cultural imperative, often heard during graduation season, to “do what you love.” To Kant, the question is not what makes you happy. The question is how to do your duty, how to best contribute—or, as the theologian Frederick Buechner put it, your vocation lies “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. ~ Emily Esfahani Smith, #NFDB
528:So in the development of your Marketing Strategy, it is absolutely imperative that you forget about your dreams, forget about your visions, forget about your interests, forget about what you want—forget about everything but your customer! When it comes to marketing, what you want is unimportant. It’s what your customer wants that matters. And what your customer wants is probably significantly different from what you think he wants. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
529:This sometimes happened: from time to time, Dantès, driven out of solitude into the world, felt an imperative need for solitude. And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord? This time his solitude was peopled with thoughts, the night illuminated by his dreams and the silence riven with his promises. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
530:The Buddha taught that suffering is the extra pain in the mind that happens when we feel an anguished imperative to have things be different from how they are. We see it most clearly when our personal situation is painful and we want very much for it to change. It's the wanting very much that hurts so badly, the feeling of "I need this desperately," that paralyzes the mind. The "I" who wants so much feels isolated. Alone. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
531:With directing, your day is done. When you hit seven o'clock, it's "Cut." That's what it is. For better or worse, that's what you've got and you have to make that work, and there's something incredibly liberating about that because you can't torture yourself. You have to focus on the moment, and you have to embrace every second and opportunity and maximize that, whereas with writing, there's no imperative there. You just amble along. ~ Dan Mazer, #NFDB
532:Restoring order of my personal universe suddenly seemed imperative, as I refolded my T-shirts, stuffed the toes of my shoes with tissue paper, and arranged all the bills in my secret stash box facing the same way, instead of tossed in sloppy and wild, as if by my evil twin. All week, I kept making lists and crossing things off them, ending each day with a sense of great accomplishment eclipsed only by complete and total exhaustion. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
533:Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves. ~ Lynn Margulis, #NFDB
534:Many of the Ten Commandments can still claim validity today. But the Fourth Commandment is diametrically opposed to the laws of psychology. It is imperative that there be general recognition of the fact that enforced “love” can do a very great deal of harm. People who were loved in childhood will love their parents in return. There is no need of a commandment to tell them to do so. Obeying a commandment can never be the basis for love. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
535:Arabella- Why you felt it was imperative for me to leave my house in a traveling trunk is still beyond me. You did see Zayne and Hamilton drop it, didn't you?
Theodore- They told me to tell you they were very sorry about that.
Arabella- Yes, I could tell they were dreadfully sorry, especially with all the laughter I heard through the one air hole someone considerately remembered to provide. I think gentlemen in general are deranged. ~ Jen Turano,#NFDB
536:For us, then, life is a confidence trick we must run on ourselves, hoping we do not catch on to any monkey business that would leave us stripped of our defense mechanisms and standing stark naked before the silent, staring void. To end this self-deception, to free our species of the paradoxical imperative to be and not to be conscious, our backs breaking by degrees upon a wheel of lies, we must cease reproducing. Nothing less will do. ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
537:...Every ego so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though is was a one-fold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us shares this delusion. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
538:Gates’s implicit criticism of Gmail was that it was wasteful in its means of storing each email. Despite his currency with cutting-edge technologies, his mentality was anchored in the old paradigm of storage being a commodity that must be conserved. He had written his first programs under a brutal imperative for brevity. And Microsoft’s web-based email service reflected that parsimony. The young people at Google had no such mental barriers. ~ Steven Levy, #NFDB
539:Adultery often happens, I am sure, because you are on a sinking ship, and you need to leap but can't leap. You are too spineless, maybe, to leap.The water is too dark and choppy and the sea is too large. Saving your own life, even, isn't enough reason to jump- no, you need the hands at your back, pushing, the hands of something as unavoidable and inevitable and imperative as love.It's got to be something that big, you know, to get you to jump. ~ Deb Caletti, #NFDB
540:Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind's equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They'll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
541:Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind’s equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They’ll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
542:When women have so absorbed the disease of sexism that they themselves can inflict it on each other, we clearly have a perfect, self-replenishing machine for the continuation of sexism. Unable to turn our assertiveness against men, we turn it against each other. Thus we remain stuck in the troubles we always had. It is imperative we renovate the machine -- no, not renovate it, but smash it entirely, so that we allow women to be all they need to be. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
543:Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind’s equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They’ll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive. And ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
544:Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status ["On the Future of the Left," Motherboard, February 4, 2015]. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
545:Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change... Savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel, #NFDB
546:They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legatees of an order both imperative and remote. For although each man among them was discrete unto himself, conjoined they made a thing that had not been before and in that communal soul were wastes hardly reckonable more than those whited regions on old maps where monsters do live and where there is nothing other of the known world save conjectural winds. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB
547:In a world facing the revolt of ragged and hungry masses of God's children; in a world torn between the tensions of East and West, white and colored, individuals and collectivists; in a world whose cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind her technological capabilities that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation; in this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis, it is an imperative for action ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
548:As we get older, excessive protein causes the cell to turn a blind eye to aging. But limiting it triggers a beautifully orchestrated network of internal processes that wards off disease, stretching out life and increasing the probability of exercising nature’s imperative to reproduce. I put all this and more into a talk I gave in 2006 titled “Protein—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” which is available online if you type the title into a search engine. ~ Joseph Mercola, #NFDB
549:In reality, however, every ego, so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though it were a one-fold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us share this delusion. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
550:Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
551:[ To break the law] would still be an imperative. I guess we do it for both reasons. You try to be a Christian, you try to come from that tradition of the Jewish prophets and then Christ and everything since. That becomes your handbook. "Witness" is the key word. You witness against the injustice, against the atrocity, against the heavy-handedness, and all the rest. We try to make a statement to other people, and we try to say it's your responsibility, too. ~ Philip Berrigan, #NFDB
552:Thomas Merton expresses the need for this mystical imperative: The Christian’s vision of the world ought, by its very nature, to have in it something of poetic inspiration. Our faith ought to be capable of filling our hearts with a wonder and a wisdom which see beyond the surface of things and events, and grasp something of the inner and “sacred” meaning of the cosmos which, in all its movements and all its aspects, sings the praises of its Creator and Redeemer.2 ~ Ilia Delio, #NFDB
553:It is imperative to exercise over big business a control and supervision which is unnecessary as regards small business. All business must be conducted under the law, and all business men, big or little, must act justly. But a wicked big interest is necessarily more dangerous to the community than a wicked little interest. 'Big business' in the past has been responsible for much of the special privilege which must be unsparingly cut out of our national life. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
554:In addition to that, we have a woman post-production supervisor, a woman colorist, a woman first AD, a woman production supervisor... I think it's really sad when I hear so many shows are content to stay in a mono-cultural realm, not realizing how they are subtracting from their own greatness by not inviting women and people of color into the space - that seasoning that makes the recipe even more great. It was absolutely imperative for me. It's how I run all my crews. ~ Ava DuVernay, #NFDB
555:The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry — is not even a ”subject " — but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning. ~ Neil Postman, #NFDB
556:Liberal gardeners are people who feel that, through gardening, we can alleviate our sense of alienation from nature; and that, through good gardening, we can repair some of the damage we have done to our environment. The most extreme liberals believe that there is an original or a natural state in which the environment would be if we hadn't shown up on the scene, and that we have not only the ability but also a moral imperative to help nature return to this state. ~ Deborah Needleman, #NFDB
557:We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
558:One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks ”stardust” or “caesar’s palace.” Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with “real” life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
559:The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes.
Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry--is not even a "subject"--but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning. ~ Neil Postman,#NFDB
560:You might think that after all the shameful capitulations made by the government during the ups and downs of their negotiations with the maphia ... they could sink no lower. Alas, when one advances blindly across the boggy ground of realpolitik, when pragmatism takes up the baton and conducts the orchestra, ignoring what is written in the score, you can be pretty sure that, as the imperative logic of dishonor will show, there are still, after all, a few more steps to descend. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
561:If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
562:We need a means for measuring the sizes of different infinite collections of universes. It is this information that we need in order to work out how likely it is that we reside in one type of universe rather than another. Until we find a fundamental dictum for how we should compare infinite collections of universes, we won't be able to foretell mathematically what typical multiverse dwellers-us-should see in experiments and observations. Solving the measure problem is imperative. ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
563:You don’t want to be stuck forcing something that won’t happen. You’ll waste your time, energy, and health on something that simply isn’t meant for you. It’s okay to move on. It’s imperative that you move on. If you don’t, you’ll prevent even better things from coming into your life. Not everything we want or strive for is meant to work out. Sometimes it’s meant to teach us a valuable skill or lesson so we can use it somewhere else. Some experiences are only for growth purposes. ~ Emily Maroutian, #NFDB
564:Common to all schools of thought, from Sri Lanka to Tibet, the unifying theme of the Buddhist approach is this remarkable imperative: “Pay precise attention, moment by moment, to exactly what you are experiencing, right now, separating out your reactions from the raw sensory events.” This is what is meant by bare attention: just the bare facts, an exact registering, allowing things to speak for themselves as if seen for the first time, distinguishing any reactions from the core event. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
565:Essential to the attainment of these national goals is the moral imperative of ensuring social justice and respect for human dignity. The great biblical tradition enjoins on all peoples the duty to hear the voice of the poor. It bids us to break the bonds of injustice and oppression which give rise to glaring, and indeed, scandalous social inequalities. Reforming the social structures which perpetuate poverty and the exclusion of the poor first requires a conversion of mind and heart. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
566:To be clear, the vast increase in the number of single women is to be celebrated not because singleness is in and of itself a better or more desirable state than coupledom. The revolution is in the expansion of options, the lifting of the imperative that for centuries hustled nearly all (non-enslaved) women, regardless of their individual desires, ambitions, circumstances, or the quality of available matches, down a single highway toward early heterosexual marriage and motherhood. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
567:Take the keys from my bag,’ or ‘There’s a pack of tissues in my bag; you can take those.’ He had not touched a handbag without explicit prior authorisation, more like a command that was only valid for a very limited time. If Laurent couldn’t find the keys or the tissues in less than ten seconds and began to rummage about in the bag, it was immediately reclaimed by its owner. The action was accompanied by an irritated little exclamation, always in the imperative, ‘Give that to me!’ And ~ Antoine Laurain, #NFDB
568:Above all, it is imperative to extirpate the idea that any fantastic, mysterious practices are required for the attainment of higher knowledge. It must be clearly realized that a start has to be made with the thoughts and feelings with which we continually live, and that these feelings and thoughts must merely be given a new direction. Everyone must say to himself: “In my own world of thought and feeling the deepest mysteries lie hidden, only hitherto I have been unable to perceive them. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
569:However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
570:This is now a well-studied aspect of psychology. Social hierarchies inhibit assertiveness. We talk to those in authority in what is called “mitigated language.” You wouldn’t say to your boss: “It’s imperative we have a meeting on Monday morning.” But you might say: “Don’t worry if you’re busy, but it might be helpful if you could spare half an hour on Monday.”5 This deference makes sense in many situations, but it can be fatal when a 90-ton airplane is running out of fuel above a major city. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
571:In Matthew 16:19, Jesus said that He would give us the keys to the Kingdom. Faith is the major key that opens every door in the Kingdom. It is a master key. Therefore it is imperative that we understand the ways of faith. Because these keys are the ways of God the natural man cannot receive them. They are spiritually understood. They are foolishness to the natural man. When a gift of the Spirit operates. Then we are able to impart that gift to others and teach them how to function in it also. ~ Phil Pringle, #NFDB
572:[34] With each of the other two kinds of imperative, experience shows us that imperatives of the kind in question do exist, and the inquiry into their possibility is the search only for •an explanation of them, not for •evidence that they exist. It is not so with categorical imperatives. Our investigation of their possibility will have to proceed purely a priori—starting with no empirical presuppositions, and in particular without the advantage of the premise that such imperatives actually exist. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
573:Against the lawless absolutism of his unconscious , man needed a lawful counter-force equally absolute. At the beginning the taboo alone provided this necessary balance: it was man's earliest 'categorical imperative.' Along with ritual, with which it is closely connected, the taboo was man's most effective means of ensuring the practice of self-control. Such moral disciplines, formalized as habit before it could be justified as a rational human necessity, was fundamental to human development. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
574:Men who scorn the idea of submission to the divine Will and are outraged by the notion of a God who requires submission are among the first to demand total submission to the process in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it. Any other attitude, so they say, is reactionary or escapist or anti-social. Perhaps, after all, they have found a divinity to worship; and, if they have, the only charitable comment must be: God help them! ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton, #NFDB
575:Men who scorn the idea of submission to the divine Will and are outraged by the notion of a God who requires submission are among the first to demand total submission to the process in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it. Any other attitude, so they say, is reactionary or escapist or anti-social. Perhaps, after all, they have found a divinity to worship; and, if they have, the only charitable comment must be: God help them! ~ Charles le Gai Eaton, #NFDB
576:The Qur’ān definitely seems optimistic about the future, while rather grim about the past It is absolutely imperative for successor civilizations and their bearer communities to study well and learn from the fate of earlier ones that have perished; or they will assuredly meet with the same fate, for "God's law does not change" for any people. This is perhaps one of the most insistent ideas in the Qur’ān, which constantly exhorts people to "travel on the earth and see the end of those before them ~ Fazlur Rahman, #NFDB
577:History leaves no doubt that among of the most regrettable crimes committed by human beings have been committed by those human beings who thought of themselves as civilized. What, we must ask, does our civilization possess that is worth defending? One thing worth defending, I suggest, is the imperative to imagine the lives of beings who are not ourselves and are not like ourselves: animals, plants, gods, spirits, people of other countries, other races, people of the other sex, places and enemies. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
578:We need to remain alert to what happens to the body when it is mediatised. Too often, the mediatised body is an anaesthetised body. I would be the last person to argue that the body signifies at some basic level that precedes or transcends its cultural inscriptions. Nevertheless, there is an ethical imperative not to conflate the body with its representations and mediations, but to remember that there is an actual body there somewhere, experiencing the consequences of what is being done to it. ~ Philip Auslander, #NFDB
579:How dominating is appetite, how enveloping immediate experience! Even the philosophically minded among us capitulate, ultimately, to the narrowest sense of personal need. Political time moves at a snail's pace because it is only with nearly insurmountable difficulty that moral discomfort takes root in the best of people, forcing an imperative out of a complaint; so viscerally repugnant is it for a critical mass to find the prevailing system unbearable, much less prepare to take up arms against it. ~ Vivian Gornick, #NFDB
580:Bannon, for instance, even driven by his imperative just to get things done, did not use a computer. How did he do anything? Katie Walsh wondered. But that was the difference between big visions and small. Process was bunk. Expertise was the last refuge of liberals, ever defeated by the big picture. The will to get big things done was how big things got done. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” was a pretty good gist of Donald Trump’s—and Steve Bannon’s—worldview. “Chaos was Steve’s strategy,” said Walsh. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
581:It's a moral imperative, it's an economic imperative, and it is a security imperative. For we've seen how spikes in food prices can plunge millions into poverty, which, in turn, can spark riots that cost lives, and can lead to instability. And this danger will only grow if a surging global population isn't matched by surging food production. So reducing malnutrition and hunger around the world advances international peace and security - and that includes the national security of the United States. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
582:Freedom is only to be found where there is burden to be shouldered. In creative achievements this burden always represents an imperative and a need that weighs heavily upon man’s mood, so that he comes to be in a mood of melancholy. All creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, whether we are clearly aware of the fact or not, whether we speak at length about it or not. All creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, but this is not to say that everyone in a melancholy mood is creative. ~ Martin Heidegger, #NFDB
583:I believe that we carry within us a divinely inspired moral imperative to love ... We have within us the ability to change for the better and to find dignity as individuals rather than as drones in one mass movement or another. We have the ability to love, the need to be loved, and the willingness to put our own lives on the line to protect those we love, and it is in these aspects of ourselves that we can glimpse the face of God; and through the exercise of these qualities, we come to a Godlike state. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
584:Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power, how could you live according to this indifference? Living, is that not precisely wanting to be different? And supposing your imperative ‘live according to nature’ meant at bottom as much as ‘live according to life’, how could you not do that? Why make a principle of what you yourselves are and must be? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
585:I know that one day he will lose to the waterfall, slip behind its turbulent curtain forever, lost to me like something out of a fairy tale. But in our story, there's no villain, no witch, no fairy godmother, no moral imperative or cautionary conclusion. No happily-ever-after. It just is. It's life. The water keeps flowing as we come and go. We were never forever, Jamie and I. Nothing is in this life. But if you love someone, and are loved by someone, you might find forever after. Whatever and wherever that is. ~ Julia Whelan, #NFDB
586:To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut. ~ Lynn Emanuel, #NFDB
587:Putting that aside, did he even want another child? At all? ever? She thought he did, but now that she considered it, she saw that her beliefs were based on flimsy evidence, such as the fact that he adored his son, and she'd once seen him smile tenderly at a stranger's baby, and his mother wanted him to have more children and he seemed very fond of his mother. Also, he was a lovely man, and lovely men should automatically want more babies because it was a biological imperative that they pass on the loveliness gene ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
588:Stripped of the kind of judgments that are at the very heart of the idea of "credit", shot through with bad faith, [the mortgage broker's] work is now predicated on irresponsibility, rooted in the absence of community. Whatever lingering fiduciary consciousness he may have has become a liability, given the general rush to irresponsibility by his competitors. The work cannot sustain him as a human being. Rather, it damages the best part of him, and it becomes imperative to partition work off from the rest of life. ~ Matthew B Crawford, #NFDB
589: The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species. ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, Intro, #NFDB
590:The biological imperative to live—indeed, live forever—was burned into our brains, into our emotional self-model,
over the course of millennia. But our brand-new cognitive self-models
tell us that all attempts to realize this imperative will ultimately be futile.
Mortality, for us, is not only an objective fact but a subjective chasm, an open wound in our phenomenal self-model. We have a deep, inbuilt existential conflict, and we seem to be the first creatures on this planet to
experience it consciously. ~ Thomas Metzinger,#NFDB
591:Technology enables consumers and investors to have extraordinary choice and ease of switching, which, in turn, stimulates much fiercer competition than ever before, which, in turn, makes it imperative for every institution to innovate like mad. That innovation is powering our economy these days, and it requires companies to find and utilize creative workers. That's the most important syllogism going; technology is embedded in that syllogism, but it's not as if we're seeing these productivity gains because of the technology. ~ Robert Reich, #NFDB
592:To an ever greater extent out experience is governed by pictures, pictures in newspapers and magazines, on television and in the cinema. Next to these pictures firsthand experience begins to retreat, to seem more and more trivial. While it once seemed that pictures had the function of interpreting reality, it now seems they have usurped it. It therefore becomes imperative to understand the picture itself, not in order to uncover a lost reality, but to determine how a picture becomes a signifying structure of its own accord. ~ Douglas Crimp, #NFDB
593:The Europeans are starting to show that they're finally serious about the Iranian nuclear program, and they appear to be willing to use sticks against Iran. So I think it is imperative that the United States sit down with the Europeans and say, "Let's make this very clear to the Iranians. Either they can give up their nuclear program and their support for terrorism, in which case we'll given them all kinds of benefits. Otherwise, we'll join in comprehensive, multilateral sanctions that will cripple their very fragile economy." ~ Kenneth M Pollack, #NFDB
594:I should have smashed those spectacles to glass so fine he would never not remember how I ruined his vision - decisive, quick, imperative - and wrecked that world of his own making, its heroes, its scholars, it founding members, generals, politicians, row after row after row after row of men and not real and not true for me, for me, not how I was, or what I saw and thought. Not anything. I could have; I should have; I did not.
But I was fifteen. I could no more have formed those words, those thoughts, than flown to the moon. ~ Kate Walbert,#NFDB
595:As a practical matter I’ve learned to seek the minimum amount of technology for myself that will create the maximum amount of choices for myself and others. The cybernetician Heinz von Foerster called this approach the Ethical Imperative, and he put it this way: “Always act to increase the number of choices.” The way we can use technologies to increase choices for others is by encouraging science, innovation, education, literacies, and pluralism. In my own experience this principle has never failed: In any game, increase your options. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
596:There's the trope about an impending "global-warming encyclical." The pope is preparing an encyclical on nature and the environment, including the human environment (which includes the moral imperative of a culturally affirmed and legally recognized right to life from conception until natural death). So what happens? A low-ranking Vatican official for self-promotion gives an interview to the Guardian in which he claims that this is a global-warming encyclical - which he couldn't possibly have known, as the document wasn't drafted yet. ~ George Weigel, #NFDB
597:Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second, a set of duties, not deduced from but derived from this principle, by way of its interpretation or specification, its application to the general conditions of human life - which Kant does in the Doctrine of virtue, the second main part of the Metaphysics of Morals; and then finally an act of judgment, through which these duties are applied to particular cases. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
598:[49] I have thus at least shown that if duty is a concept that is to have significance and actual law-giving authority for our actions, it has to be expressed in categorical imperatives, never in hypothetical ones. And along with that I have made clear—and ready for any use—the content that the categorical imperative must have if it is to contain the principle of all duty (if there is such a thing as duty). This is a substantial result; but I haven’t yet reached the point where I can prove a priori that •this kind of imperative really exists, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
599:As a practical matter I’ve learned to seek the minimum amount of technology for myself that will create the maximum amount of choices for myself and others. The cybernetician Heinz von Foerster called this approach the Ethical Imperative, and he put it this way: “Always act to increase the number of choices.” The way we can use technologies to increase choices for others is by encouraging science, innovation, education, literacies, and pluralism. In my own experience this principle has never failed: In any game, increase your options. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
600:As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods [of judicial writing] which divide themselves from one another with measurable distinctness. There is the type magisterial or imperative; the type laconic or sententious; the type conversational or homely; the type refined or artificial, smelling of the lamp, verging at times upon preciosity or euphuism; the demonstrative or persuasive; and finally the type tonsorial or agglutinative, so called from the shears and the pastepot which are its implements and emblem. ~ Benjamin Cardozo, #NFDB
601:It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action. ~ Arthur Goldberg, #NFDB
602:What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. ... I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
603:Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and--there you have it: Holocaust ~ Richard Weikart, #NFDB
604:It was imperative that the growing discord in our family be made to appear minor. The indication that my father truly was beside himself was the way he had carried his argument with us to others. But we couldn’t give in to that—we were well trained. We knew our roles and our strategies without hesitation and without consultation. The paramount value of looking right is not something you walk away from after a single night. After such a night as we had, in fact, it is something you embrace, the broken plank you are left with after the ship has gone down. ~ Jane Smiley, #NFDB
605:because she is white, her non-branded-ness reads as uncool rather than as pathology: she doesn’t fail to meet the imperative to be cool, she transcends it. Swift shakes off both gendered and genre stereotypes, and the external judgment of others: she doesn’t need to concern herself with the market value others place on her, with her reputation. She’s free to be boring and vanilla (because that’s what she is). This freedom–the ability to succeed while being resolutely average (think George W Bush)–that’s the whiteness Swift’s hedged bet returns in abundance. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
606:I look forward to the time when the churches come to celebrate and honour the work of animal protection as an imperative arising from their belief in the Creator and in the gospel of the crucified. After all, similarly remarkable things have happened, for example, the growing consensus among churches that the environment should be cared for and protected as a Christian duty--an astonishing turnaround when one considers the prevailing dualism in previous centuries, which expressly discouraged concern for "earthly" matters as distinct from "spiritual" ones. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
607:Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving. ~ Gene Roddenberry, #NFDB
608:Any author who uses mathematics should always express in ordinary language the meaning of the assumptions he admits, as well as the significance of the results obtained. The more abstract his theory, the more imperative this obligation. In fact, mathematics are and can only be a tool to explore reality. In this exploration, mathematics do not constitute an end in itself, they are and can only be a means. ~ Maurice Allais, La formation scientifique, Une communication du Prix Nobel d’économie, Maurice Allais, address to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (1997)., #NFDB
609:Another myth of necessity is that killing is an economic imperative. While an economic motive has driven many violent ideologies--the economy of the New World was largely buttressed by slavery, and the plundering of gold and other assests as well as the unpaid labor of Nazi victims financed the German war machine--that doesn't mean the economy would collapse were the killing to cease. It is far more likely that the economic status quo would break down; the carnistic-corporate power structure, rather than the citizenry, would suffer were carnism abolished. ~ Melanie Joy, #NFDB
610:When you are incubating new ideas, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is very good advice. But when you are seeking to transform your enterprise's portfolio by scaling a fledgling business to material size - say ten percent of total enterprise revenue - then it is imperative that you make that the singular focus of everyone in the enterprise for the two to three year period it is likely to require to reach its tipping point. Expecting to do two such scaling efforts in parallel is simply folly, yet that is what the "eggs/basket" idea is often used to justify. ~ Geoffrey Moore, #NFDB
611:I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile. ~ Andrew Sullivan, #NFDB
612:The mark of the "Noble Minded Man" is that he does not do things simply because they are pleasing or profitable to himself, but because they flow from an unconditional moral imperative. They are things that he sees to be right and good in themselves. Hence, anyone who is guided by the profit motive, even though it be for the profit of the society to which he belongs, is not capable of living a genuinely moral life. Even when his acts do not conflict with the moral law, they remain amoral because they are motivated by the desire of profit and not for the love of good. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
613:To this day, we see all around us the Promethean drive to omnipotence through technology and to omniscience through science. The effecting of all things possible and the knowledge of all causes are the respective primary imperatives of technology and of science. But the motivating imperative of society continues to be the very different one of its physical and spiritual survival. It is now far less obvious than it was in Francis Bacon's world how to bring the three imperatives into harmony, and how to bring all three together to bear on problems where they superpose. ~ Gerald Holton, #NFDB
614:It follows that if you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived-or have denied the reality of your life.
To admit that there may be some psychological need informing your return to faith does not preclude or diminish the spiritual imperative, any more than acknowledging the chemical aspects of sexual attraction lessens the mystery of enduring human love. Faith cannot save you from the claims of reason, except insofar as it preserves and protects that wonderful, terrible time when reason, if only for a moment, lost its claim on you. ~ Christian Wiman,#NFDB
615:Whether young or old, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, should presume to dispense the mysteries of Christ without the strongest of all possible reasons for doing so - the imperative, invincible call of God. No one is to show cause why he ought not to be a Minister: he is to show cause why he should be a Minister. His call to the sacred profession is not the absence of a call to any other pursuit; it is direct, immediate, powerful, to this very department of labour. He is not here because he can be nowhere else, but he is nowhere else because he must be here. ~ James Henley Thornwell, #NFDB
616:...We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it's just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
617:One indisputable charm of being a lookout is the sanction it offers to be shed of the social imperative of productivity, to slip away from the group hug of a digital culture enthralled with social networking, the hive mind, and efficiency defined as connectedness. I often think of a line from Aldo Leopold: “Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.” I want to lengthen, not shorten, my attention span, and most of the material splendors of the twenty-first century bully me in the opposite direction. The ~ Philip Connors, #NFDB
618:But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace - the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors - makes all infirmities occasions of glory. ~ Robert Farrar Capon, #NFDB
619:The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
620:There was, I thought, something calling to me from out in the dark.
It came from out in the tempest, even from the lights of the fishing boats a mile out at sea. You can be called to a last effort, a final heroic statement, because I doubt you call yourself to leave comforts and certainties for an open road. But the call is inside your own head. It's a sad summons from the depths of your own wasted past. You could call it the imperative to go out with full-tilt trumpets and gunshots instead of the quietly desperate sound of the hospital ventilator. Victory instead of defeat. ~ Lawrence Osborne,#NFDB
621:Visible alternatives shatter the sense of inevitability, that the system must, necessarily, be patched together in the same form -- this is why it became such an imperative of global governance to stamp them out, or, when that's not possible, to ensure that no one knows about them. To become aware of it allows us to see everything we are already doing in a new light. To realize we're all already communists when working on a common projects, all already anarchists when we solve problems without recourse to lawyers or police, all revolutionaries when we make something genuinely new. ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
622:Early on, I learnt from the Russian intelligentsia that the only meaning of life lies in conscious participation in the making of history. The more I think of that, the more deeply true it seems to be. It follows that one must range oneself actively against everything that diminishes man, and involve oneself in all struggles which tend to liberate and enlarge him. This categorical imperative is by no way lessened by the fact that such an involvement is inevitably soiled by error: it is a worse error merely to live for oneself, caught within traditions which are soiled by inhumanity. ~ Victor Serge, #NFDB
623:You miss the idea of him. There you go. Was that so hard? “That goes away, too,” says your friend. Through the magic of the biological imperative, his brain has been reprogrammed. He has been forced to gloss over his own romantic carnage so that he might once again start down that road of procreation. He has nineteen layers of skin; you have three-fourths of a layer. They’re all like this, the recovered. Sometimes you want to hop across the table, curl up in their laps, and beg to be made one of them. How does it work? Hypnosis? A chip in the neck? A radioactive spider with Xanax venom? ~ Sloane Crosley, #NFDB
624:He had not been specific, and she was too polite, too respectful to ask what exactly it was that had caused him to abandon one life and begin another... Michael West had done it more than once. There was a freshness in leaving behind one life for the next, a raw, tingling sensation that was one step short of pain. An imperative of the mind and spirit had reshaped the facts of his life like tides rearranging a shore. And in each new life there was Abby, awaiting his arrival--more than one Abby, sometimes--people with empty places beside them where Michael could stand look as if he belonged. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
625:Thomas Berry calls the Ecozoic Era, a time when we recognize the imperative of caring for the planet as a means of compassionate survival. We do not know what the outcome is going to be, but we have an opportunity to make these kinds of creative and imaginative leaps of thought and actions both locally and globally. This is completely antithetical to the direction George W. Bush is leading this nation. I do trust that the open space of democracy is ultimately the open space of our hearts and that we can follow our own leadership that carries a long-term view way beyond "four more years." ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
626:One way that clinicians exert caution while trying to make a diagnosis is through use of something called the rule of five. Clinicians usually ask patients about what seems to be troubling them. As they describe their symptoms, clinicians are taught to begin generating a list of the five most probable diagnoses based on their symptoms. The imperative to generate an overly inclusive list of possible explanations is a shortcut that helps clinicians avoid selecting the first explanation that pops into their heads. It reminds them to consider both diagnostic and non-diagnosable explanations for symptoms. ~ Ty Tashiro, #NFDB
627:There is probably nothing more menacing or dangerous than an individual who is devoid of compassion or empathy. When this individual is permitted by community apathy and bias to successfully cloak himself in the attire of one who claims allegiance to his or her Creator, it becomes the moral imperative of those who lay witness to the peril to step up before it is too late. Until such a time when domestic violence and sexual assault are eradicated for good, the perpetrators of these deplorable acts will continue to cause unspeakable harm as Evil’s welcomed ambassadors and Tyranny’s strongest ally. ~ Sahar Abdulaziz, #NFDB
628:necessarily surface in conscious awareness, because this type of anticipation resides in the deep and wordless part of the brain. Much of what we do as partners is fundamentally about survival and our beastly, instinctual selves. In fact, we could say the human species has survived over millennia due to the simple imperative “Thou shall not get killed.” Love and war are both conditions of our human brain. Arguably, though, the brain is wired first and foremost for war, rather than for love. Its primary function is to ensure we survive as individuals and as a species. And it is very, very good at this. ~ Stan Tatkin, #NFDB
629:As you never tire of stating, the only moral imperative for the writer, against which there is no recourse, is to return to the literary-linguistic community to which he belongs a fresh, personal style of writing different from what previously existed and which he inherited when setting out on his task: to work on what is given, to follow accepted models is to be condemned to an impoverished insignificance, however much applause the writer gets from the public: the work of whoever does not innovate might as well not exist, for its disappearance would not affect the development of his culture at all. ~ Juan Goytisolo, #NFDB
630:Imagine a reader you can trust. This sounds like a simple imperative. But the difference between writing for the reader implicit in your education And writing for one you trust is the difference between writing clumsily, Using all the grappling hooks of transition and false logic, And writing well, able to move briskly and freely, Going anywhere from anywhere almost instantly. All your life you’ve been reading books that trusted you, Trusted your intelligence, your keenness, Your ability to feel an invisible wink, To follow any trail, Even while you were learning in school not to trust the reader. ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg, #NFDB
631:You have to try everything, for consumerist man is haunted by the fear of 'missing' something, some form of enjoyment or other. You never know whether a particular encounter, a particular experience (Christmas in the Canaries, eel in whisky, the Prado, LSD, Japanese-style love-making) will not elicit some 'sensation'. It is no longer desire, or even 'taste', or a specific inclination that are at stake, but a generalized curiosity, driven by a vague sense of unease - it is the 'fun morality' or the imperative to enjoy oneself, to exploit to the full one's potential for thrills pleasure or gratification. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
632:All my life I have felt a great kinship with the madman and the criminal. Practically all my life I have dwelt in big cities; I am unhappy, uneasy, unless I am in a big city. My feeling for Nature is limited to water, mountain and desert. These three form a trine which is more imperative, for me, than any spiritual alimentation. But in the city I am aware of another element which is beyond all these in power of fascination: the labyrinth. To be lost in a strange city is the greatest joy I know; to become oriented is to lose everything. To me the city is crime personified, insanity personified. I feel at home. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
633:Immediately on my arrival at the Project I began studying linguistics, because that seemed imperative to me. I was soon amazed to learn that, when it came to the primary, most fundamental concepts in this field—a field supposedly precise, quantified, mathematized—there was absolutely no agreement. Why, the authorities could not come together on so basic and preliminary a question as what exactly morphemes and phonemes were. But when I asked the appropriate people, in all sincerity, how in the world they could accomplish anything, given this state of affairs, my naive question was taken as a sneering insinuation. I ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
634:Nobody knew literature and history better than these people, nobody could write better Russian than they, nobody despised our times more profoundly. For these characters civilization meant more than daily bread and a nightly hug. This wasn’t, as it would seem, another lost generation. This was the only generation of Russians that had found itself, for whom Giotto and Mandelstam were more imperative than their own personal destinies. Poorly dressed yet somehow still elegant…broken, growing old, they still retained their love for the non-existent (or existing only in their balding heads) thing called ‘civilization. ~ Joseph Brodsky, #NFDB
635:I came to Oxford looking for a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience. I chose to experience a lifetime.
I know that one day he will lose to the waterfall, slip behind its turbulent curtain forever, lost to me like something out of a fairy tale. But in our story, there's no villain, no witch, no fairy godmother, no moral imperative or cautionary conclusion. No happily-ever-after.
It just is. It's life.
The water keeps flowing as we come and go.
We were never forever, Jamie and I. Nothing is in this life. But if you love someone and are loved by someone, you might find forever after.
Whatever and wherever it is. ~ Julia Whelan,#NFDB
636:The time has come in the history of man’s journey from his material jungle to his spiritual mountain top when it is imperative that he must live more and more in the cosmic Light universe of knowing, and less in the electric wave universe of sensing. Man must know that his power lies in the stillness of his centering Self and not in the motion by means of which he manifests that stillness. He must know that his Self is God in him. Also he must know gradually the dawning awareness of the cosmic Light of God in him, for with it comes an awareness of his purposefulness in manifesting the Light and the power to manifest it. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
637:The factory has programmed that adventurous impulse out of us. The economic imperative of the last century has been to avoid risk, avoid change, and most of all, avoid exploration and the new. An efficient factory fears change because change means retooling and risk and a blip in productivity. Sure, we’ll put up with change if we have to, and welcome the predictable incremental change of productivity improvement, but please leave us alone when it comes to the word “bold.” Avoiding risk worked then but doesn’t work now. Now “what’s next?” is in fact the driving force for individuals and for organizations. Ever onward, ever faster. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
638:Like George Washington, we are quick to dismiss politics. This is naïve. Conflict in politics is not only inevitable; it is axiomatically imperative. Politics is division. Political parties do not exist arbitrarily, but are a rational, practical response to dispute. As long as we keep our republic — and in fact even if we do not — people will form cliques in order to forward their agendas. The only way to remove the need for parties, and the disruption they cause, is to remove the capacity for disagreement completely. One cannot help but suspect that for some who claim to find antagonism so tiring, this is the latent desire. ~ Charles C W Cooke, #NFDB
639:All of this helps explain why the Church had been so uncompromising in its attitude toward usury. It was not just a philosophical question; it was a matter of moral rivalry. Money always has the potential to become a moral imperative unto itself. Allow it to expand and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools, and potential merchandise.23 Even human relations become a matter of cost-benefit calculation. Clearly, this is the way the conquistadors viewed the worlds that they set out to conquer. ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
640:Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences" did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
641:Sigmund Freud once asserted, “Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge.” Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the “individual differences” did not “blur” but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
642:Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of “grow or die,” is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental problems. We will ignore their root causes, such as trade for profit, industrial expansion, and the identification of “progress” with corporate self-interest. In short, we will tend to focus on the symptoms of a grim social pathology rather than on the pathology itself, and our efforts will be directed toward limited goals whose attainment is more cosmetic than curative. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
643:To be clear, the vast increase in the number of single women is to be celebrated not because singleness is in and of itself a better or more desirable state than coupledom. The revolution is in the expansion of options, the lifting of the imperative that for centuries hustled nearly all (non-enslaved) women, regardless of their individual desires, ambitions, circumstances, or the quality of available matches, down a single highway toward early heterosexual marriage and motherhood. There are now an infinite number of alternate routes open; they wind around combinations of love, sex, partnership, parenthood, work, and friendship, at different speeds. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
644:Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
645:McRaven’s thesis, which would become part of the curriculum at the Naval Postgraduate School, set out the core concept of special ops: that a small, well-trained force can deliver a decisive blow against a much larger, well-defended one. He defined such a mission as one “conducted by forces specially trained, equipped, and supported for a specific target whose destruction, elimination, or rescue (in the case of hostages), is a political or military imperative.” Refining the key elements to success for such missions, he prescribed, in a nutshell, “A simple plan, carefully concealed, repeatedly and realistically rehearsed, and executed with surprise, speed, and purpose. ~ Mark Bowden, #NFDB
646:Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience and hard sweat of the mind ... What is "moral sense"? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. The truth is mathematically demonstrable, everywhere verifiable; it is the single eternal imperative controlling everything we do. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
647:War is Man’s greatest fall from grace, of course, especially perhaps when we feel a moral imperative to fight it and find ourselves twisted into ethical knots. We can never doubt (ever) the courage of those men in the Halifaxes and Stirlings and Lancasters but the bombing war was undoubtedly a brutish affair, a crude method employing a blunt weapon, continually hampered by the weather and lack of technology (despite massive advances that war always precipitates). The large gap between what was claimed for the results of the bombing campaign and what was actually achieved was never fully understood at the time, and certainly not, I suspect, by those men flying the bombers. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
648:The necessity of starting life afresh on new foundations. That these foundations must be of social justice, of rational organization, of respect for the individual, of liberty, is for me an obvious fact which, little by little, is asserting itself out of the very inhumanity of the present time. The future seems to me, despite the clouds on the horizon, to be full of possibilities vaster than any we have glimpsed in the past. The passion, the experience, and even the errors of my fighting generation may perhaps help illumine the way forward, but on one condition, which has become an absolute imperative: never give up the defense of man against systems whose plans crush the individual. ~ Victor Serge, #NFDB
649:Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that "computer science" is not a science and that its significance has little to do with computers. The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. The essence of this change is the emergence of what might best be called procedural epistemology—the study of the structure of knowledge from an imperative point of view, as opposed to the more declarative point of view taken by classical mathematical subjects. Mathematics provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of "what is". Computation provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of "how to". ~ Harold Abelson, #NFDB
650:My ministers have informed me that Alyss is ridding her land of Glass Eyes."
Overriding the imperative that Redd embedded in them is harder than she thought," added Ripkins.
In other words, they're designed to kill and nothing more."
The bodygaurds bowed that this was so.
Perhaps the trick is not the override their imperative," Arch mused, "but the reprogram them to acknowledge a differnent master. Everyone in Woderland--even the otherwise rebellious Redd Heart--is, was, or always has been occupied with inventing things. But what good are things if there no clever schemes in which to use them? I putthings to unexpected and imaginative use."
--Seeing Redd ~ Frank Beddor,#NFDB
651:In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced the concept of the Übermensch: an exemplary, transcendent figure who is the polar opposite of “the last man” or “men without chests.” The Übermensch is virtuous, loyal, ambitious and outspoken, disdainful of religious dogma and suspicious of received wisdom, intensely engaged in the hurly-burly of the real world. Above all he is passionate—a connoisseur of both “the highest joys” and “the deepest sorrows.” He believes in the moral imperative to defend (with his life, if necessary) ideals such as truth, beauty, honor, and justice. He is self-assured. He is a risk taker. He regards suffering as salutary, and scorns the path of least resistance. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
652:Yes, yes," he shut off her attempted objection. "You would have destroyed my writing and my career. Realism is imperative to my nature, and the bourgeois spirit hates realism. The bourgeoisie is cowardly. It is afraid of life. And all your effort was to make me afraid of life. You would have formalized me. You would have compressed me into a two-by-four pigeonhole of life, where all life's values are unreal and false and vulgar." He felt her stir protestingly. "Vulgarity--a heart of vulgarity, I'll admit--is the basis of bourgeois refinement and culture. As I say, you wanted to formalize me to make me over into one of your own class, with your class ideas, class values and class prejudices. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
653:From here on in, it’s imperative for you to use those emotions to your advantage, and for the long term to not let your emotions control your thinking. Most people use fear and greed against themselves. That’s the start of ignorance. Most people live their lives chasing paychecks, pay raises and job security because
of the emotions of desire and fear, not really questioning where those emotion-driven thoughts are leading them. It’s just like the picture of a donkey dragging a cart with its owner dangling a carrot just in front of its nose. The donkey’s owner may be going where he wants to, but the donkey is chasing an illusion. Tomorrow there will only be another carrot for the donkey. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki,#NFDB
654:Before the power system had made plenitude possible, the great objection to vocational diversification would have been that it would decrease the necessary supply of goods, lower profits, and slow down the pace of production. But this slowdown would apply mainly to superficial and meretricious goods; this is precisely what an economy of plenitude demands if it is to foster a selective use of goods, and due rejection of 'bads.' A slowdown in many areas of production has become imperative, so as to curtail the over-stimulation of the profit-pleasure centers. But a slow-down, sometimes even a stoppage, is no less imperative in order to provide the leisure necessary for fostering more intimate human relations. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
655:That’s why it is so dangerous to use infatuation as a sign to pursue a relationship. If you and I don’t know the difference between infatuation and love, we are destined to make some of the dumbest and most regrettable decisions we’ll ever make. These bad decisions come with heavy and painful price tags. So you see, it’s imperative in this tricky business of “falling in love” that we take the time to clearly define what we mean by the word “love.” The investment will pay off handsomely. We can actually learn how to avoid future relational baggage and how to recognize authentic love relationships when we clarify two crucial issues: (1) what love is, and (2) what the difference is between love and infatuation. ~ Chip Ingram, #NFDB
656:The male imperative to compete for females often comes at a heavy cost. In some mammals, such as kangaroos, mountain sheep, deer and sea elephants, it leads to fights that can result in life-threatening injuries. At a minimum, the loser can expect a drop in status as well as eviction from the most favorable feeding grounds, leading to a shortened life expectancy. Moreover, sexual selection often operates at cross-purposes with other evolutionary forces.[152] A male who develops disproportionately sized organs, or displays brilliant color, or emits certain sounds, may well lose some of his mobility or become more vulnerable to predators. Trying to attract a female, in other words, may cost him his life. ~ Martin van Creveld, #NFDB
657:True adulthood would mean no longer denying the truth. It would mean feeling the repressed suffering, consciously acknowledging the story remembered by the body at an emotional level, and integrating that story instead of repressing it. Whether contact with the parents can then in fact be maintained will depend on the given circumstances in each individual case. What is absolutely imperative is the termination of the harmful attachment to the internalized parents of childhood, an attachment that, though we call it love, certainly does not deserve the name. It is made up of different ingredients, such as gratitude, compassion, expectations, denial, illusions, obedience, fear, and the anticipation of punishment. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
658:The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
659:True adulthood would mean no longer denying the truth. It would mean feeling the repressed suffering, consciously acknowledging the story remembered by the body at an emotional level, and integrating that story instead of repressing it. Whether contact with the parents can then in fact be maintained will depend on the given circumstances in each individual case. What is absolutely imperative is the termination of the harmful attachment to the internalized parents of childhood, an attachment that, though we call it love, certainly does not deserve the name. It is made up of different ingredients, such as gratitude, compassion, expectations, denial, illusions, obedience, fear, and the anticipation of punishment. Time ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
660:Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
661:IN 1984, journalist Steven Levy published Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which chronicled the scruffy subculture that had not only created the personal computer (and eventually the Internet) but also the unique social ethos that came with it. He listed seven principles of the “hacker ethic”: Access to computers—and anything that might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative! All information should be free. Mistrust authority—promote decentralization. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better. ~ Chris Anderson, #NFDB
662:... all the smart men talking about Manifest Destiny. Like it's a new idea. ... It means taking what is yours, your property, whatever you decide it to be. And everyone else taking their assigned places to allow you to to take it. Whether it's red men or Africans, giving up themselves, giving of themselves, so that we can have what is rightfully ours. The French seeing aside their territorial claims. The British and the Spanish slinking away. ... the American spirit, ... to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription -- the American imperative."
"I need to visit the outhouse," ... ~ Colson Whitehead,#NFDB
663:It is one of those things not easily accounted for, that men who would scorn to do an injustice to a fellow man, in a private transaction, — who would scorn to usurp any arbitrary dominion over him, or his property, — who would be in the highest degree indignant, if charged with any private injustice, — and who, at a moment’s warning, would take their lives in their hands, to defend their own rights, and redress their own wrongs, — will, the moment they become members of what they call a government, assume that they are absolved from all principles and all obligations that were imperative upon them, as individuals; will assume that they are invested with a right of arbitrary and irresponsible dominion over other men, and other men’s property. ~ Lysander Spooner, #NFDB
664:central imperative of liberation theology—to provide a preferential option for the poor—seemed like a worthy life’s goal to him. Of course, one could pursue it almost anywhere, but clearly the doctrine implied making choices among degrees of poverty. It would make sense to provide medicine in the places that needed it most, and there was no place needier than Haiti, at least in the Western Hemisphere, and he hadn’t seen any place in Haiti needier than Cange. He didn’t stick around in Léogâne to see the blood bank get installed. He’d found out that the hospital would charge patients for its use. He told me he had these thoughts, as he headed back toward the central plateau: “I’m going to build my own fucking hospital. And there’ll be none of that there, thank you. ~ Tracy Kidder, #NFDB
665:The necessity of political struggle especially means confronting and contradicting those on the left who say that resistance is futile. Such people have no place in a movement for justice. For actionists who choose to work aboveground, this confrontation with detractors - and some of these detractors reject the idea of resistance of any kind - is one of the small, constant actions you can take. Defend the possibility of resistance, insist on a moral imperative of fighting for this planet, and argue for direct action against perpetrators. Despite what much of the left has now embraced, we are not all equally responsible. There are a few corporations that have turned the planet into a dead commodity for their private wealth, destroying human cultures along with it. ~ Lierre Keith, #NFDB
666:It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?” She was in such evident distress that I tried to comfort her, but without effect. Finally she went down on her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting. It was all very ridiculous but I did not feel comfortable. However, there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it. I therefore tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as I could, that I thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that I must go. She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
667:The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer—the romantic—asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g, Tristan and Isolde, Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’) it is still an organic imperative. In the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary love between the sexes is ‘normal,’ that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women. ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
668:The ministry of evangelization is an extraordinary opportunity of showing gratitude to Jesus by passing on His gospel of grace to others. However, the “conversion by concussion” method, with one sledgehammer blow of the Bible after another, betrays a basic disrespect for the dignity of the other and is utterly alien to the gospel imperative to bear witness. To evangelize a person is to say to him or her, You, too, are loved by God in the Lord Jesus. And not only to say it but to really think it and relate it to the man or woman so they can sense it. This is what it means to announce the Good News. But that becomes possible only by offering the person your friendship—a friendship that is real, unselfish, without condescension, full of confidence, and profound esteem. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
669:We’re in the same position as any scientist. All we have to go on is experiential evidence. And sooner or later we have to trust our own experience, because that’s all we really have. Otherwise it’s a vicious circle. If I fundamentally distrust my experience, then I must distrust even my capacity to distrust, since that is also an experience. So sooner or later I have no choice but to trust, trust my experience, trust that the universe is not fundamentally and persistently going to lie to me. Of course we can be mistaken, and sometimes experiences are misleading, but on balance we have no choice but to follow them. It’s a type of phenomenological imperative. And especially mystical experiences—if anything, as you say, they are more real, not less real, than other experiences.” I ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
670:El verbo leer, como el verbo amar y el verbo soñar, no soporta ‘el modo imperativo’. Yo siempre les aconsejé a mis estudiantes que si un libro los aburre lo dejen; que no lo lean porque es famoso, que no lean un libro porque es moderno, que no lean un libro porque es antiguo. La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz.
The verb reading, like the verb to love and the verb dreaming, doesn't bear the imperative mode. I always advised to my students that if a book bores them leave it; That they don't read it because it's famous, that they don't read a book because it's modern, that they don't read a book because it's antique. The reading should be one of the ways of happiness and nobody can be obliged to be happy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
671:It’s easy to minimize a person’s hurt without understanding the nature of pain. People often like to categorize how much a person should or shouldn’t hurt about things. For example, when someone is upset about something, they say, “At least you’re not paralyzed, or starving in Africa.” While it’s imperative to be grateful for what we have, I think people often mistaken the nature of pain, when they ‘categorize’ in this way. The criteria for how much something hurts is not dependent on the thing itself. It is dependent on 2 things:
1. The strength of the attachment.
2. The level of Divine help.
Therefore to minimize the devastation of pain:
1. Don’t be attached to (dependent on) temporary things.
2. Seek Divine help.
And don’t assign judgement for people’s pain. ~ Yasmin Mogahed,#NFDB
672:The necessity that the foods selected and used shall provide an adequate quantity of fat-soluble activators (including the known fatsoluble vitamins) is so imperative and is so important in preventing a part of our modern degeneration that I shall illustrate its need with another practical case. A mother asked my assistance in planning the nutritional program for her boy. She reported that he was five years of age and that he had been in bed in hospitals with rheumatic fever, arthritis and an acute heart involvement most of the time for the past two and a half years. She had been told that her boy would not recover, so severe were the complications. As is so generally the case with rheumatic fever and endocarditis, this boy was suffering from severe tooth decay. In this connection the ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
673:Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us and transform our perception into love." qtd on p 252
"Loving something of where one comes from--and having emotional access to that love is a moral imperative for Eliot. It is to be in touch with the kernel of one's character, one's most receptive self. For Eliot, being sensitive to one's memories of childhood is a sign of moral maturity." Mead p 253
"... [R]emembrance of a childhood landscape is . . . .is an opportunity to be in touch again with the intensity and imagination of beginnings. It is a discovery, later in life, of what remains with me." Mead p 253 ~ Rebecca Mead,#NFDB
674:We've surpassed ourselves now, we're exploring terrain beyond the limits of merely human understanding. Sometimes its contours, even in conventional space, are just too intricate for our brains to track; other times its very axes extend into dimensions inconceivable to minds built to fuck and fight on some prehistoric grassland. So many things constrain us, from so many directions. The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of self-interest. Subtle and elegant equations predict the behavior of the quantum world, but none can explain it. After four thousand years we can't even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer. We have such need of intellects greater than our own. But we're not very good at building them. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
675:I have identified five precepts central to the faith that have made it resistant to historical change and adaptation. Only when these five things are recognized as inherently harmful and when they are repudiated and nullified will a true Muslim Reformation have been achieved. The five things to be reformed are: 1. Muhammad’s semi-divine and infallible status along with the literalist reading of the Qur’an, particularly those parts that were revealed in Medina; 2. The investment in life after death instead of life before death; 3. Sharia, the body of legislation derived from the Qur’an, the hadith, and the rest of Islamic jurisprudence; 4. The practice of empowering individuals to enforce Islamic law by commanding right and forbidding wrong; 5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
676:To be effectively empowered to make decisions, it is imperative that frontline leaders execute with confidence. Tactical leaders must be confident that they clearly understand the strategic mission and Commander’s Intent. They must have implicit trust that their senior leaders will back their decisions. Without this trust, junior leaders cannot confidently execute, which means they cannot exercise effective Decentralized Command. To ensure this is the case, senior leaders must constantly communicate and push information—what we call in the military “situational awareness”—to their subordinate leaders. Likewise, junior leaders must push situational awareness up the chain to their senior leaders to keep them informed, particularly of crucial information that affects strategic decision making. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
677:Brown believed that technological superiority was imperative to military dominance, and he also believed that advancing science was the key to economic prosperity. “Harold Brown turned technology leadership into a national strategy,” remarks DARPA historian Richard Van Atta. Despite rising inflation and unemployment, DARPA’s budget was doubled. Microprocessing technologies were making stunning advances. High-speed communication networks and Global Positioning System technologies were accelerating at whirlwind speeds. DARPA’s highly classified, high-risk, high-payoff programs, including stealth, advanced sensors, laser-guided munitions, and drones, were being pursued, in the black. Soon, Assault Breaker technology would be battle ready. From all of this work, entire new industries were forming. ~ Annie Jacobsen, #NFDB
678:The problem is this: nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. This demand to fulfill himself, to seek something out there was made imperative because of this self-consciousness in you which occurred somewhere along the line of the evolutionary process. Man separated himself from the totality of nature. ~ U G Krishnamurti, #NFDB
679:thought then that decent, intelligent, and experienced managers would automatically make rational business decisions. But I learned over time that isn’t so. Instead, rationality frequently wilts when the institutional imperative comes into play. For example: (1) As if governed by Newton’s First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
680:For years I’d been awaiting that overriding urge I’d always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers’ strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There’s a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: “I’m pregnant.” I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother’s deepest fear.) (27) ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
681:My aim is not to provide excuses for black behavior or to absolve blacks of personal responsibility. But when the new black conservatives accent black behavior and responsibility in such a way that the cultural realities of black people are ignored, they are playing a deceptive and dangerous intellectual game with the lives and fortunes of disadvantaged people. We indeed must criticize and condemn immoral acts of black people, but we must do so cognizant of the circumstances into which people are born and under which they live. By overlooking these circumstances, the new black conservatives fall into the trap of blaming black poor people for their predicament. It is imperative to steer a course between the Scylla of environmental determinism and the Charybdis of a blaming-the-victims perspective.
~ Cornel West,#NFDB
682:On the information sheet in a New York hotel, I recently read: "Dear guest!
To guarantee that you will fully enjoy your stay with us, this hotel is
totally smoke-free. For any infringement of this regulation, you will be charged $200:' The beauty of this formulation, taken literally, is that you are to be punished for refusing to fully enjoy your stay . . . The superego imperative to enjoy thus functions as the reversal of Kant's "Du kannst, denn du soUstf" (You can, because you must ! ) ; it relies on a "You must, because you can ! " That is to say, the superego aspect of today's "nonrepressive" hedonism (the constant provocation we are exposed to, enjoining us to go right to the end and explore all modes of jouissance) resides in the way permitted jouissance necessarily turns into obligatory jouissance. ~ Slavoj i ek,#NFDB
683:There's the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you're a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself. You guard them inside you, because, if you don't, there's no distinction between inside and outside. Secrets are the way you know you even have an inside. A radical exhibitionist is a person who has forfeited his identity. But identity in a vacuum is also meaningless. Sooner or later, the inside of you needs a witness. Otherwise you're just a cow, a cat, a stone, a thing in the world, trapped in your thingness. To have an identity, you have to believe that other identities equally exist. You need closeness with other people. And how is closeness built? By sharing secrets. . . . Your identity exists at the intersection of these lines of trust. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
684:faster. Now, when new technology is brought in, your coworkers have a different calculus. If they can produce 20 percent more per employee, why not decrease the workweek to twenty-eight hours? (For all sectors, legislation dictates the required workweek cannot exceed thirty-five hours.)13 There is still market competition, and firms still fail, but the grow-or-die imperative doesn’t apply when your enterprise’s goal is no longer to maximize total profits but rather to maximize profit-per-worker. And instead of a race to the bottom, there’s pressure to make sure janitorial and other “dirty jobs” are well compensated. In time, many of these tasks will be automated. People used to fear that machines would bring about mass unemployment, but now you and most others look forward to the social impact of technological innovations.14 ~ Bhaskar Sunkara, #NFDB
685:Conscience is strong in women. Children are very violently taught that they owe all to their parents, and the parents are not slow in foreclosing the mortgage. But the home is not a debtor's prison - to girls any more than to boys. This enormous claim of parents calls for extermination. Do they in truth do all for their children; do their children owe all to them? Is nothing furnished in the way of safety, sanitation, education, by that larger home, the state? What could these parents do, alone, in never so pleasant a home, without the allied forces of society to maintain that home in peace and prosperity. These lingering vestiges of a patriarchal cult must be left behind. Ancestor-worship has had victims enough. Girls are human creatures as well as boys, and both have duties, imperative duties, quite outside the home. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, #NFDB
686:But if it is true that human minds are themselves to a very great degree the creations of memes, then we cannot sustain the polarity of vision we considered earlier; it cannot be "memes versus us," because earlier infestations of memes have already played a major role in determining who or what we are. The "independent" mind struggling to protect itself from alien and dangerous memes is a myth. There is a persisting tension between the biological imperative of our genes on the one hand and the cultural imperatives of our memes on the other, but we would be foolish to "side with" our genes; that would be to commit the most egregious error of pop sociobiology. Besides, as we have already noted, what makes us special is that we, alone among species, can rise above the imperatives of our genes— thanks to the lifting cranes of our memes. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
687:Beloved, to be white is to know that you have at your own hand, or by extension, through institutionalized means, the power to take black life with impunity. It’s the power of life and death that gives whiteness its force, its imperative. White life is worth more than black life. This is why the cry “Black Lives Matter” angers you so greatly, why it is utterly offensive and effortlessly revolutionary. It takes aim at white innocence and insists on uncovering the lie of its neutrality, its naturalness, its normalcy, its normativity. The most radical action a white person can take is to acknowledge this denied privilege, to say, “Yes, you’re right. In our institutional structures, and in deep psychological structures, our underlying assumption is that our lives are worth more than yours.” But that is a tough thing for most of you to do. ~ Michael Eric Dyson, #NFDB
688:He looked past Chin toward streams of numbers running in opposite directions. He understood how much it meant to him, the roll and flip of data on a screen. He studied the figural diagrams that brought organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets.
"In fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planet's living billions. Here was the heave of the biosphere. Our bodies and oceans were here, knowable and whole. ~ Don DeLillo,#NFDB
689:Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in under or over-protectiveness, in a distrust in parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity - a flexible concept - be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first. ~ Jim Thompson, #NFDB
690:I'm near tears at this moment. But I also get an unexpected burst of courage, and here's what it feels like:
I don't care anymore if this guy hates me or badmouths me to other club owners. Because now - and I've never felt this before - I actively want him to hate me. It becomes imperative, for my self-worth, that and asshole like Reed actively loathe me. If someone like this were to like me, to like my comedy, and to like the way I conduct myself professionally, it would mean I suck as a person.
I've encountered this a few times since then. Not very often. But there are those rare occasions - and they're bracing, freeing sensations when they occur - when you absolutely crave someone's disapproval and disgust. You can see it actually helping your career, your social relations, and your life if it becomes known that this person thinks you're shit. ~ Patton Oswalt,#NFDB
691:Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So we renounce our resistance, our noncooperation, our stubborn refusal to enter life as it is. We renounce our fantasy of a beautiful past and an exciting future we can cherish and hold on to. Life just isn't like this. Life, time, is letting go, moment after moment. Life and time redeem themselves constantly, heal themselves constantly, only we don't know this, and much as we long to be healed and redeemed, we refuse to recognize this truth. This is why the sirens' songs are so attractive and so deadly. They propose a world of indulgence and wishful thinking, an unreal world that is seductive and destructive. (142) ~ Norman Fischer, #NFDB
692:Among Frye's assertions are that "[m]any awakening women [that is, women whose consciousness has been raised by people like Frye] become celibate or lesbian," that "[m]ale parasitism means that males must have access to women; it is the Patriarchal Imperative," and that "[t]he woman-only meeting is a fundamental challenge to the structure of power," for "[t]he slave who decides to exclude the master from her hut is declaring herself not a slave." Rather than seek to understand sexual categories, the late University of Arizona professor Monique Wittig declares in her essay, "One Is Not Born a Woman," the need to "destroy… the categories of sex" and maintains that a woman can escape servitude only "by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual. We are escapees from our class in the same way as the American runaway slaves were when escaping slavery and becoming free. ~ Bruce Bawer, #NFDB
693:A man's imperative command is not only to say "no" in cases where "yes" would be a sign of "disinterestedness," but also to say "no" as seldom as possible. One must part with all that which compels one to repeat "no," with ever greater frequency. The rationale of this principle is that all discharges of defensive forces, however slight they may be, involve enormous and absolutely superfluous losses when they become regular and habitual. Our greatest expenditure of strength is made up of those small and most frequent discharges of it. The act of keeping things off, of holding them at a distance, amounts to a discharge of strength,—do not deceive yourselves on this point!—and an expenditure of energy directed at purely negative ends. Simply by being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
694:President Obama dropped the term 'war on terror', and rightly so. Terrorism is not an enemy but a type of warfare that may or may not be adopted by an enemy. Imagine if, after Pearl Harbor, an attack that relied on aircraft carriers, President Roosevelt had declared a global war on naval aviation. By focusing on terrorism instead of al Qaeda or radical Islam, Bush elevated a specific kind of assault to a position that shaped American global strategy, which left the United States strategically off-balance.
Obama may have clarified the nomenclature, but he left in place a significant portion of the imbalance, which is an obsession with the threat of terrorist attacks. As we consider presidential options in the coming decade, it appears imperative that we clear up just how much of a threat terrorism actually presents and what that threat means for U.S. policy. ~ George Friedman,#NFDB
695:Not that we must resort to indifference, of course, which neither Stoic sage nor Buddhist monk would for a moment countenance: compassion and benevolence to others, indeed to all other forms of life, must remain the highest ethical imperative of our behaviour. But passion is not acceptable in the home of the wise man, and familial ties, when they become too binding, must be loosened. Which is why, like the Greek sage, the Buddhist monk lives, as much as possible, in a condition of solitude. (The word ‘monk’ derives from the Greek monos, meaning ‘alone’.) It is truly in solitude that wisdom can bloom, uncompromised by the difficulties associated with all forms of attachment. It is impossible, in effect, to have a wife or husband, children or friends without becoming in some degree attached to them. We must free ourselves of these ties if we wish to overcome the fear of death. ~ Luc Ferry, #NFDB
696:A special chapter is assigned to the collapse of the theory of evolution because this theory constitutes the basis of all anti-spiritual philosophies. Since Darwinism rejects the fact of creation—and therefore, Allah's existence—over the last 150 years it has caused many people to abandon their faith or fall into doubt. It is therefore an imperative service, a very important duty to show everyone that this theory is a deception. Since some readers may find the opportunity to read only one of our books, we think it appropriate to devote a chapter to summarize this subject. • All the author's books explain faith-related issues in light of Qur'anic verses, and invite readers to learn Allah's words and to live by them. All the subjects concerning Allah's verses are explained so as to leave no doubt or room for questions in the reader's mind. The books' sincere, plain, and fluent style ~ Harun Yahya, #NFDB
697:People don't tend to employ me. I'm the wrong personality type. Or rather, people do tend to employ me for a short time and then they sack me. A film broker once told me, as she terminated my contract, that I have a misleading sort of face.
"You're pretty", she complained. "Your features are symmetrical and there was an article in Grazia that says human beings are programmed to find those with symmetrical features more pleasing to they eye. So this isn't my fault, I was simply responding to a biological imperative. You've even teeth, so when you smile, you look...sweet, I suppose. But you're not, are you?"
"I hope not," I said.
"You see, there you go again. You're a smart-arse and you've no ability to filter your thoughts---"
"And my thoughts are often abrasive."
"Exactly."
"I'll just get my brushes and sponges and leave."
"If you would. ~ Marian Keyes,#NFDB
698:As members of my cabinet," Alyss calmly explained, "you share in the responsibilty of ensuring a safe furture for Wonderland. I'm sure the four of you will agree that we're in a crisis and that trying times bring out the best in you. What queen wouldn't want such helpful cabinet members by her side in an hour of need? Forgive me for calling you here. I was thinking only of myself and others when I did it. But for the love of your rank if nothing else, advise me. How do you think we should conter this invasion?"
Uh," said the Lady of Clubes.
I know exactly how we should counter it! said her husband. "First and foremost, a decree must be at once...decreed! All ranking families are to remain indoors and well-protected until it can be guaranteed that every threat is violence is past! It's imperative that nothing inconvenient happen to us, for the population would then have no one to look up to! ~ Frank Beddor,#NFDB
699:When trying to explain the violent path of some Islamists, Western commentators sometimes blame harsh economic conditions, dysfunctional family circumstances, confused identity, the generic alienation of young males, a failure to integrate into the larger society, mental illness, and so on. Some on the Left insist that the real fault lies with the mistakes of American foreign policy.
None of this is convincing. Jihad in the twenty-first century is not a problem of poverty, insufficient education, or any other social precondition. (Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was earning more than $90,000 a year working for a drilling company in British Columbia, where he also reportedly proclaimed his support of the Taliban and joked about suicide bombing vests, with no repercussions.) We must move beyond such facile explanations. The imperative for jihad is embedded in Islam itself. It is a religious obligation. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,#NFDB
700:[Wild animals], and the beautiful landscapes that sustain them...possess a value and a virtue regardless of our dwindling connection with them. It seems that there is a virtue and a wisdom in keeping some things beyond our reach: that the protection of wilderness itself is imperative... We have touched, and are consuming, everything. The world is very old, and we are so new. I like the feeling of awe--what the late writer Wallace Stegner called 'the birth of awe'--in beholding wild country not reduced by man. I like to remember that it is wild country that gives rise to wild animals; and that the marvelous specificity of wild animals reminds us to wake up, to let our senses be inflamed by every scent and sound and sight and taste and touch of the world. I like to remember that we are not here forever, and not here alone, and that the respect with which we behold the wild world matters, if anything does. ~ Rick Bass, #NFDB
701:2. Innovation is both conceptual and perceptual. The second imperative of innovation is therefore to go out to look, to ask, to listen. This cannot be stressed too often. Successful innovators use both the right side and the left side of their brains. They look at figures, and they look at people. They work out analytically what the innovation has to be to satisfy an opportunity. And then they go out and look at the customers, the users, to see what their expectations, their values, their needs are. Receptivity can be perceived, as can values. One can perceive that this or that approach will not fit in with the expectations or the habits of the people who have to use it. And then one can ask: ‘What does this innovation have to reflect so that the people who have to use it will want to use it, and see in it their opportunity?’ Otherwise one runs the risk of having the right innovation in the wrong form ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
702:The Qur’ān began by criticizing two closely related aspects of that society: the polytheism or multiplicity of gods which was symptomatic of the segmentation of society, and the gross socioeconomic disparities that equally rested on and perpetuated a pernicious divisiveness of mankind. The two are obverse and converse of the same coin: only God can ensure the essential unity of the human race as His creation, His subjects, and those responsible finally to Him alone. The economic disparities were most persistently criticized, because they were the most difficult to remedy and were at the hear of social discord—although tribal rivalries, with their multiple entanglements of alliance, enmity, and vengeance, were no less serious, and the welding of these tribes into a political unity was an imperative need. Certain abuses of girls, orphans, and women, and the institution of slavery demanded desperate reform. ~ Fazlur Rahman, #NFDB
703:But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with “morality.” Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
704:The most general formula on which every religion and morality is founded is: "Do this and that, refrain from this and that — and then you will be happy! And if you don't..." Every morality, every religion, is based on this imperative; I call it the original sin of reason, the immortal unreason. In my mouth, this formula is changed into its opposite — the first example of my "revaluation of all values." An admirable human being, a "happy one," instinctively must perform certain actions and avoid other actions; he carries these impulses in his body, and they determine his
relations with the world and other human beings. In a formula: his virtue is the effect of his happiness. A long life, many descendants — these are not the rewards of virtue: instead, virtue itself is that slowing down of the metabolism which leads, among other things, to a long life, many descendants — in short, to Cornaro's virtue. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
705:If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
706:Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
707:The levelling of the European man is the great process which cannot be obstructed; it should even be accelerated. The necessity of cleaving gulfs, distance, order of rank, is therefore imperative —not the necessity of retarding this process. This homogenizing species requires justification as soon as it is attained: its justification is that it lies in serving a higher and sovereign race which stands upon the former and can raise itself this task only by doing this. Not merely a race of masters whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an overflow of energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners, even for the most abstract thought; a yea-saying race that may grant itself every great luxury —strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative, rich enough to have no need of economy or pedantry; beyond good and evil; a hothouse for rare and exceptional plants. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
708:2 tn The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh-lekha, “go out”) followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”). If Abram leaves, then God will do these three things. The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) is subordinated to the preceding cohortatives and indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram. On the syntactical structure of vv. 1-2 see R. B. Chisholm, “Evidence from Genesis,” A Case for Premillennialism, 37. For a similar sequence of volitive forms see Gen 45:18. sn It would be hard to overestimate the value of this call and this divine plan for the theology of the Bible. Here begins God’s plan to bring redemption to the world. The promises to Abram will be turned into a covenant in Gen 15 and 22 (here it is a call with conditional promises) and will then lead through the Bible to the work of the Messiah. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
709:Get Drunk
Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"
184
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
710:When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
711:Even more important is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative for change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call “the edge of chaos.” We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter—if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. . . . Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.8 This threshold line, that edge between anarchy and frozen rigidity, is not a like a fence line, it is a fractal line; it possesses nonlinearity. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, #NFDB
712:Two ideas are opposed — not concepts or abstractions, but Ideas which were in the blood of men before they were formulated by the minds of men. The Resurgence of Authority stands opposed to the Rule of Money; Order to Social Chaos, Hierarchy to Equality, socio-economico-political Stability to constant Flux; glad assumption of Duties to whining for Rights; Socialism to Capitalism, ethically, economically, politically; the Rebirth of Religion to Materialism; Fertility to Sterility; the spirit of Heroism to the spirit of Trade; the principle of Responsibility to Parliamentarism; the idea of Polarity of Man and Woman to Feminism; the idea of the individual task to the ideal of ‘happiness’; Discipline to Propaganda-compulsion; the higher unities of family, society, State to social atomism; Marriage to the Communistic ideal of free love; economic self-sufficiency to senseless trade as an end in itself; the inner imperative to Rationalism. ~ Francis Parker Yockey, #NFDB
713:But the more time has been released from production, the more imperative it has become to absorb that time in consumption and consumerism, given that, as was earlier argued, capitalist 'economic rationality has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth'. The ever-present danger is that freely associating and self-creating individuals, liberated from the chores of production and blessed with a whole range of labour-saving and time-saving technologies to aid their consumption, might start to build an alternative non-capitalistic world. They might become inclined to reject the dominant capitalist economic rationality, for example, and start evading its overwhelming but often cruel rules of time discipline. To avoid such eventualities, capital must not only find ways to absorb more and more goods and services through realisation but also somehow occupy the free time that the new technologies release. ~ David Harvey, #NFDB
714:Standing there small among the boxes of Kandy Kakes that rose like brownish cartoon cliffs around him, he resembled the videos I'd seen of sea lions floating angelically among the kelp, black bodies filmed from below, their shapes cut out in bright sunlight, bodies mistakable for those of a human being. I felt the memory of a shadowy arm around me, a watcher again, sitting there on the couch with my boyfriend, watching the animals become prey. Somewhere there were giant whales feeding on creatures too small to see, pressing them against fronds of baleen with a tongue the size of a sedan. There were polar bears killing seals, tearing ovoid chunks from out of their smooth, round bellies. In the surrounding vastness of the warehouse, I heard something scratching against the concrete floor and knew there were rats here, scraping a thin film of nutrient from the dry packaged matter that surrounded them. Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative. ~ Alexandra Kleeman, #NFDB
715:One of the most wonderful things about Pride and Prejudice is the variety of voices it embodies. There are so many different forms of dialogue: between several people, between two people, internal dialogue and dialogue through letters. All tensions are created and resolved through dialogue. Austen's ability to create such multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in relation and in confrontation within a cohesive structure, is one of the best examples of the democratic aspect of the novel. In Austen's novels, there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also space - not just space but a necessity - for self-reflection and self-criticism. Such reflection is the cause of change. We needed no message, no outright call for plurality, to prove our point. All we needed was to reach and appreciate the cacophony of voices to understand its democratic imperative. There was where Austen's danger lay. ~ Azar Nafisi, #NFDB
716:He is an unsuccessful scapegoat whose heroic willingness to die for the truth will ultimately make the entire cycle of satanic violence visible to all people and therefore inoperative. The "kingdom of Satan" will give way to the "kingdom of God." Thanks to Jesus' death, the Spirit of God, alias the Paraclete (a word that signifies "the lawyer for the defense"), wins a foothold in the kingdom of Satan. He reveals the innocence of Jesus to the disciples first and then to all of us. The defense of victims is both a moral imperative and the source of our increasing power to demystify scapegoating. The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus' death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the Cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound. The ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
717:Our elders have failed us, they have not provided leadership, they have not provided counsel, they have been silent and compliant in the face of power. They have said nothing on fracking, climate collapse, the extinction crisis and done even less. The old have, for the most part, betrayed the young. This is as true of witchcraft as it is of our wider culture. It is therefore down to us as individuals to take our lead from the only source of initiation, living spirit, and through it embody the new witchcraft. We must become a witchcraft with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose, of responsibility to the land which is in crisis, or we are nothing more than consumers of the earth which will all too soon eat of us. Those who do not feel the imperative to act on this information demonstrate that they are not orientated, that is, they have no connection to the land and its denizens. Their magic is little more than a cerebral construct, and without being embodied is meaningless. ~ Peter Grey, #NFDB
718:We hold these truths self-evident: That all men and women are created equal, though we do not live equal lives due to differences in will, motivation, effort, and habit. That we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, but that it is incumbent upon each of us to be vigilant and disciplined should we wish to attain such a vital, free, and happy life. We believe the greatest of human powers is the ability to independently think for ourselves, to choose our own aims, affections, and actions. For in the hearts of humankind lives a natural instinct for freedom and independence, a psychological predisposition for self-direction, a biological imperative toward growth, and a spiritual joy in choosing and advancing one’s own life. It is the main motivation of humankind to be free, to express our true selves and pursue our dreams without restriction—to experience what may be called Personal Freedom. ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
719:And it's about this whole "secrets" business.
We all have them. Every single one of us has something we're keeping inside... sometimes to protect ourselves, sometimes to protect others. The whole tendency in contemporary society to "tell all" or put it all in living color on Facebook in the interest of "honesty"... is hooey. As Reynard says in The Girl with the Sweetest Secret, he possesses some secrets he will never reveal because he has learned the harm malicious or just unfettered sharing can do. Loving others means putting their welfare above our own desire to share or even confess. If love is the prime value we hold, we must make certain what we will reveal has a critical or urgent moral imperative (i.e., to prevent an injustice, loss of life, damage to health, or the abuse of power). Think of the secrets you hold about yourself, your loved ones, and those you work and live with, Which of them would be worth hurting your spouse or family to reveal? Sobering to think about. ~ Betina Krahn,#NFDB
720:The blush started at her toes and worked its way up. She threw her right arm over her face. “Go dry your hair,” she said, mortified. “Please.” Richard gently pulled her arm away and peered down at her, his expression grave. “Are you in pain? Saints, but the fever has begun again. You’re flushed.” “I’m embarrassed!” He blinked. “Why?” Jessica ignored the fact that Warren was standing not a handful of feet away from them, listening as if being able to repeat every word was imperative to his survival. “If you don’t know,” she said tartly, “I’m not about to tell you.” Realization dawned. She saw it in his eyes. And in the color that leaped to his cheeks. He lowered her arm to her side carefully and frowned. “No one else saw,” he muttered. “You did!” “What was I to do?” he countered defensively. “Leave you be?” “No,” she moaned. He took her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. “I tended you as best I knew how,” he said roughly. “I wasn’t about to leave you to some addle-witted leech. ~ Lynn Kurland, #NFDB
721:Charles Baudelaire: Get Drunk
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.
But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.
And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: 'It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'
-- Charles Baudelaire, tr. Michael Hamburger ~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
722:If I burst into a house and yell to all assembled, “Put on the kettle!” I have uttered an imperative English sentence, but some will probably infer that I would like to have a cup of tea or other hot beverage, while another may further surmise that I feel myself at home here, and may in fact be the occupant of this house. Yet another person present, a monoglot Hungarian, may infer only that I speak English, and so does whomever I am addressing (well, it sounds like English to her), while somebody really in the know will be instantly informed that I have decided after all to steam open that sealed envelope and surreptitiously read the letter inside in spite of the fact that it isn’t addressed to me; a crime is about to be committed. What semantic information can be gleaned from the event depends on what information the gleaner already has accumulated. Learning that somebody speaks English can be a valuable update to your world knowledge, a design improvement that may someday pay big dividends. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
723:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #NFDB
724:Feeling secure for the moment, I took in a few more details. She was wearing a midnight blue dress, something with texture, maybe raw silk. It was cut just above the knee, with three-quarter length sleeves, an off-the-shoulder neckline, and a deep V cut in the back and front. Her shoes were patent leather stilettos with sharp toes. There was a handbag to match the shoes, and a gold Cartier watch with a gold link band encircling her left wrist. It was a man’s watch, large and heavy on her wrist, and its incongruous heft served to accentuate her femininity. Her hair was swept back and away from her face in a way that accentuated her profile. Overall the look was controlled and sleek, sophisticated and sexy. None of it, especially the shoes, would be ideal for escape and evasion, if it came to that, so I realized she must have chosen it all for some other operational imperative. There are all sorts of weapons in the world, and I reminded myself that when this woman was dressed for work, she was anything but unarmed. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
725:The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange — in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. Hegel has freed history from metaphysics — he made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded, and a method found of explaining man's "knowing" by his "being", instead of, as heretofore, his "being" by his "knowing". ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
726:Second, it is imperative that we remind ourselves how innovative philosophical pluralism is. When Machen confronted the impact of modernism on Christianity, his driving point was that the liberalism of his day, whatever it was, was not Christianity at all, even though that was the way it paraded itself.116 At least he recognized what was at stake, and addressed the fundamental issues. Today we must recognize that philosophical pluralism is not only non-Christian (though some Western pluralists think of themselves as Christians), but that the nature of the relativism it spawns and the worldliness that it engenders are in some respects qualitatively new, and must be addressed in fresh terms. Many generations have recognized how difficult it is for finite and sinful mortals to come to close agreement as to the objective truth of this or that subject, but this is the first generation to believe that there is no objective truth out there, or that if there is, there is no access to it. This necessarily changes the character of at least some of the debate. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
727:The only road to freedom is self-education in art. Art is not a luxury for any advanced
civilization; it is a necessity, without which creative intelligence will wither and die. Even
in economically troubled times, support for the arts should be a national imperative.
Dance, for example, requires funding not only to secure safe, roomy rehearsal space but
to preserve the indispensible continuity of the teacher-student link. American culture has
become unbalanced by its obsession with the blood sport of politics, a voracious vortex
consuming everything in its path. History shows that, for both individuals and nations,
political power is transient. America's true legacy is its ideal of liberty, which has inspired
insurgencies around the world. Politicians and partisans of both the Right and the Left
must recognize that art too is a voice of liberty, requiring nurture without intrusion. Art
unites the spiritual and material realms. In an age of alluring, magical machines, the
society that forgets art risks losing its soul. ~ Camille Paglia,#NFDB
728:In the summer of 1931,” Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s press chief first for the party and later for the Reich, relates, “the Fuehrer suddenly decided to concentrate systematically on cultivating the influential industrial magnates.”14 What magnates were they? Their identity was a secret which was kept from all but the inner circle around the Leader. The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly “socialists” and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it. Throughout the latter half of 1931, says Dietrich, Hitler “traversed Germany from end to end, holding private interviews with prominent [business] personalities.” So hush-hush were some of these meetings that they had to be held “in some lonely forest glade. Privacy,” explains Dietrich, “was absolutely imperative; the press must have no chance of doing mischief. Success was the consequence. ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
729:This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower,#NFDB
730:She was now afraid to yield to passion, and because she could not yield to the larger impulses it became essential also to not yield to the small ones, even if her adversary were in the right. She was living on a plane of war. The bigger resistance to the flow of life became one with the smaller resistance to the will of others, and the smallest issue became equal to the ultimate one. The pleasure of yielding on a level of passion being unknown to her, the pleasure of yielding on other levels became equally impossible. She denied herself all the sources of feminine pleasure: of being invaded, of being conquered. In war, conquest was imperative. No approach from the enemy could be interpreted as anything but a threat. She could not see that the real issue of the war was a defense of her being against the invasion of passion. Her enemy was the lover who might possess her. All her intensity was poured into the small battles; to win in the choice of a restaurant, of a movie, of visitors, in opinions, in analysis of people, to win in all the small rivalries through an evening. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
731:WAKE UP OR PERISH The world’s problems are, by and large, human problems—the unavoidable consequence of egoic sleepwalking. If we care to look, all the signs are present to suggest that we are not only sleepwalking, but at times borderline insane as well. In a manner of speaking, we have lost (or at the very least forgotten) our souls, and we try very, very hard not to notice, because we don’t want to see how asleep we are, how desolate our condition really is. So we blindly carry on, driven by forces we do not recognize or understand, or even acknowledge. We are no doubt at a very critical point in time. Our world hangs in the balance, and a precarious balance it is. Awakening to Reality is no longer a possibility; it is an imperative. We have sailed the ship of delusion about as far as she can carry us. We have run her ashore and now find ourselves shipwrecked on an increasingly desolate land. Our options have imploded. “Wake up or perish” is the spiritual call of our times. Did we ever need more motivation than this? And yet all is eternally well, and more well than can be imagined. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
732:You no longer watch TV, it is TV that watches you (live),” or again: “You are no longer listening to Don’t Panic, it is Don’t Panic that is listening to you”—a switch from the panoptic mechanism of surveillance (Discipline and Punish [Surveiller et punir]) to a system of deterrence, in which the distinction between the passive and the active is abolished. There is no longer any imperative of submission to the model, or to the gaze “YOU are the model!” “YOU are the majority!” Such is the watershed of a hyperreal sociality, in which the real is confused with the model, as in the statistical operation, or with the medium. …Such is the last stage of the social relation, ours, which is no longer one of persuasion (the classical age of propaganda, of ideology, of publicity, etc.) but one of deterrence: “YOU are information, you are the social, you are the event, you are involved, you have the word, etc.” An about-face through which it becomes impossible to locate one instance of the model, of power, of the gaze, of the medium itself, because you are always already on the other side. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
733:If we're lucky, we find the one person who will hold our trust and keep it sacred and safe against all attackers. That one soul who will restore our belief that people are decent and kind, and that life, while messy, is still the most wondrous gift anyone can know. But until that day comes, we have to try and remember that home isn't a specific place or person. It's a feeling we carry inside ourselves. That touch of the divine that lights a fire inside us that burns out the past and consumes the pain until nothing is left but a warmth that allows us to love others more than ourselves. A warmth that only grows when we do right even while others seek to do us wrong. Peace is knowing that one life, no matter how trivial it seems, touches thousands of others, and learningto respect that about all people. While you may not mean much to the world, to those who know and love you, you are their entire world. And it is knowledge that no one can hurt you unless you allow them to. The only power they have isn't something they're taken or demanded. It's what we give them by choice. And while it is imperative that we value the lives of others, it is equally important to value our own. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
734:People work, not me. I look out the window, look out the window, out the window. Outside it's winter, and it's sunny. The doors don't shut properly, they don't shut, they're old. A phone rings through the wall. How come it takes such daunting effort to do what one likes? It's daunting, daunting to begin. I find it daunting to get started, and that seems not to be a fixable thing. The road to success, the road to success. Who knows? I get tired of myself. As pleasant as I find it here, as pleasant as a I find it. Did anyone pick up? In any case, the phone stopped ringing. What works better in fiction? Past or present tense? Weekends make me cranky, I don't like them, that imperative to have a good time, do things, do something special, the notion of free time. I prefer to seek out those things while other people work. People relaxing tend to look ridiculous, like out of place, grotesque. I'm unmotivated, a little, I realize, bored, overly calm, almost comfortable. I don't like where I live anymore, I'm fed up, I'm fed up with where I live. I want, somehow, to live differently. I'd take care of it, I'd take care of that baby if he gave it to me, if he wanted to give it to me, if he wanted. ~ Romina Paula, #NFDB
735: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, #NFDB
736:Quite so: the choice, as laid out by Muhammad himself, is conversion, subjugation as dhimmis, or the sword.49 Qutb accordingly denies any contradiction between the injunction that “there is no compulsion in religion” and the imperative to fight until “religion is for Allah” (2:193). He says that “Islam has not used force to impose its beliefs.” Rather, jihad’s “main objective has been the establishment of a stable society in which all citizens, including followers of other religious creeds, may live in peace and security”—although not with legal equity, as 9:29 emphasizes. For Qutb, that “stable society” is the “Islamic social order,” the establishment of which is a chief objective of jihad.50 In this light, the verse saying there is no compulsion in religion and the one ordering Muslims to fight until religion is for Allah go together without any trouble. Muslims must fight until “religion is for Allah,” but refrain from forcing anyone to accept Allah’s religion. They enforce subservience upon those who refuse to convert, such that many of them subsequently convert to Islam so as to escape the humiliating and discriminatory regulations of dhimmitude—but when they convert, they do so freely. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
737:Of course we would all like to "believe" in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, thing have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with "morality." Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
738:Poem For Adrienne Rich (Ii)
Reading your poems makes me want to
make again. Something stirs in me
that is no longer man-root,
no longer the male imperative
that drove you and your sisters
under the skin up the wall
down which courses the wailing
and weeping of a myriad women.
Survival of wits is hard come-by
in this world of warring families.
We know there are too many people
here including ourselves and that each
appears to have the right to be so.
Ah love what is your true form,
your true self among five billion selves?
As you and I age (we were born
a year apart) I pray your health
holds together. Mine has collapsed
from the congenital start.
And yet I lived to write and love a lot.
Not with your fiery vision of words,
your smoky camouflaging of pain.
And such anger held in barest
check. Dear God forgive the males
who ploughed your sensibilities
like an open field, sowing rocks.
And the women — the later lovers
who didn’t quite rise to your
occasions (I tend to think in cliches
now I am only half alive). I didn’t mean
to obtrude in this your poem. But
we are quite personal in what we write
and the world may eventually be
a tiny bit the better for our speaking
out of ourselves.
~ Bruce Beaver,#NFDB
739:The hatred directed against the privileged in body and spirit: the revolt of the ugly and bungled souls against the beautiful, the proud, and the cheerful. The weapons used: contempt of beauty, of pride, of happiness: 'There is no such thing as merit,' 'The danger is enormous: it is right that one should tremble and feel ill at ease,' 'Naturalness is evil; it is right to oppose all that is natural — even 'reason' (all that is antinatural is elevated to the highest place).
It is again the priests who exploit this condition, and who win the 'people' over to themselves. 'The sinner' over whom there is more joy in heaven than over 'the just person.' This is the struggle against 'paganism' (the pang of conscience, a measure for disturbing the harmony of the soul).
The hatred of the mediocre for the exceptions, and of the herd for its independent members. (Custom actually regarded as 'morality.' The revulsion of feeling against 'egotism': that only is worth anything which is done 'for another.' 'We are all equal'; — against the love of dominion, against 'dominion' in general; — against privilege;—against sectarians, free-spirits, and sceptics; — against philosophy (a force opposing mechanical and automatic instincts); in philosophers themselves — 'the categorical imperative,' the essential nature of morality, 'general and universal. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
740:Buddhist meditation takes this untrained, everyday mind as its natural starting point, and it requires the development of one particular attentional posture—of naked, or bare, attention. Defined as “the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception,”1 bare attention takes this unexamined mind and opens it up, not by trying to change anything but by observing the mind, emotions, and body the way they are. It is the fundamental tenet of Buddhist psychology that this kind of attention is, in itself, healing: that by the constant application of this attentional strategy, all of the Buddha’s insights can be realized for oneself. As mysterious as the literature on meditation can seem, as elusive as the koans of the Zen master sometimes sound, there is but one underlying instruction that is critical to Buddhist thought. Common to all schools of thought, from Sri Lanka to Tibet, the unifying theme of the Buddhist approach is this remarkable imperative: “Pay precise attention, moment by moment, to exactly what you are experiencing, right now, separating out your reactions from the raw sensory events.” This is what is meant by bare attention: just the bare facts, an exact registering, allowing things to speak for themselves as if seen for the first time, distinguishing any reactions from the core event. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
741:The dawn! The dawn, I repeated. Henry thought it was the dawn itself which was a new experience. I could not explain what I felt. It was the first time I had not felt the compulsion to escape; it was the first time I had abandoned myself to fraternity, exchange, confessions, without feeling suddenly the need to take flight. All night I had stayed there, without experiencing that abrupt end to fusion, that sudden and painful consciousness of separation, of reaching ultimately and always the need of my own world, the inability to remain outside, estranged, at some moment or other, from everyone. This had not happened, this dawn had come as the first break in the compulsion and tyranny of inadaptation. (The way I once concealed from myself this drama of perpetual divorce was to blame the clock. It was time to go, in place of now I must go, because relationship is so difficult for me, so strained, so laborious, its continuance, its flow.) I never knew what happened. At a party, at a visit, at a play, a film, came a moment of anguish. I cannot sustain the role, the pretense that I am at one with others, synchronized. Where was the exit? Flight. The imperative need of flight. Was it the failure to remove the obstacles, the walls, the barriers, the effort? Dawn had come quietly, and found me sitting at ease with Henry and Fred, and it was the dawn of freedom from a nameless enemy. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
742:In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? What really happened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the Gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither? What about the Geneva Accords? What about SEATO and the Cold War? What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
743:If now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any transgression of duty, we shall find that we in fact do not will that our maxim should be universal law, for that is impossible for us; on the contrary, we will that the opposite should remain a universal law, only we assume the liberty of making an exception in our own favor or (just for this time only) in favor of our inclination. Consequently, if we considered all cases from one and the same point of view, namely, that of reason, we should find a contradiction in our own will, namely, that a certain principle should be objectively necessary as a universal law, and yet subjectively should not be universal, but admit of exceptions. As, however, we at one moment regard our action from the point of view of a will wholly conformed to reason, and then again look at the same action from the point of view of a will affected by inclination, there is not really any contradiction, but an antagonism of inclination to the precept of reason, whereby the universality of the principle is changed into mere generality, so that the practical principle of reason shall meet the maxim half way. Now, although this cannot be justified in our own impartial judgement, yet it proves that we do really recognize the validity of the categorical imperative and (with all respect for it) only allow ourselves a few exceptions which we think unimportant and forced from us. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
744:Las Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification, a place the tone of which is set by mobsters and call girls and ladies’ room attendants with amyl nitrite poppers in their uniform pockets. Almost everyone notes that there is no “time” in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future (no Las Vegas casino, however, has taken the obliteration of the ordinary time sense quite so far as Harold’s Club in Reno, which for a while issued, at odd intervals in the day and night, mimeographed “bulletins” carrying news from the world outside); neither is there any logical sense of where one is. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks ”stardust” or “caesar’s palace.” Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with “real” life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder. All of which makes it an extraordinarily stimulating and interesting place, but an odd one in which to want to wear a candlelight satin Priscilla of Boston wedding dress with Chantilly lace insets, tapered sleeves and a detachable modified train. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
745:In each of the following chapters, dealing in turn with policing and repression, culture and propaganda, religion and education, the economy, society and everyday life, racial policy and antisemitism, and foreign policy, the overriding imperative of preparing Germany and its people for a major war emerges clearly as the common thread. But that imperative was neither rational in itself, nor followed in a coherent way. In one area after another, the contradictions and inner irrationalities of the regime emerge; the Nazi's headlong rush to war contained the seeds of the Third Reich's eventual destruction. How and why this should be so is one of the major questions that run through this book and binds its separate parts together. So do many further questions: about the extent to which the Third Reich won over the German people; the manner in which it worked; the degree to which Hitler, rather than broader systematic factors inherent in the structure of the Third Reich as a whole, drove policy onward; the possibilities of opposition, resistence, and dissent or even non-conformity to the dictates of National Socialism under a dictatorship that claimed the total allegiance of all its citizens; the nature of the Third Reich's relationship with modernity; the ways in which its policies in different areas resembled, or differed from, those pursued elsewhere in Europe and beyond during the 1930s; and much more besides. ~ Richard J Evans, #NFDB
746:There is an irony of history that completely escapes Harris and other new atheists in their evangelical quest for a global morality rooted in scientific truth. As philosopher John Gray of the London School of Economics convincingly argues, it is universal forms of monotheism, such as Christianity and Islam, that merged Hebrew tribal belief in one God with Greek faith in universal laws applicable to the whole of creation that originated the inclusive concept of Humanity in the first place. Universal monotheisms created two new concepts in human thought: individual free choice and collective humanity. People not born into these religions could, in principle, choose to belong (or remain outside) without regard to ethnicity, tribe or territory. The mission of these religions was to extend moral salvation to all peoples, whether they liked it or not. Secularized by the European Enlightenment, the great quasi-religious isms of modern history—colonialism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, communism, democratic liberalism and accompanying forms of messianic atheism—have all tried to harness industry and science to continue on a global scale the Stone Age human imperative “cooperate to compete” (against the other-isms, that is). These great secular isms, often relying on the science of the day to justify their moral values, have produced both massive killing to save the mass of humanity as well as great progress in human rights ~ Benny Morris, #NFDB
747:June 7 Someone Who Believes In Me "Just for today I will have faith in someone in NA who believes in me and wants to help me in my recovery." Basic Text, p. 96 Not all of us arrive in NA and automatically stay clean. But if we keep coming back, we find in Narcotics Anonymous the support we need for our recovery. Staying clean is easier when we have someone who believes in us even when we don't believe in ourselves. Even the most frequent relapser in NA usually has one staunch supporter who is always there, no matter what. It is imperative that we find that one person or group of people who believes in us. When we ask them if we will ever get clean, they will always reply, "Yes, you can and you will. Just keep coming back!" We all need someone who believes in us, especially when we can't believe in ourselves. When we relapse, we undermine our already shattered self-confidence, sometimes so badly that we begin to feel utterly hopeless. At such times, we need the support of our loyal NA friends. They tell us that this can be our last relapse. They know from experience that if we keep coming to meetings, we will eventually get clean and stay clean. It's hard for many of us to believe in ourselves. But when someone loves us unconditionally, offering support no matter how many times we've relapsed, recovery in NA becomes a little more real for us. Just for today: I will find someone who believes in me. I will believe in them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
748:Most people remember COINTELPRO from the days of the Black Panthers, Yippies, and other revolutionary groups who threatened our government during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. Sensing that these groups might incite American citizens into radical action, the FBI sent in agents to agitate members of these various groups, often pitting them against each other through various forms of subterfuge, such as blackmail.
It appears that the CIA, FBI, and NSA are now sending their goons into the metaphysical marketplace, making sure that people who think they are aspiring to higher and positively transformative things are, in reality, only becoming more self-indulgent, disconnected, and confused.
The biggest influx of these agents occurred during the blossoming of the "human potential" movement in the early '70s, through such institutions as Esalen. Legions of people threw away their protest banners and followed their bliss during a time when directly addressing the socio-political problems of the day was imperative.
Since then, the emphasis on personal development - and more recently, the You Create Your Own Reality movement - a significant segment of the population has been brainwashed into disdaining all socio-political issues. For what better way to disempower people than to have them focus on their personal evolution at the expense of their families, communities, and the countries they live in? ~ David Icke,#NFDB
749:If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned into this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.
It is the inner offering of the heart's adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This is the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 165, [T2],#NFDB
750:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#NFDB
751:Back in Portland, Oregon, Diehl realized that another fundamental problem involved communication. Engineer Mendenhall had spotted the fuel problem. He had given a number of hints to the captain and, as the situation became serious, made direct references to the dwindling reserves. Diehl, listening back to the voice recorder, noted alterations in the intonation of the engineer. As the dangers spiraled he became ever more desperate to alert McBroom, but he couldn’t bring himself to challenge his boss directly. This is now a well-studied aspect of psychology. Social hierarchies inhibit assertiveness. We talk to those in authority in what is called “mitigated language.” You wouldn’t say to your boss: “It’s imperative we have a meeting on Monday morning.” But you might say: “Don’t worry if you’re busy, but it might be helpful if you could spare half an hour on Monday.”5 This deference makes sense in many situations, but it can be fatal when a 90-ton airplane is running out of fuel above a major city. The same hierarchy gradient also exists in operating theaters. Jane, the nurse, could see the solution. She had fetched the tracheotomy kit. Should she have spoken up more loudly? Didn’t she care enough? That is precisely the wrong way to think about failure in safety-critical situations. Remember that Engineer Mendenhall paid for his reticence with his life. The problem was not a lack of diligence or motivation, but a system insensitive to the limitations of human psychology. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
752:To say that simple life-forms without nervous systems have pain is unnecessary and probably not correct. They certainly have some of the elements required to construct feelings of pain, but it is reasonable to hypothesize that for pain itself to emerge, as a mental experience, the organism needed to have a mind and that for that to pass, the organism needed a nervous system capable of mapping structures and events. In other words, I suspect that life-forms without nervous systems or minds had and have elaborate emotive processes, defensive and adaptive action programs, but not feelings. Once nervous systems entered the scene, the path for feelings was open. That is why even humble nervous systems probably allow some measure of feeling.5 It is often asked, not unreasonably, why feelings should feel like anything at all, pleasant or unpleasant, tolerably quiet or like an uncontainable storm. The reason should now be clear: when the full constellation of physiological events that constitutes feelings began to appear in evolution and provided mental experiences, it made a difference. Feelings made lives better. They prolonged and saved lives. Feelings conformed to the goals of the homeostatic imperative and helped implement them by making them matter mentally to their owner as, for example, the phenomenon of conditioned place aversion appears to demonstrate.6 The presence of feelings is closely related to another development: consciousness and, more specifically, subjectivity. ~ Ant nio R Dam sio, #NFDB
753:Iago’s treatment of Othello conforms to Bacon’s definition of scientific enquiry as putting Nature to the Question. If a member of the audience were to interrupt the play and ask him: "What are you doing? could not Iago answer with a boyish giggle, "Nothing. I’m only trying to find out what Othello is really like"? And we must admit that his experiment is highly successful. By the end of the play he does know the scientific truth about the object to which he has reduced Othello. That is what makes his parting shot, What you know, you know, so terrifying for, by then, Othello has become a thing, incapable of knowing anything.
And why shouldn’t Iago do this? After all, he has certainly acquired knowledge. What makes it impossible for us to condemn him self-righteously is that, in our culture, we have all accepted the notion that the right to know is absolute and unlimited. […] We are quite prepared to admit that, while food and sex are good in themselves, an uncontrolled pursuit of either is not, but it is difficult for us to believe that intellectual curiosity is a desire like any other, and to realize that correct knowledge and truth are not identical. To apply a categorical imperative to knowing, so that, instead of asking, "What can I know?" we ask, "What, at this moment, am I meant to know?" – to entertain the possibility that the only knowledge which can be true for us is the knowledge we can live up to – that seems to all of us crazy and almost immoral. But, in that case, who are we to say to Iago – "No, you mustn’t. ~ W H Auden,#NFDB
754:Different objects present themselves to consciousness as constituents of different spheres of reality. I recognize the fellowmen I must deal with in the course of everyday life as pertaining to a reality quite different from the disembodied figures that appear in my dreams. The two sets of objects introduce quite different tensions into my consciousness and I am attentive to them in quite different ways. My consciousness, then, is capable of moving through different spheres of reality. Put differently, I am conscious of the world as consisting of multiple realities. As I move from one reality to another, I experience the transition as a kind of shock. This shock is to be understood as caused by the shift in attentiveness that the transition entails. Waking up from a dream illustrates this shift most simply. Among the multiple realities there is one that presents itself as the reality par excellence. This is the reality of everyday life. Its privileged position entitles it to the designation of paramount reality. The tension of consciousness is highest in everyday life, that is, the latter imposes itself upon consciousness in the most massive, urgent and intense manner. It is impossible to ignore, difficult even to weaken in its imperative presence. Consequently, it forces me to be attentive to it in the fullest way. I experience everyday life in the state of being wide-awake. This wide-awake state of existing in and apprehending the reality of everyday life is taken by me to be normal and self-evident, that is, it constitutes my natural attitude. I ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
755:Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean? Some idealists seem to say that they are true whenever they are what God means that we ought to think about that object. Others hold the copy-view all through, and speak as if our ideas possessed truth just in proportion as they approach to being copies of the Absolute's eternal way of thinking.
These views, you see, invite pragmatistic discussion. But the great assumption of the intellectualists is that truth means essentially an inert static relation. When you've got your true idea of anything, there's an end of the matter. You're in possession; you KNOW; you have fulfilled your thinking destiny. You are where you ought to be mentally; you have obeyed your categorical imperative; and nothing more need follow on that climax of your rational destiny. Epistemologically you are in stable equilibrium.
Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"
The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CAN ASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE AND VERIFY. FALSE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CANNOT. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as. ~ William James,#NFDB
756:Remember what I told you, Nerissa. Spare no expense when it comes to dressing her. I want her out of those hideous colors and fabrics she's in now, and into something that will show her coloring to greatest advantage." "Silks, satins, velvets?" "Yes, and the finest, most expensive ones Madame has." Lucien's enigmatic black eyes had gleamed with sly delight before he'd turned away and, his forefinger tapping his lips once, twice, continued on. "And dramatic colors only — no pastels for that girl, no more washed out yellows and wretched browns that only make her look sallow and ill. She's no English rose and shouldn't be dressed like one. No, I want her in blazing scarlet, brilliant turquoise, emerald green, magenta — loud, startling hues that will flatter her exotic coloring and make every man at the ball unable to take his eyes off her." He'd given a dangerous little smile. "Especially Charles . . ." Nerissa had returned his grin. "Especially Charles." "Just take care, my dear, that he does not learn of the purchases you'll make for the girl at Madame Perrot's. Let him think the shopping trip is for you, and that Amy is along as . . . as training to be a lady's maid. Ah, yes. That will throw him off the scent quite nicely, I think — as well as make him seriously begin to question, if he has not already, whether he wants her to be a lady's maid or his lady." He had grinned then, as delighted with his machinations as he must've been when he'd brought Gareth and Juliet together. "It is imperative that he is, shall we say, pleasantly surprised when he sees his little friend at Friday night's ball . . ." Even ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
757:Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences" did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. And today you need no longer hesitate to use the word "saints": think of Father Maximilian Kolbe who was starved and finally murdered by an injection of carbolic acid at Auschwitz and who in 1983 was canonized.
You may be prone to blame for invoking examples that are the exceptions ot the rule. "Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt" (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority . More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So let us be alert-alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
758:I work at T-Town, which is about ninety-nine percent men, and all of them either are alpha personalities or think they are. That said, what we have here is the standard dynamic for sexual tension. I'm moderately good-looking. I have big boobs, and I get hit on by everyone from the pastor of my church to baristas at Starbucks, and by every single guy at T-Town except for my boss and the range master. I don't blame them and I don't judge them. It's part of the procreative drive hardwired into us, and we haven't evolved as a species far enough exert any genuine control over the biological imperative. You, on the other hand, are a very good-looking man of prime breeding age. Old enough to have interesting lines and scars--and stories to go with them--and young enough to be a catch. You probably get laid as often as you want to, and you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times women have said no to you. Maybe--and please correct me if I've strayed too far into speculation--being an agent of a secret government organization has led you to buy into the superspy sex stud propaganda perpetuated by James Bond films."
"My name is Powers," I said. "Austin Powers."
She ignored me and plowed ahead. "We're in the middle of a crisis. We may have to work closely together for several days, or even several weeks. Close-quarters travel, emotions running high, all that. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not spend the next few days living inside a trite office romance cliche. That includes everything from mild flirtation to sexual innuendo and double entendre and the whole ball of wax."
She sipped her Coke. The ball landed in my court with a thump. ~ Jonathan Maberry,#NFDB
759:When historians write the epitaph for neoliberalism, they will have to conclude that it was the form of capitalism that systematically prioritized political imperatives over economic ones. That is: given a choice between a course of action that will make capitalism seem like the only possible economic system, and one that will make capitalism actually be a more viable long-term economic system, neoliberalism has meant always choosing the former. Does destroying job security while increasing working hours really create a more productive (let alone innovative, loyal) workforce? There is every reason to believe that exactly the opposite is the case. In purely economic terms the result of neoliberal reform of labor markets is almost certainly negative—an impression that overall lower economic growth rates in just about all parts of the world in the eighties and nineties would tend to reinforce. However it has been spectacularly effective in depoliticizing labor. The same could be said of the burgeoning growth in armies, police, and private security services. They’re utterly unproductive—nothing but a resource sink. It’s quite possible, in fact, that the very weight of the apparatus created to ensure the ideological victory of capitalism will itself ultimately sink it. But it’s also easy to see how, if the ultimate imperative of those running the world is choking off the possibility of any sense of an inevitable, redemptive future that will be fundamentally different than the world today must be a crucial part of the neoliberal project. Antithesis Yet even those areas of science and technology that did receive massive funding have not seen the breakthroughs originally anticipated ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
760:Fear death?to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, soone fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!
1.
Written in the autumn of 1861, a few months after Mrs.
Browning's death. First published in the Atlantic Monthly
of June 1864 ; also in Men and Women, 1864.
Prospice: the Latin imperative of prospicio.
look forward, look ahead.
7.
The Arch Fear: Death.
15.
bandaged: a reference to the practice of bandaging the
eyes of those who are to be executed by shooting.
19.
arrears: Browning implies that he has had less of
~ Robert Browning, Prospice
,#NFDB
761:Like Plato, Kant believed that human beings have a dual nature: part animal and part rational. The animal part of us follows the laws of nature, just as does a falling rock or a lion killing its prey. There is no morality in nature; there is only causality. But the rational part of us, Kant said, can follow a different kind of law: It can respect rules of conduct, and so people (but not lions) can be judged morally for the degree to which they respect the right rules. What might those rules be? Here Kant devised the cleverest trick in all moral philosophy. He reasoned that for moral rules to be laws, they had to be universally applicable. If gravity worked differently for men and women, or for Italians and Egyptians, we could not speak of it as a law. But rather than searching for rules to which all people would in fact agree (a difficult task, likely to produce only a few bland generalities), Kant turned the problem around and said that people should think about whether the rules guiding their own actions could reasonably be proposed as universal laws. If you are planning to break a promise that has become inconvenient, can you really propose a universal rule that states people ought to break promises that have become inconvenient? Endorsing such a rule would render all promises meaningless. Nor could you consistently will that people cheat, lie, steal, or in any other way deprive other people of their rights or their property, for such evils would surely come back to visit you. This simple test, which Kant called the “categorical imperative,” was extraordinarily powerful. It offered to make ethics a branch of applied logic, thereby giving it the sort of certainty that secular ethics, without recourse to a sacred book, had always found elusive. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
762:What your reasoning ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine - something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I seek you for this, I seek you for that" changes to a sheer "I seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna."
The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and He is He. That is all about it.
I have written all that only to explain what we mean whenwe speak of seeking the Divine for himself and not for anything else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being - for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Seeking the Divine,#NFDB
763:The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.
Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit, except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.
It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of "bourgeois" conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory.
Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that "liberty is the highest political end" — not necessarily the highest end on everyone's personal scale of values. ~ Murray N Rothbard,#NFDB
764:I keep finding myself confronted with the question, “What is the aim of man’s life?” and, no matter what result my reflections reach, no matter what I take to be life’s source, I invariably arrive at the conclusion that the purpose of our human existence is to afford a maximum of help towards the universal development of everything that exists.
If I meditate as I contemplate nature, I perceive everything in nature to be in constant process of development, and each of nature’s constituent portions to be unconsciously contributing towards the development of others. But man is, though a like portion of nature, a portion gifted with consciousness, and therefore bound, like the other portions, to make conscious use of his spiritual faculties in striving for the development of everything existent.
If I meditate as I contemplate history, I perceive the whole human race to be for ever aspiring towards the same end.
If I meditate on reason, if I pass in review man’s spiritual faculties, I find the soul of every man to have in it the same unconscious aspiration, the same imperative demand of the spirit.
If I meditate with an eye upon the history of philosophy, I find everywhere, and always, men to have arrived at the conclusion that the aim of human life is the universal development of humanity.
If I meditate with an eye upon theology, I find almost every nation to be cognizant of a perfect existence towards which it is the aim of mankind to aspire.
So I too shall be safe in taking for the aim of my existence a conscious striving for the universal development of everything existent. I should be the unhappiest of mortals if I could not find a purpose for my life, and a purpose at once universal and useful… Wherefore henceforth all my life must be a constant, active striving for that one purpose. ~ Leo Tolstoy,#NFDB
765:The break with Maoist orthodoxy, at the same time, revealed the reformer’s dilemma. The revolutionary’s dilemma is that most revolutions occur in opposition to what is perceived as abuse of power. But the more existing obligations are dismantled, the more force must be used to re-create a sense of obligation. Hence the frequent outcome of revolution is an increase in central power; the more sweeping the revolution, the more this is true. The dilemma of reform is the opposite. The more the scope of choice is expanded, the harder it becomes to compartmentalize it. In pursuit of productivity, Deng stressed the importance of “thinking things out for yourself” and advocated the “complete” emancipation of minds. Yet what if those minds, once emancipated, demanded political pluralism? Deng’s vision called for “large numbers of pathbreakers who dare to think, explore new ways and generate new ideas,” but it assumed that these pathbreakers would limit themselves to exploring practical ways to build a prosperous China and stay away from exploration of ultimate political objectives. How did Deng envision reconciling emancipation of thought with the imperative for political stability? Was this a calculated risk, based on the assessment that China had no better alternative? Or did he, following Chinese tradition, reject the likelihood of any challenge to political stability, especially as Deng was making the Chinese people better off and considerably freer? Deng’s vision of economic liberalization and national revitalization did not include a significant move toward what would be recognized in the West as pluralistic democracy. Deng sought to preserve one-party rule not so much because he reveled in the perquisites of power (he famously abjured many of the luxuries of Mao and Jiang Qing), but because he believed the alternative was anarchy. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
766:The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle". It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants. ~ Thorstein Veblen, #NFDB
767:Mary
The angel of self-discipline, her guardian
Since she first knew and had to go away
From home that spring to have her child with strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
And her ordeal seemed fiction, and the true
Her mother's firm insistence she was the mother
And the neighbors' acquiescence. So she taught school,
Walking a mile each way to ride the street car—
First books of the Aeneid known by heart,
French, and the French Club Wednesday afternoon;
Then summer replacement typist in an office,
Her sister's family moving in with them,
Depression years and she the only earner.
Saturday, football game and opera broadcasts,
Sunday, staying at home to wash her hair,
The Business Women's Circle Monday night,
And, for a treat, birthdays and holidays,
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald.
The young blond sister long since gone to college,
Nephew and nieces gone, her mother dead,
Instead of Caesar, having to teach First Aid,
The students rowdy, she retired. The rent
For the empty rooms she gave to Thornwell Orphanage,
Unwed Mothers, Temperance, and Foster Parents
And never bought the car she meant to buy;
Too blind at last to do much more than sit
All day in the antique glider on the porch
Listening to cars pass up and down the street.
Each summer, on the grass behind the house—
Cape jasmine, with its scent of August nights
Humid and warm, the soft magnolia bloom
Marked lightly by a slow brown stain—she spread,
For airing, the same small intense collection,
Concert programs, worn trophies, years of yearbooks,
Letters from schoolgirl chums, bracelets of hair
And the same picture: black hair in a bun,
Puzzled eyes in an oval face as young
Or old as innocence, skirt to the ground,
And, seated on the high school steps, the class,
22
The ones to whom she would have said, "Seigneur,
Donnez-nous la force de supporter
La peine," as an example easy to remember,
Formal imperative, object first person plural.
~ Edgar Bowers,#NFDB
768:You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
769:You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves indifference as a power—how could you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature falsely, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. 10. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
770:The church's theology bought into this ahistoricism in different ways: along a more liberal, post-Kantian trajectory, the historical particularities of Christian faith were reduced to atemporal moral teachings that were universal and unconditioned. Thus it turned out that what Jesus taught was something like Kant's categorical imperative - a universal ethics based on reason rather than a set of concrete practices related to a specific community. Liberal Christianity fostered ahistoricism by reducing Christianity to a universal, rational kernel of moral teaching. Along a more conservative, evangelical trajectory (and the Reformation is not wholly innocent here), it was recognized that Christians could not simply jettison the historical particularities of the Christian event: the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, there was still a quasi-Platonic, quasi-gnostic rejection of material history such that evangelicalism, while not devolving to a pure ahistoricism, become dominated by a modified ahistoricism we can call primitivism. Primitivism retains the most minimal commitment to God's action in history (in the life of Christ and usually in the first century of apostolic activity) and seeks to make only this first-century 'New Testament church' normative for contemporary practice. This is usually articulated by a rigid distinction between Scripture and tradition (the latter then usually castigated as 'the traditions of men' as opposed to the 'God-give' realities of Scripture). Such primitivism is thus anticreedal and anticatholic, rejecting any sense that what was unfolded by the church between the first and the twenty-first centuries is at all normative for current faith and practice (the question of the canon's formation being an interesting exception here). Ecumenical creeds and confessions - such as the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed - that unite the church across time and around the globe are not 'live' in primitivist worship practices, which enforce a sense of autonomy or even isolation, while at the same time claiming a direct connection to first-century apostolic practices. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
771:fuck VULGAR SLANG v. [trans.] 1 have sexual intercourse with (someone). [intrans.] (of two people) have sexual intercourse. 2 ruin or damage (something). n. an act of sexual intercourse. [with adj.] a sexual partner. exclam. used alone or as a noun (the fuck) or a verb in various phrases to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, or simply for emphasis. go fuck yourself an exclamation expressing anger or contempt for, or rejection of, someone. not give a fuck (about) used to emphasize indifference or contempt. fuck around spend time doing unimportant or trivial things. have sexual intercourse with a variety of partners. (fuck around with) meddle with. fuck off [usu. in imperative] (of a person) go away. fuck someone over treat someone in an unfair or humiliating way. fuck someone up damage or confuse someone emotionally. fuck something up (or fuck up) do something badly or ineptly. fuck·a·ble adj. early 16th cent.: of Germanic origin (compare Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen); possibly from an Indo-European root meaning 'strike', shared by Latin pugnus 'fist'. Despite the wideness and proliferation of its use in many sections of society, the word fuck remains (and has been for centuries) one of the most taboo words in English. Until relatively recently, it rarely appeared in print; even today, there are a number of euphemistic ways of referring to it in speech and writing, e.g., the F-word, f***, or fk. fuck·er n. VULGAR SLANG a contemptible or stupid person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·head n. VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·ing adj. [attrib.] & adv. [as submodifier] VULGAR SLANG used for emphasis or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise. fuck-me adj. VULGAR SLANG (of clothing, esp. shoes) inviting or perceived as inviting sexual interest. fuck-up n. VULGAR SLANG a mess or muddle. a person who has a tendency to make a mess of things. fuck·wit n. CHIEFLY BRIT., VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fu·coid ~ Oxford University Press, #NFDB
772:When you’re in the middle and stuck, you need to know when to back out and call for help. If that person is someone you live with, set up your signals as Molly and her husband did. Use expressions or words that clearly signify “I need your help now!” It is imperative that parents of spirited children work together. It is not a sign of failure to let others assist you. It is a recognition and acceptance of your own intensity and limits. Blaming or ridiculing only fuels the intensity levels. Teamwork is essential. You have to talk about how you react when your child is upset. You have to decide how you can help and support each other. By working together, you take the sting out of your child’s strong responses. You create a lifeline that keeps you from falling into the abyss of the red zone. If it seems impossible for you and your partner to work together, seek counseling, and make weekly dates a priority so that you can work together. Researchers at the Gottman Institute have found that children of unhappily married parents are chronically aroused physiologically and it takes them much longer to recover from emotional arousal. Your children need you to work together so that they can stay in the green zone, where they are calm and open to your guidance. If you are a single parent, you might think that you can’t ask someone else for help. Single parents often say, “What if I call and interrupt their meal or family time?” Or, “I don’t want to bother anyone.” But good friends don’t mind being bothered. They appreciate the opportunity to help and the joy of giving. Look for someone you know who likes your child and won’t be critical of him or you. You have to be able to trust that they’ll support you, and then feel free to call. As the parent of a spirited child, you have to know and use your resources well. Step Away from It Of course there are times when your kids are plummeting into the red zone and you are all alone, with no one to help. If you realize you’re going over the edge with them, give yourself permission to step out of the fire. It’s much better to take a breather than to have two bulls charging head to head into each other. ~ Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, #NFDB
773:Anger that is sin, on the other hand, is anger that is self-defensive and self-serving, that is resentful of what is done against oneself. It is the anger that leads to murder and to God’s judgment (Matt. 5:21-22). Anger that is selfish, undisciplined, and vindictive is sinful and has no place even temporarily in the Christian life. But anger that is unselfish and is based on love for God and concern for others not only is permissible but commanded. Genuine love cannot help being angered at that which injures the object of that love. But even righteous anger can easily turn to bitterness, resentment, and self-righteousness. Consequently, Paul goes on to say, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. Even the best motivated anger can sour, and we are therefore to put it aside at the end of the day. Taken to bed, it is likely to give the devil an opportunity to use it for his purposes. If anger is prolonged, one may begin to seek vengeance and thereby violate the principle taught in Romans 12:17-21, Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” It may also be that verses 26b-27 refer entirely to this unrighteous anger, in which case Paul uses the imperative in the sense of saying that, because anger may come in a moment and overtake a believer, and because it has such a strong tendency to grow and fester, it should be dealt with immediately—confessed, forsaken, and given to God for cleansing before we end the day. In any case of anger, whether legitimate or not, if it is courted, “advantage [will] be taken of us by Satan” (2 Cor. 2:11), and he will feed our anger with self-pity, pride, self-righteousness, vengeance, defense of our rights, and every other sort of selfish sin and violation of God’s holy will. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
774:Since the launch of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928, tens of thousands of their comrades in the urban centers had been working tirelessly to build power stations, steel mills, and manufacturing plants for heavy machinery. As this historic effort unfolded, it would be essential for the country’s grain-producing regions to do their part—by meeting the increased demand for bread in the cities with leaps in agricultural production. But to pave the way for this ambitious effort, it was deemed necessary to exile a million kulaks—those profiteers and enemies of the common good, who also happened to be the regions’ most capable farmers. The remaining peasants, who viewed newly introduced approaches to agriculture with resentment and suspicion, proved antagonistic to even the smallest efforts at innovation. Tractors, which were meant to usher in the new era by the fleet, ended up being in short supply. These challenges were compounded by uncooperative weather resulting in a collapse of agricultural output. But given the imperative of feeding the cities, the precipitous decline in the harvest was met with increased quotas and requisitions enforced at gunpoint. In 1932, the combination of these intractable forces would result in widespread hardship for the agricultural provinces of old Russia, and death by starvation for millions of peasants in Ukraine. (While many of the young loyalists (like Nina) who joined the udarniks in the countryside would have their faith in the Party tested by what they witnessed, most of Russia, and for that matter the world, would be spared the spectacle of this man-made disaster. For just as peasants from the countryside were forbidden to enter the cities, journalists from the cities were forbidden to enter the countryside; delivery of personal mail was suspended; and the windows of passenger trains were blackened. In fact, so successful was the campaign to contain awareness of the crisis, when word leaked out that millions were starving in Ukraine, Walter Duranty, the lead correspondent for The New York Times in Russia (and one of the ringleaders in the Shalyapin Bar), would report that these rumors of famine were grossly exaggerated and had probably originated with anti-Soviet propagandists. Thus, the world would shrug. And even as the crime unfolded, Duranty would win the Pulitzer Prize.) ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
775:But this is not always the manner of the commencement. The sadhaka is often led gradually and there is a long space between the first turning of the mind and the full assent of the nature to the thing towards which it turns. There may at first be only a vivid intellectual interest, a forcible attraction towards the idea and some imperfect form of practice. Or perhaps there is an effort not favoured by the whole nature, a decision or a turn imposed by an intellectual influence or dictated by personal affection and admiration for someone who is himself consecrated and devoted to the Highest. In such cases, a long period of preparation may be necessary before there comes the irrevocable consecration; and in some instances it may not come. There may be some advance, there may be a strong effort, even much purification and many experiences other than those that are central or supreme; but the life will either be spent in preparation or, a certain stage having been reached, the mind pushed by an insufficient driving-force may rest content at the limit of the effort possible to it. Or there may even be a recoil to the lower life, - what is called in the ordinary parlance of Yoga a fall from the path. This lapse happens because there is a defect at the very centre. The intellect has been interested, the heart attracted, the will has strung itself to the effort, but the whole nature has not been taken captive by the Divine. It has only acquiesced in the interest, the attraction or the endeavour. There has been an experiment, perhaps even an eager experiment, but not a total self-giving to an imperative need of the soul or to an unforsakable ideal. Even such imperfect Yoga has not been wasted; for no upward effort is made in vain. Even if it fails in the present or arrives only at some preparatory stage or preliminary realisation, it has yet determined the soul's future.
But if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call we have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there should be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration,#NFDB
776:complexity of the human constitution :::
There is another direction in which the ordinary practice of Yoga arrives at a helpful but narrowing simplification which is denied to the Sadhaka of the integral aim. The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self's depths and vastnesses behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple. A small but clamorous company of desires, some imperative intellectual and aesthetic cravings, some tastes, a few ruling or prominent ideas amid a great current of unconnected or ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly without or in spite of it, arranging these things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order, -- this is the material of his existence. The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, -- and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of' the soul, -- we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.
The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us -- intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart, the body-has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 74-75,#NFDB
777:Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the vital importance of having a caring adult or mentor in every young person’s life? How many times did I hear about the value of having a coach—whether you are applying for a job for the first time at Walmart or running Walmart? How many times did I hear people stressing the importance of self-motivation and practice and taking ownership of your own career or education as the real differentiators for success? How interesting was it to learn that the highest-paying jobs in the future will be stempathy jobs—jobs that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with another human being? How ironic was it to learn that something as simple as a chicken coop or the basic planting of trees and gardens could be the most important thing we do to stabilize parts of the World of Disorder? Who ever would have thought it would become a national security and personal security imperative for all of us to scale the Golden Rule further and wider than ever? And who can deny that when individuals get so super-empowered and interdependent at the same time, it becomes more vital than ever to be able to look into the face of your neighbor or the stranger or the refugee or the migrant and see in that person a brother or sister? Who can ignore the fact that the key to Tunisia’s success in the Arab Spring was that it had a little bit more “civil society” than any other Arab country—not cell phones or Facebook friends? How many times and in how many different contexts did people mention to me the word “trust” between two human beings as the true enabler of all good things? And whoever thought that the key to building a healthy community would be a dining room table? That’s why I wasn’t surprised that when I asked Surgeon General Murthy what was the biggest disease in America today, without hesitation he answered: “It’s not cancer. It’s not heart disease. It’s isolation. It is the pronounced isolation that so many people are experiencing that is the great pathology of our lives today.” How ironic. We are the most technologically connected generation in human history—and yet more people feel more isolated than ever. This only reinforces Murthy’s earlier point—that the connections that matter most, and are in most short supply today, are the human-to-human ones. ~ Thomas L Friedman, #NFDB
778:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218, #NFDB
779:...the centrality of competitiveness as the key to growth is a recurrent EU motif. Two decades of EC directives on increasing competition in every area, from telecommunications to power generation to collateralizing wholesale funding markets for banks, all bear the same ordoliberal imprint. Similarly, the consistent focus on the periphery states’ loss of competitiveness and the need for deep wage and cost reductions therein, while the role of surplus countries in generating the crisis is utterly ignored, speaks to a deeply ordoliberal understanding of economic management. Savers, after all, cannot be sinners. Similarly, the most recent German innovation of a constitutional debt brake (Schuldenbremse) for all EU countries regardless of their business cycles or structural positions, coupled with a new rules-based fiscal treaty as the solution to the crisis, is simply an ever-tighter ordo by another name.
If states have broken the rules, the only possible policy is a diet of strict austerity to bring them back into conformity with the rules, plus automatic sanctions for those who cannot stay within the rules. There are no fallacies of composition, only good and bad policies. And since states, from an ordoliberal viewpoint, cannot be relied upon to provide the necessary austerity because they are prone to capture, we must have rules and an independent monetary authority to ensure that states conform to the ordo imperative; hence, the ECB. Then, and only then, will growth return. In the case of Greece and Italy in 2011, if that meant deposing a few democratically elected governments, then so be it.
The most remarkable thing about this ordoliberalization of Europe is how it replicates the same error often attributed to the Anglo-American economies: the insistence that all developing states follow their liberal instruction sheets to get rich, the so-called Washington Consensus approach to development that we shall discuss shortly. The basic objection made by late-developing states, such as the countries of East Asia, to the Washington Consensus/Anglo-American idea “liberalize and then growth follows” was twofold. First, this understanding mistakes the outcomes of growth, stable public finances, low inflation, cost competitiveness, and so on, for the causes of growth. Second, the liberal path to growth only makes sense if you are an early developer, since you have no competitors—pace the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century and the United States in the nineteenth century. Yet in the contemporary world, development is almost always state led. ~ Mark Blyth,#NFDB
780:He’d promised she would be “safe,” which she now realized left a great deal of room for personal interpretation. “If I’m going to remain,” she said uneasily, “I think we ought to agree to observe all the proprieties and conventions.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for a beginning, you really shouldn’t be calling me by my given name.”
“Considering the kiss we exchanged in the arbor last night, it seems a little absurd to call you Miss Cameron.”
It was the time to tell him she was Lady Cameron, but Elizabeth was too unstrung by his reference to those unforgettable-and wholly forbidden-moments in his arms to bother with that. “That isn’t the point,” she said firmly. “The point is that although last night did happen, it must not influence our behavior today. Today we ought-ought to be twice as correct in our behavior,” she continued, a little desperately and illogically, “to atone for what happened last night!”
“Is that how it’s done?” he asked, his eyes beginning to glint with amusement. “Somehow I didn’t quite imagine you allowed convention to dictate your every move.”
To a gambler without ties or responsibility, the rules of social etiquette and convention must be tiresome in the extreme, and Elizabeth realized it was imperative to convince him he must yield to her viewpoint. “Oh, but I am,” she prevaricated. “The Camerons are the most conventional people in the world! As you know from last night, I believe in death before dishonor. We also believe in God and country, motherhood and the king, and…and all the proprieties. We’re quite intolerably boring on the subject, actually.”
“I see,” he said, his lips twitching. “Tell me something,” he asked mildly, “why would such a conventional person as yourself have crossed swords with a roomful of men last night in order to protect a stranger’s reputation?”
“Oh, that,” Elizabeth said. “That was just-well, my conventional notion of justice. Besides,” she said, her ire coming to the fore as she recalled the scene in the card room last night, “it made me excessively angry when I realized that the only reason none of them would try to dissuade Lord Everly from shooting you was because you were not their social equal, while Everly is.”
“Social equality?” he teased with a lazy, devastating smile. “What an unusual notion to spring from such a conventional person as yourself.”
Elizabeth was trapped, and she knew it. “The truth is,” she said shakily, “that I am scared to death of being here.”
“I know you are,” he said, sobering, “but I am the last person in the world you’ll ever have to fear. ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
781:She woke to find dawn light, pearly silver tinged with pink, washing into the room. For a moment, she wondered what had woken her, then she glanced at Breckenridge-into his hazel eyes.
"You're awake!" She only just managed not to squeal. The joy leaping through her was near impossible to contain.
He smiled weakly. His lids drooped, fell. "I've been awake for some time, but didn't want to wake you."
His voice was little more than a whisper.
She realized it was the faint pressure of his fingers on hers that had drawn her rom sleep. Those fingers, his hand, were no longer over-warm. Reaching out, she laid her fingers on his forehead. "Your temperature's normal-the fever's broken. Thank God."
Retrieving her hand, refocusing on his face, she felt relief crash through her in a disorienting, almost overpowering wave. "You have to rest." That was imperative; she felt driven by flustered urgency to ensure he understood. "You're mending nicely. Now the crisis has passed, you'll get better day by day. Catriona says that with time you'll be as good as new." Algaria had warned her to assure him of that.
He swallowed; eyes closed, he shifted his head in what she took to be a nod. "I'll rest in a minute. But first...did you mean what you said out there by the bull pen? That you truly want a future with me?"
"Yes." She clutched his hand more tightly between hers. "I meant every word."
His lips curved a fraction, then he sighed. Eyes still closed-she sensed he found his lids too heavy to lift-he murmured, "Good. Because I meant every word, too."
She smiled through sudden tears. "Even about our daughters being allowed to look like Cordelia?"
His smile grew more definite. "Said that aloud, did I? Yes, I meant that, but for pity's sake don't tell her--she'll never let me hear the end of it, and Constance will have my head to boot."
His words were starting to slur again; he was slipping back into healing sleep.
Catriona's words, her warning, rang in Heather's head. She remembered her vow. Rising, she leaned over him; his hand still clasped between hers, and kissed him gently. "Go to sleep and get well, but before you do, I need to tell you this. I love you. I will until the end of my days. I don't expect you to love me back, but that doesn't matter anymore. You have my love regardless, and always will." She kissed him again, sensed he'd heard, but that he was stunned, surprised. He didn't respond.
She drew back. "And now you need to put your mind to getting better. We have a wedding to attend, after all."
She knew he heard that-his features softened, eased.
As he slid into sleep, he was, very gently, smiling. ~ Stephanie Laurens,#NFDB
782:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.
The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.
Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.
And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,#NFDB
783:is turning all life into a unified flow experience. If a person sets out to achieve a difficult enough goal, from which all other goals logically follow, and if he or she invests all energy in developing skills to reach that goal, then actions and feelings will be in harmony, and the separate parts of life will fit together—and each activity will “make sense” in the present, as well as in view of the past and of the future. In such a way, it is possible to give meaning to one’s entire life. But isn’t it incredibly naive to expect life to have a coherent overall meaning? After all, at least since Nietzsche concluded that God was dead, philosophers and social scientists have been busy demonstrating that existence has no purpose, that chance and impersonal forces rule our fate, and that all values are relative and hence arbitrary. It is true that life has no meaning, if by that we mean a supreme goal built into the fabric of nature and human experience, a goal that is valid for every individual. But it does not follow that life cannot be given meaning. Much of what we call culture and civilization consists in efforts people have made, generally against overwhelming odds, to create a sense of purpose for themselves and their descendants. It is one thing to recognize that life is, by itself, meaningless. It is another thing entirely to accept this with resignation. The first fact does not entail the second any more than the fact that we lack wings prevents us from flying. From the point of view of an individual, it does not matter what the ultimate goal is—provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime’s worth of psychic energy. The challenge might involve the desire to have the best beer-bottle collection in the neighborhood, the resolution to find a cure for cancer, or simply the biological imperative to have children who will survive and prosper. As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life. In the past few years I have come to be quite well acquainted with several Muslim professionals—electronics engineers, pilots, businessmen, and teachers, mostly from Saudi Arabia and from the other Gulf states. In talking to them, I was struck with how relaxed most of them seemed to be even under strong pressure. “There is nothing to it,” those I asked about it told me, in different words, but with the same message: “We don’t get upset because we believe that our life is in God’s hands, and whatever He decides will be fine with us.” Such implicit faith used to be widespread in our culture as well, but it is not easy to find it now. Many of us have to discover a goal that will give meaning to life on our own, without the help of a traditional faith. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
784:I wish I'd been accepted sooner and better. When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes--and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history. We choose our own lives. It is not simply that we decide on the behaviors that construct our experience; when given our druthers, we elect to be ourselves. Most of us would like to be more successful or more beautiful or wealthier, and most people endure episodes of low self-esteem or even self-hatred. We despair a hundred times a day. But we retain the startling evolutionary imperative for the fact of ourselves, and with that splinter of grandiosity we redeem our flaws. These parents have, by and large, chosen to love their children, and many of them have chosen to value their own lives, even though they carry what much of the world considers an intolerable burden. Children with horizontal identities alter your self painfully; they also illuminate it. They are receptacles for rage and joy-even for salvation. When we love them, we achieve above all else the rapture of privileging what exists over what we have merely imagined.
A follower of the Dalai Lama who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for decades was asked if he had ever been afraid in jail, and he said his fear was that he would lose compassion for his captors. Parents often think that they've captured something small and vulnerable, but the parents I've profiled here have been captured, locked up with their children's madness or genius or deformity, and the quest is never to lose compassion. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect. Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible.
For some parents of children with horizontal identities, acceptance reaches its apogee when parents conclude that while they supposed that they were pinioned by a great and catastrophic loss of hope, they were in fact falling in love with someone they didn't yet know enough to want. As such parents look back, they see how every stage of loving their child has enriched them in ways they never would have conceived, ways that ar incalculably precious. Rumi said that light enters you at the bandaged place. This book's conundrum is that most of the families described here have ended up grateful for experiences they would have done anything to avoid. ~ Andrew Solomon,#NFDB
785:The sexual cycle averages 26 to 28 days (they tend to speak of it as 26 days, approximating it to the lunar cycle). For 21 or 22 days the individual is somer, sexually inactive, latent. On about the 18th day hormonal changes are initiated by the pituitary control and on the 22nd or 23rd day the individual enters kemmer, estrus. In this first phase of kemmer (Karh, secher) he remains completely androgynous. Gender, and potency, are not attained in isolation. A Gethenian in first-phase kemmer, if kept alone or with others not in kemmer, remains incapable of coitus. Yet the sexual impulse is tremendously strong in this phase, controlling the entire personality, subjecting all other drives to its imperative. When the individual finds a partner in kemmer, hormonal secretion is further stimulated (most importantly by touch—secretion? scent?) until in one partner either a male or female hormonal dominance is established. The genitals engorge or shrink accordingly, foreplay intensifies, and the partner, triggered by the change, takes on the other sexual role (? without exception? If there are exceptions, resulting in kemmer-partners of the same sex, they are so rare as to be ignored). This second phase of kemmer (Karh. thorharmen), the mutual process of establishing sexuality and potency, apparently occurs within a timespan of two to twenty hours. If one of the partners is already in full kemmer, the phase for the newer partner is liable to be quite short; if the two are entering kemmer together, it is likely to take longer. Normal individuals have no predisposition to either sexual role in kemmer; they do not know whether they will be the male or the female, and have no choice in the matter. (Otie Nim wrote that in the Orgoreyn region the use of hormone derivatives to establish a preferred sexuality is quite common; I haven’t seen this done in rural Karhide.) Once the sex is determined it cannot change during the kemmer-period. The culminant phase of kemmer (Karh. thokemmer) lasts from two to five days, during which sexual drive and capacity are at maximum. It ends fairly abruptly, and if conception has not taken place, the individual returns to the somer phase within a few hours (note: Otie Nim thinks this “fourth phase” is the equivalent of the menstrual cycle) and the cycle begins anew. If the individual was in the female role and was impregnated, hormonal activity of course continues, and for the 8.4-month gestation period and the 6- to 8-month lactation period this individual remains female. The male sexual organs remain retracted (as they are in somer), the breasts enlarge somewhat, and the pelvic girdle widens. With the cessation of lactation the female reenters somer and becomes once more a perfect androgyne. No physiological habit is established, and the mother of several children may be the father of several more. Social ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
786:her imperative to “think dialectically”—a maxim drawn from her study of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Because reality is constantly changing, we must constantly detect and analyze the emerging contradictions that are driving this change. And if reality is changing around us, we cannot expect good ideas to hatch within an ivory tower. They instead emerge and develop through daily life and struggle, through collective study and debate among diverse entities, and through trial and error within multiple contexts. Grace often attributes her “having been born female and Chinese” to her sense of being an outsider to mainstream society. Over the past decade she has sharpened this analysis considerably. Reflecting on the limits of her prior encounters with radicalism, Grace fully embraces the feminist critique not only of gender discrimination and inequality but also of the masculinist tendencies that too often come to define a certain brand of movement organizing—one driven by militant posturing, a charismatic form of hierarchical leadership, and a static notion of power seen as a scarce commodity to be acquired and possessed. Grace has struck up a whole new dialogue and built relationships with Asian American activists and intellectuals since the 1998 release of her autobiography, Living for Change. Her reflections on these encounters have reinforced her repeated observation that marginalization serves as a form of liberation. Thus, she has come away impressed with the particular ability of movement-oriented Asian Americans to dissect U.S. society in new ways that transcend the mind-sets of blacks and whites, to draw on their transnational experiences to rethink the nature of the global order, and to enact new propositions free of the constraints and baggage weighing down those embedded in the status quo. Still, Grace’s practical connection to a constantly changing reality for most of her adult life has stemmed from an intimate relationship with the African American community—so much so that informants from the Cointelpro days surmised she was probably Afro-Chinese.3 This connection to black America (and to a lesser degree the pan-African world) has made her a source of intrigue for younger generations grappling with the rising complexities of race and diversity. It has been sustained through both political commitments and personal relationships. Living in Detroit for more than a half century, Grace has developed a stature as one of Motown’s most cherished citizens: penning a weekly column for the city’s largest-circulation black community newspaper; regularly profiled in the mainstream and independent media; frequently receiving awards and honors through no solicitation of her own; constantly visited by students, intellectuals, and activists from around the world; and even speaking on behalf of her friend Rosa Parks after the civil rights icon became too frail for public appearances. ~ Grace Lee Boggs, #NFDB
787:It is futile to pretend the problem doesn’t exist and hope that it will go away. Yet, absurdly, this has been American policy since the September 11 attacks. U.S. officials seem to believe that if they act as if Islam is a religion of peace and the Koran a book of peace, Muslims will feel themselves compelled to behave accordingly. An extreme example of this bizarre assumption came in President Obama’s heralded speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4, 2009.16 Obama was extremely anxious to appear sympathetic and accommodating to Muslim grievances—so much so that he not only quoted the Koran (and did so ham-handedly and out of context, as we have seen), but also signaled in several ways, whether by ignorance or by design, that he was Muslim himself. For example, Obama extended “a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum”—that is, peace be upon you. According to Islamic law, however, this is the greeting that a Muslim extends to a fellow Muslim. To a non-Muslim he is to say, “Peace be upon those who are rightly guided”—in other words, “Peace be upon the Muslims.” Islamic law is silent about what Muslims must do when naïve, non-Muslim, Islamophilic presidents offer the greeting to Muslims. Obama also said the words that Muslims traditionally utter after mentioning the names of prophets—“peace upon them”—after mentioning Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Does he, then, accept Muhammad as a prophet? No reporter has asked him, but that was decidedly the impression he gave, intentionally or not, to the Islamic world. Obama spoke of a “relationship between Islam and the West” marked by “centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars.” He then named three sources of present-day tensions between Muslim countries and the United States: the legacy of Western colonialism; “a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations;” and “the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization,” which “led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.” Significantly, Obama only listed ways in which the West has allegedly mistreated the Islamic world. He said not a word about the Koran’s doctrines of jihad and religious supremacism. Nothing at all about the Koranic imperative to make war against and subjugate non-Muslims as dhimmis. Not a word about the culture of hatred and contempt for non-Muslims that arises from Koranic teachings and which existed long before the ostensibly harmful spread of American culture (“modernity and globalization”) around the world. Obama did refer to “violent extremists” who have “exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims.” The idea that Islamic jihadists are a “small but potent minority of Muslims” is universally accepted dogma, born of ignorance of the Koran’s contents. The jihadists may indeed be a minority of Muslims, but there is no solid evidence that the vast majority of Muslims reject in principle what the jihadists do—and indeed, how could they, given the Koran’s explicit mandates for warfare against Infidels? ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
788:Come, Paul!" she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried -
"My heart will break!"
What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, "Trust me!" lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept.
"Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass," said the calm Madame Beck.
To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - "Laissez-moi!" in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving.
"Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke.
"But this will never do," said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman -
"Sortez d'ici!"
"I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him," she threatened pertinaciously.
"Femme!" cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, "Femme! sortez à l'instant!"
He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt.
"What you do is wrong," pursued Madame; "it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character."
"You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me," said he, "but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less fiercely, "be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!"
This time, in the "leave me" there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.
The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.
"It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he.
"It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said. ~ Charlotte Bront,#NFDB
789:At last I said good-night and stepped into the corridor, startled to find London waiting for me.
“I was told you were here,” he said, by way of explanation.
“It’s late, and you’re off duty,” I pointed out, bewildered. “I’m sure I can make it to my quarters unharmed.”
“Nonetheless, I’ll accompany you.”
There was no humor in his tone, no desire to engage me, and my apprehension grew. When we arrived at my quarters, he followed me into the parlor, and I wondered why everyone was behaving so strangely tonight, for despite how well London and I knew each other, he would normally have waited for an invitation before entering.
“London, what are you--”
He cut me off, closing the door. “Alera, you must know that this war is far from over.”
“What are you talking about?”
He considered me for a moment, then approached to lay his hands on my shoulders, gazing into my uneasy brown eyes.
“I realize that since Narian came into our lives, you and I have not always been on the best of terms. You have not always agreed with me, and you have not always trusted me. But I beg of you to do so now.”
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, for his intensity was disconcerting.
“Please, London. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“I know that you and Narian are betrothed,” he said, confirming my suspicion. “This increases the difficulty of your position, but it is imperative that you do as I say.”
He released me and untied a small pouch from his belt, then took my hand, pressing it into my palm.
“Pour this into a goblet of wine and give it to Narian when he comes to you tonight.”
“Why?” I choked, feeling faint.
“Because he is the only one who can stop us. And because you are the only one he won’t suspect. Please, Alera, you must do this for me. For Hytanica.”
“But what are you going to do?” I demanded. “What exactly is it I’m doing for Hytanica?”
He strode to the window, gazing out at the last streaks of light cast by the setting sun before turning around, his face in shadow.
“Tonight, we will take back our kingdom. Halias and his men are positioned to take care of the Cokyrian sentries on the city wall. Once that’s done, we’ll lock down the gate.” His voice was calm, but forceful. “We’re ready for them, Alera--do you realize we outnumber them? We’ve been planning this for months, but Narian can thwart us. The magic the Overlord taught him is too great. He is unnaturally strong, as quiet as the mist, can conjure fire, cause pain with a wave of his hand and has an array of potions at his disposal. You are our only hope of success.”
I bristled at his assumption that our goals were the same.
“Why would I do this?” I angrily demanded. “People will die. My people, Narian’s people. You’re setting them up to die, and for what? An attempt that will fail! Let me talk to Narian, negotiate for more freedoms. I love Hytanica as much as you do, but this is foolish--no, this is reckless.”
“This is going to happen. Just think of how many people will die if Narian is unleashed.”
“Narian is not a monster.”
“Narian is a weapon.”
We glared at each other until it seemed time had stopped altogether, then London stepped toward me. “Sides aren’t easy to pick. But you know which one needs you the most.”
“And what if Narian doesn’t come to me tonight? What then?”
“He will. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
790:The Grammarians Funeral
Eight Parts of Speech this Day wear Mourning Gowns
Declin'd Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, Nouns.
And not declined, Adverbs and Conjunctions,
In Lillies Porch they stand to do their functions.
With Preposition; but the most affection
Was still observed in the Interjection.
The Substantive seeming the limbed best,
Would set an hand to bear him to his Rest.
The Adjective with very grief did say,
Hold me by strength, or I shall faint away.
The Clouds of Tears did over-cast their faces,
Yea all were in most lamentable Cases.
The five Declensions did the Work decline,
And Told the Pronoun Tu, The work is thine:
But in this case those have no call to go
That want the Vocative, and can't say O!
The Pronouns said that if the Nouns were there,
There was no need of them, they might them spare:
But for the sake of Emphasis they would,
In their Discretion do what ere they could.
Great honour was confer'd on Conjugations,
They were to follow next to the Relations.
Amo did love him best, and Doceo might
Alledge he was his Glory and Delight.
But Lego said by me he got his skill,
And therefore next the Herse I follow will.
Audio said little, hearing them so hot,
Yet knew by him much Learning he had got.
O Verbs the Active were, Or Passive sure,
Sum to be Neuter could not well endure.
But this was common to them all to Moan
Their load of grief they could not soon Depone.
A doleful Day for Verbs, they look so moody,
They drove Spectators to a Mournful Study.
The Verbs irregular, 'twas thought by some,
Would break no rule, if they were pleas'd to come.
Gaudeo could not be found; fearing disgrace
He had with-drawn, sent Maereo in his Place.
Possum did to the utmost he was able,
17
And bore as Stout as if he'd been A Table.
Volo was willing, Nolo some-what stout,
But Malo rather chose, not to stand out.
Possum and Volo wish'd all might afford
Their help, but had not an Imperative Word.
Edo from Service would by no means Swerve,
Rather than fail, he thought the Cakes to Serve.
Fio was taken in a fit, and said,
By him a Mournful POEM should be made.
Fero was willing for to bear a part,
Altho' he did it with an aking heart.
Feror excus'd, with grief he was so Torn,
He could not bear, he needed to be born.
Such Nouns and Verbs as we defective find,
No Grammar Rule did their attendance bind.
They were excepted, and exempted hence,
But Supines, all did blame for negligence.
Verbs Offspring, Participles hand-in-hand,
Follow, and by the same direction stand:
The rest Promiscuously did croud and cumber,
Such Multitudes of each, they wanted Number.
Next to the Corpse to make th' attendance even,
Jove, Mercury, Apollo came from heaven.
And Virgil, Cato, gods, men, Rivers, Winds,
With Elegies, Tears, Sighs, came in their kinds.
Ovid from Pontus hast's Apparrell'd thus,
In Exile-weeds bringing De Tristibus:
And Homer sure had been among the Rout,
But that the Stories say his Eyes were out.
Queens, Cities, Countries, Islands, Come
All Trees, Birds, Fishes, and each Word in Um.
What Syntax here can you expect to find?
Where each one bears such discomposed mind.
Figures of Diction and Construction,
Do little: Yet stand sadly looking on.
That such a Train may in their motion chord,
Prosodia gives the measure Word for Word.
18
~ Benjamin Tompson,#NFDB
791:Hero, who had not failed to notice Miss Milborne's roses, and George's haggard appearance, took the earliest opportunity that offered of following him to his retreat. Her tender heart ached for the pain she knew him to be suffering. It was a pain she was not quite a stranger to, and her own susceptibility made it seem the more imperative to offer such comfort as she could to George.
She found him sitting moodily on a small sofa, a glass of brandy in his hand. He looked up, with a challenging expression in his eyes, but when he saw who had come in his brow cleared, and he rose, setting down his glass, and managing to conjure of the travesty of a smile.
Hero clasped his hand between both hers, saying: 'Dear George, do not heed it! Indeed, she could not have carried violets with that gown!'
'She is wearing Severn's roses,' he replied.
'Oh no! You cannot know that!'
'Mrs. Milborne told Lady Cowper so within my hearing.'
Hero looked dismayed, but rallied. 'It can only be because they were more suited to that gown. Sit down, George! I am persuaded you refine too much upon it.'
He allowed himself to be pulled down on to the sofa beside her, but gave a groan. 'I told her that if she wore my violets I shouldn't know what to think. I have had my answer, and may as well go and blow my brains out without more ado.'
'Oh, do not say so! You know, George, I think you should not have sent that message. Perhaps she may not have quite liked it. Have you spoken with her?'
He shook his head. 'I could not trust myself. Besides, if I came within reach of that curst fellow, Severn, I should very likely find a means of picking a quarrel with him.'
'No, no, don't do that! Should you like it if I were to try if I can discover Isabella's feelings upon this occasion?'
'Thank you! I have observed her to be in excellent spirits!' he said bitterly. 'That one so fair should be so heartless!'
'Indeed, I am sure she is no such thing! She has a little reserve, perhaps, and she does not confide in one, but I feel quite certain Severn has not engaged her affections.'
He was silent for a moment, pleating and repleating the handkerchief he held, his attention apparently absorbed in this foolish task. His lip quivered; he said in a hard voice: 'She will marry him for his possessions, and his rank. It is plain enough.'
'Oh, no! You are unjust, George!She has more heart than you believe.'
'Once I believed-' He stopped, and dropped his head in his hands, with a groan. 'It don't signify! I beg your pardon! I should not be boring on about my affairs. But you cannot know the anguish of having one's love scorned, indeed, I dare say hardly regarded!'
'Dear George, do not say so!' Hero besought him, putting up her hand to smooth his unruly locks. 'I know- oh, I know! But do not allow yourself to think there is no hope of her affections animating towards you! It cannot be but that if one truly loves-' Her voice became suspended; she was obliged to wipe a tear from her cheek.
He put his arm round her, in a brotherly way, and gave her a slight hug. 'Yes, yes, where there is a heart to be won, of course you are right, Kitten! But in "my" case-! There, do not let us dwell upon it any longer! I am the greatest brute alive: I have made you cry, and I would not do so for the world!'
She gave a shaky laugh. 'Only for your sake, dear George! Indeed, I am the happiest creature imaginable, in- in general!'
He turned her face up. 'Are you? I hope you may be, for you deserve to be.'
She smiled mistily, and because it seemed a natural thing to do under the circumstances, he bent his head, and kissed her.
There was nothing at all passionate in this embrace, and Hero had no hesitation in receiving it in the spirit in which it was clearly meant. ~ Georgette Heyer,#NFDB
792:The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (Clark, Christopher) - Your Highlight on page 26 | location 732-759 | Added on Saturday, 3 May 2014 14:31:16 Garašanin articulated this imperative in 1848 during the uprising in the Vojvodina. ‘The Vojvodina Serbs,’ he wrote, ‘expect from all Serbdom a helping hand, so they can triumph over their traditional enemy. […] But because of political factors, we cannot aid them publicly. It only remains for us to aid them in secret.’55 This preference for covert operations can also be observed in Macedonia. Following an abortive Macedonian insurrection against the Turks in August 1903, the new Karadjordjević regime began to operate an active policy in the region. Committees were established to promote Serb guerrilla activity in Macedonia, and there were meetings in Belgrade to recruit and supply bands of fighters. Confronted by the Ottoman minister in Belgrade, the Serbian foreign minister Kaljević denied any involvement by the government and protested that the meetings were in any case not illegal, since they had been convened ‘not for the raising of bands, but merely for collecting funds and expressing sympathy for co-religionists beyond the border’.56 The regicides were deeply involved in this cross-border activity. The conspirator officers and their fellow travellers within the army convened an informal national committee in Belgrade, coordinated the campaign and commanded many of the volunteer units. These were not, strictly speaking, units of the Serbian army proper, but the fact that volunteer officers were immediately granted leave by the army suggested a generous measure of official backing.57 Militia activity steadily expanded in scope, and there were numerous violent skirmishes between Serb četniks (guerrillas) and bands of Bulgarian volunteers. In February 1907, the British government requested that Belgrade put a stop to this activity, which appeared likely to trigger a war between Serbia and Bulgaria. Once again, Belgrade disclaimed responsibility, denying that it was funding četnik activity and declaring that it ‘could not prevent [its people] from defending themselves against foreign bands’. But the plausibility of this posture was undermined by the government’s continuing support for the struggle – in November 1906, the Skupština had already voted 300,000 dinars for aid to Serbs suffering in Old Serbia and Macedonia, and this was followed by a ‘secret credit’ for ‘extraordinary expenses and the defence of national interests’.58 Irredentism of this kind was fraught with risk. It was easy to send guerrilla chiefs into the field, but difficult to control them once they were there. By the winter of 1907, it was clear that a number of the četnik bands were operating in Macedonia independently of any supervision; only with some difficulty did an emissary from Belgrade succeed in re-imposing control. The ‘Macedonian imbroglio’ thus delivered an equivocal lesson, with fateful implications for the events of 1914. On the one hand, the devolution of command functions to activist cells dominated by members of the conspirator network carried the danger that control over Serb national policy might pass from the political centre to irresponsible elements on the periphery. On the other hand, the diplomacy of 1906–7 demonstrated that the fuzzy, informal relationship between the Serbian government and the networks entrusted with delivering irredentist policy could be exploited to deflect political responsibility from Belgrade and maximize the government’s room for manoeuvre. The Belgrade political elite became accustomed to a kind of doublethink founded on the intermittent pretence that the foreign policy of official Serbia and the work of national liberation beyond the frontiers of the state were separate phenomena. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
793:English version by Kunzang Tenzin HOMAGE TO ARYAMANJUSRI! Homage to the destroyer of demonic power! The wind lashes calm waters into rollers and breakers; The king makes multifarious forms out of unity, Seeing many faces of this one Archer, Saraha. The cross-eyed fool sees one lamp as two; The vision and the viewer are one, You broken, brittle mind! Many lamps are lit in the house, But the blind are still in darkness; Sahaja is all-pervasive But the fool cannot see what is under his nose. Just as many rivers are one in the ocean All half-truths are swallowed by the one truth; The effulgence of the sun illuminates all dark corners. Clouds draw water from the ocean to fall as rain on the earth And there is neither increase nor decrease; Just so, reality remains unaltered like the pure sky. Replete with the Buddha's perfections Sahaja is the one essential nature; Beings are born into it and pass into it, Yet there is neither existence nor non-existence in it. Forsaking bliss the fool roams abroad, Hoping for mundane pleasure; Your mouth is full of honey now, Swallow it while you may! Fools attempt to avoid their suffering, The wise enact their pain. Drink the cup of sky-nectar While others hunger for outward appearances. Flies eat filth, spurning the fragrance of sandalwood; Man lost to nirvana furthers his own confusion, Thirsting for the coarse and vulgar. The rain water filling an ox's hoof-print Evaporates when the sun shines; The imperfections of a perfect mind, All are dissolved in perfection. Salt sea water absorbed by clouds turns sweet; The venom of passionate reaction In a strong and selfless mind becomes elixir. The unutterable is free of pain; Non-meditation gives true pleasure. Though we fear the dragon's roar Rain falls from the clouds to ripen the harvest. The nature of beginning and end is here and now, And the first does not exist without the last; The rational fool conceptualising the inconceivable Separates emptiness from compassion. The bee knows from birth That flowers are the source of honey; How can the fool know That samsara and nirvana are one? Facing himself in a mirror The fool sees an alien form; The mind with truth forgotten Serves untruth's outward sham. Flowers' fragrance is intangible Yet its reality pervades the air, Just as mandala circles are informed By a formless presence. Still water stung by an icy wind Freezes hard in starched and jagged shapes; In an emotional mind agitated by critical concepts The unformed becomes hard and intractable. Mind immaculate by nature is untouched By samsara and nirvana's mud; But just like a jewel lost in a swamp Though it retains its lustre it does not shine. As mental sloth increases pure awareness diminishes; As mental sloth increases suffering also grows. Shoots sprout from the seed and leaves from the branches. Separating unity from multiplicity in the mind The light grows dim and we wander in the lower realms; Who is more deserving of pity than he Who walks into fire with his eyes wide open? Obsessed with the joys of sexual embrace The fool believes he knows ultimate truth; He is like someone who stands at his door And, flirting, talks about sex. The wind stirs in the House of Emptiness Exciting delusions of emotional pleasure; Fallen from celestial space, stung, The tormented yogin faints away. Like a brahmin taking rice and butter Offering sacrifice to the flame, He who visualises material things as celestial ambrosia Deludes himself that a dream is ultimate reality. Enlightening the House of Brahma in the fontanelle Stroking the uvala in wanton delight, Confused, believing binding pleasure to be spiritual release, The vain fools calls himself a yogin. Teaching that virtue is irrelevant to intrinsic awareness, He mistakes the lock for the key; Ignorant of the true nature of the gem The fool calls green glass emerald. His mind takes brass for gold, Momentary peak experience for reality accomplished; Clinging to the joy of ephemeral dreams He calls his short-thrift life Eternal Bliss. With a discursive understanding of the symbol EVAM, Creating four seals through an analysis of the moment, He labels his peak experience sahaja: He is clinging to a reflection mistaken for the mirror. Like befuddled deer leaping into a mirage of water Deluded fools in their ignorance cling to outer forms And with their thirst unslaked, bound and confined, They idealise their prison, pretending happiness. The relatively real is free of intellectual constructs, And ultimately real mind, active or quiescent, is no-mind, And this is the supreme,the highest of the high, immaculate; Friends, know this sacred high! In mind absorbed in samadhi that is concept-free, Passion is immaculately pure; Like a lotus rooted in the slime of a lake bottom, This sublime reality is untouched by the pollution of existence. Make solid your vision of all things as visionary dream And you attain transcendence, Instantaneous realisation and equanimity; A strong mind binding the demons of darkness Beyond thought your own spontaneous nature is accomplished. Appearances have never ceased to be their original radiance, And unformed, form never had a substantial nature to be grasped; It is a continuum of unique meditation, In an inactive, stainless, meditative mind that is no-mind. Thus the I is intellect, mind and mind-forms, I the world, all seemingly alien show, I the infinite variety of vision-viewer, I the desire, the anger, the mental sloth - And bodhicitta. Now there is a lamp lit in spiritual darkness Healing the splits riven by the intellect So that all mental defilements are erased. Who can define the nature of detachment? It cannot be denied nor yet affirmed, And ungraspable it is inconceivable. Through conceptualisation fools are bound, While concept-free there is immaculate sahaja. The concepts of unity and multiplicity do not bring integration; Only through awareness do sentient beings reach freedom. Cognition of radiance is strong meditation; Abide in a calm, quiescent mind. Reaching the joy swollen land Powers of seeing expand, And there is joy and laughter; Even chasing objects there is no separation. From joy, buds of pure pleasure emerge, Bursting into blooms of supreme pleasure, And so long as outflow is contained Unutterable bliss will surely mature. What, where and by whom are nothing, Yet the entire event is imperative. Whether love and attachment or desirelessness The form of the event is emptiness. Like pigs we wallow in this sensual mire But what can stain our pearly mind? Nothing can ever contaminate it, And by nothing can we ever be bound.
~ Saraha, The Royal Song of Saraha (Dohakosa)
,#NFDB
794:THE STILLEST HOUR
What happened to me, my friends? You see me distracted, driven away, unwillingly obedient, prepared to
go-alas, to go away from you. Indeed, Zarathustra
must return once more to his solitude; but this time
the bear goes back to his cave without joy. What happened to me? Who ordered this? Alas, my angry mistress wants it, she spoke to me; have I ever yet
mentioned her name to you? Yesterday, toward evening,
there spoke to me my stillest hour: that is the name of
my awesome mistress. And thus it happened; for I must
tell you everything lest your hearts harden against me
for departing suddenly.
Do you know the fright of him who falls asleep? He
is frightened down to his very toes because the ground
gives under him and the dream begins. This I say to
you as a parable. Yesterday, in the stillest hour, the
ground gave under me, the dream began. The hand
moved, the clock of my life drew a breath; never had
I heard such stillness around me: my heart took fright.
Then it spoke to me without voice: "You know it,
Zarathustra?" And I cried with fright at this whispering,
and the blood left my face; but I remained silent.
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "You know
it, Zarathustra, but you do not say itl" And at last I
answered defiantly: "Yes, I know it, but I do not want
to say itl"
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "You do
not want to, Zarathustra? Is this really true? Do not
hide in your defiance." And I cried and trembled like
a child and spoke: "Alas, I would like to, but how can
I? Let me off from this! It is beyond my strength!"
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What do
146
you matter, Zarathustra? Speak your word and break"
And I answered: "Alas, is it my word? Who am l?
I await the worthier one; I am not worthy even of being
broken by it."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What do
you matter? You are not yet humble enough for me.
Humility has the toughest hide." And I answered:
'
at the foot of my height. How high are my peaks? No
one has told me yet. But my valleys I know well."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "O Zarathustra, he who has to move mountains also moves
valleys and hollows." And I answered: "As yet my
words have not moved mountains, and what I said did
not reach men. Indeed, I have gone to men, but as yet
I have not arrived."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What do
you know of that? The dew falls on the grass when the
night is most silent." And I answered: "They mocked
me when I found and went my own way; and in truth
my feet were trembling then. And thus they spoke to
me: 'You have forgotten the way, now you have also
forgotten how to walk.'"
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What
matters their mockery? You are one who has forgotten
how to obey: now you shall command. Do you not
know who is most needed by all? He that commands
great things. To do great things is difficult; but to
comm and great things is more difficult. This is what
is most unforgivable in you: you have the power, and
you do not want to rule." And I answered: "I lack the
lion's voice for commanding."
Then it spoke to me again as a whisper: "It is the
stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that
come on doves' feet guide the world. 0 Zarathustra, you
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shall go as a shadow of that which must come: thus you
will comm and and, commanding, lead the way." And I
answered: "I am ashamed."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "You must
yet become as a child and without shame. The pride of
youth is still upon you; you have become young late;
but whoever would become as a child must overcome
his youth too." And I reflected for a long time and
trembled. But at last I said what I had said at first; "I
do not want to."
Then laughter surrounded me. Alas, how this laughter tore my entrails and slit open my heart! And it
spoke to me for the last time: "O Zarathustra, your
fruit is ripe, but you are not ripe for your fruit. Thus
you must return to your solitude again; for you must
yet become mellow." And again it laughed and fled;
then it became still around me as with a double stillness. But I lay on the ground and sweat poured from
my limbs.
Now you have heard all, and why I must return to
my solitude. Nothing have I kept from you, my friends.
But this too you have heard from me, who is still the
most taciturn of all men-and wants to be. Alas, my
friends, I still could tell you something, I still could
give you something. Why do I not give it? Am I stingy?
But when Zarathustra had spoken these words he was
overcome by the force of his pain and the nearness of
his parting from his friends, and he wept loudly; and
no one knew how to comfort him. At night, however,
he went away alone and left his friends.
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Third Part
You look up when you feel the need for elevation.
And I look down because I am elevated. Who
among you can laugh and be elevated at the same
time? Whoever climbs the highest mountains
laughs at all tragic plays and tragic seriousness.
(Zarathustra, "On Reading and Writing," I, p.
40)
TRANSLATOR S NOTES
1. The Wanderer: The contrast between Zarathustra's sentimentality and his praise of hardness remains characteristic
of the rest of the book.
2. On the Vision and the Riddle: Zarathustra's first account
of the eternal recurrence (see my Nietzsche, .i, II) is
followed by a proto-surrealistic vision of a triumph over
nausea.
3. On Involuntary Bliss: Zarathustra still cannot face the
thought of the eternal recurrence.
4. Before Sunrise: An ode to the sky. Another quotation
from Zweig's essay on Nietzsche seems pertinent: "His
nerves immediately register every meter of height and
every pressure of the weather as a pain in his organs, and
they react rebelliously to every revolt in nature. Rain or
gloomy skies lower his vitality ('overcast skies depress me
deeply'), the weight of low clouds he feels down into his
very intestines, rain 'lowers the potential,' humidity debilitates, dryness vivifies, sunshine is salvation, winter is a kind
of paralysis and death. The quivering barometer needle of
his April-like, changeable nerves never stands still-most
nearly perhaps in cloudless landscapes, on the windless tablelands of the Engadine." In this chapter the phrase "beyond
good and evil" is introduced; also one line, slightly varied,
of the "Drunken Song" (see below). Another important
149
theme in Nietzsche's thought: the praise of chance and "a
little reason" as opposed to any divine purpose.
5. On Virtue That Makes Small: "Do whatever you will,
but . . .": What Nietzsche is concerned with is not casuistry but character, not a code of morals but a kind of man,
not a syllabus of behavior but a state of being.
6. Upon the Mount of Olives: "'The ice of knowledge will
yet freeze him to death!' they moan." Compare Stefan
George's poem on the occasion of Nietzsche's death (my
Nietzsche, Prologue, II): "He came too late who said to thee
imploring: There is no way left over icy cliffs."
7. On Passing By: Zarathustra's ape, or "grunting swine,"
unintentionally parodies Zarathustra's attitude and style.
His denunciations are born of wounded vanity and vengefulness, while Zarathustra's contempt is begotten by love;
and "where one can no longer love, there one should pass
by."
8. On Apostates: Stylistically, Zarathustra is now often little
better than his ape. But occasional epigrams show his old
power: the third paragraph in section 2, for instance.
9. The Return Home: "Among men you will always seem
wild and strange," his solitude says to Zarathustra. But
"here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter
you, for they want to ride on your back. On every parable
you ride to every truth." The discipline of communication might have served the philosopher better than the
indiscriminate flattery of his solitude. But in this respect
too, it was not given to Nietzsche to live in blissful
ignorance: compare, for example, "The Song of Melancholy" in Part Four.
io. On the Three Evils: The praise of so-called evil as an
ingredient of greatness is central in Nietzsche's thought,
from his early fragment, Homer's Contest, to his Antichrist.
There are few problems the self-styled immoralist pursued
so persistently. Whether he calls attention to the element
of cruelty in the Greek agon or denounces Christianity for
vilifying sex, whether he contrasts sublimation and extirpation or the egoism of the creative and the vengeful: all
these are variations of one theme. In German, the three
evils in this chapter are Wollust, Herrschsucht, Selbstsucht.
For the first there is no exact equivalent in English. In
this chapter, "lust" might do in some sentences, "voluptuousness" in others, but each would be quite inaccurate
half the time, and the context makes it imperative that
the same word be used throughout. There is only one
word in English that renders Nietzsche's meaning perfectly
in every single sentence: sex. Its only disadvantage: it is,
to put it mildly, a far less poetic word than Wollust, and
hence modifies the tone though not Nietzsche's meaning.
But if we reflect on the three things which, according to
Nietzsche, had been maligned most, under the influence of
Christianity, and which he sought to rehabilitate or revaluate-were they not selfishness, the will to power, and sex?
Nietzsche's early impact was in some ways comparable to
that of Freud or Havelock Ellis. But prudery was for him
at most one of three great evils, one kind of hypocrisy, one
aspect of man's betrayal of the earth and of himself.
i1. On the Spirit of Gravity: It is not only the metaphor
of the camel that points back to the first chapter of Part
One: the dead weight of convention is a prime instance of
what is meant by the spirit of gravity; and the bird that
outsoars tradition is, like the child and the self-propelled
wheel at the beginning of the book, a symbol of creativity.
The creator, however, is neither an "evil beast" nor an
"evil tamer of beasts"-neither a profligate nor an ascetic:
he integrates what is in him, perfects and lavishes himself, and says, "This is my way; where is yours?" Michelangelo and Mozart do not offer us "the way" but a challenge and a promise of what is possible.
12. On Old and New Tablets: Attempt at a grand summary,
full of allusions to, and quotations from, previous chapters
Its unevenness is nowhere more striking than in section 12,
with its puns on "crusades." Such sections as 5, 7, and 8,
on the other hand, certainly deserve attention. The despot
in section ii, who has all history rewritten, seems to point
forward in time to Hitler, of whose racial legislation it
151
could indeed be said: "with the grandfa ther, however,
time ends." Section 15 points back to Luther. Section zo
exposes in advance Stefan George's misconception when he
ended his second poem on Nietzsche (my Nietzsche, p.
iil):
"The warner went-the wheel that downward rolls /
To emptiness no arm now tackles in the spokes." The
penultimate paragraph of this section is more "playful"
in the original: Ein Vorspiel bin ich besserer Spieler, oh
meine Braiderl Ein Beispiell In section 25 the key word is
Versuch, one of Nietzsche's favorite words, which means
experiment, attempt, trial. Sometimes he associates it with
suchen, searching. (In Chapter 2, "On the Vision and
the Riddle," Sucher, Versucher has been rendered "searchers, researchers.") Section 29, finally, is used again, with
minute changes, to conclude Twilight of the Idols.
13. The Convalescent: Zarathustra still cannot face the
thought of the eternal recurrence but speaks about human
speech and cruelty. In the end, his animals expound the
eternal recurrence.
14 On the Great Longing: Hymn to his soul: Zarathustra
and his soul wonder which of them should be grateful to
the other.
15. The Other Dancing Song: Life and wisdom as women
again; but in this dancing song, life is in complete control,
and when Zarathustra's imagination runs away with him
he gets his face slapped. What he whispers into the ear
of life at the end of section 2 is, no doubt, that after his
death he will yet recur eternally. The song at the end,
punctuated by the twelve strokes of the bell, is interpreted
in "The Drunken Song" in Part Four.
i6. The Seven Seals: The eternal recurrence of the small
man no longer nauseates Zarathustra. His affirmation now is
boundless and without reservation: "For I love you, 0
eternity."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, THE STILLEST HOUR
,#NFDB
795:Tasker Norcross
“Whether all towns and all who live in them—
So long as they be somewhere in this world
That we in our complacency call ours—
Are more or less the same, I leave to you.
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,
We’ve all two legs—and as for that, we haven’t—
There were three kinds of men where I was born:
The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross.
Now there are two kinds.”
“Meaning, as I divine,
Your friend is dead,” I ventured.
Ferguson,
Who talked himself at last out of the world
He censured, and is therefore silent now,
Agreed indifferently: “My friends are dead—
Or most of them.”
“Remember one that isn’t,”
I said, protesting. “Honor him for his ears;
Treasure him also for his understanding.”
Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again:
“You have an overgrown alacrity
For saying nothing much and hearing less;
And I’ve a thankless wonder, at the start,
How much it is to you that I shall tell
What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross,
And how much to the air that is around you.
But given a patience that is not averse
To the slow tragedies of haunted men—
Horrors, in fact, if you’ve a skilful eye
To know them at their firesides, or out walking,—”
“Horrors,” I said, “are my necessity;
And I would have them, for their best effect,
Always out walking.”
Ferguson frowned at me:
265
“The wisest of us are not those who laugh
Before they know. Most of us never know—
Or the long toil of our mortality
Would not be done. Most of us never know—
And there you have a reason to believe
In God, if you may have no other. Norcross,
Or so I gather of his infirmity,
Was given to know more than he should have known,
And only God knows why. See for yourself
An old house full of ghosts of ancestors,
Who did their best, or worst, and having done it,
Died honorably; and each with a distinction
That hardly would have been for him that had it,
Had honor failed him wholly as a friend.
Honor that is a friend begets a friend.
Whether or not we love him, still we have him;
And we must live somehow by what we have,
Or then we die. If you say chemistry,
Then you must have your molecules in motion,
And in their right abundance. Failing either,
You have not long to dance. Failing a friend,
A genius, or a madness, or a faith
Larger than desperation, you are here
For as much longer than you like as may be.
Imagining now, by way of an example,
Myself a more or less remembered phantom—
Again, I should say less—how many times
A day should I come back to you? No answer.
Forgive me when I seem a little careless,
But we must have examples, or be lucid
Without them; and I question your adherence
To such an undramatic narrative
As this of mine, without the personal hook.”
“A time is given in Ecclesiastes
For divers works,” I told him. “Is there one
For saying nothing in return for nothing?
If not, there should be.” I could feel his eyes,
And they were like two cold inquiring points
Of a sharp metal. When I looked again,
To see them shine, the cold that I had felt
Was gone to make way for a smouldering
266
Of lonely fire that I, as I knew then,
Could never quench with kindness or with lies.
I should have done whatever there was to do
For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned
In honesty for once around the clock
The loss of him, for my sake or for his,
Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve,
Had I the power and the unthinking will
To make him tread again without an aim
The road that was behind him—and without
The faith, or friend, or genius, or the madness
That he contended was imperative.
After a silence that had been too long,
“It may be quite as well we don’t,” he said;
“As well, I mean, that we don’t always say it.
You know best what I mean, and I suppose
You might have said it better. What was that?
Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible?
Well, it’s a word; and a word has its use,
Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave.
It’s a good word enough. Incorrigible,
May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross.
See for yourself that house of his again
That he called home: An old house, painted white,
Square as a box, and chillier than a tomb
To look at or to live in. There were trees—
Too many of them, if such a thing may be—
Before it and around it. Down in front
There was a road, a railroad, and a river;
Then there were hills behind it, and more trees.
The thing would fairly stare at you through trees,
Like a pale inmate out of a barred window
With a green shade half down; and I dare say
People who passed have said: ‘There’s where he lives.
We know him, but we do not seem to know
That we remember any good of him,
Or any evil that is interesting.
There you have all we know and all we care.’
They might have said it in all sorts of ways;
And then, if they perceived a cat, they might
Or might not have remembered what they said.
267
The cat might have a personality—
And maybe the same one the Lord left out
Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it,
Saw the same sun go down year after year;
All which at last was my discovery.
And only mine, so far as evidence
Enlightens one more darkness. You have known
All round you, all your days, men who are nothing—
Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet
Of any other need it has of them
Than to make sextons hardy—but no less
Are to themselves incalculably something,
And therefore to be cherished. God, you see,
Being sorry for them in their fashioning,
Indemnified them with a quaint esteem
Of self, and with illusions long as life.
You know them well, and you have smiled at them;
And they, in their serenity, may have had
Their time to smile at you. Blessed are they
That see themselves for what they never were
Or were to be, and are, for their defect,
At ease with mirrors and the dim remarks
That pass their tranquil ears.”
“Come, come,” said I;
“There may be names in your compendium
That we are not yet all on fire for shouting.
Skin most of us of our mediocrity,
We should have nothing then that we could scratch.
The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please,
And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross.”
Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation,
While a dead sigh came out of him. “Good God!”
He said, and said it only half aloud,
As if he knew no longer now, nor cared,
If one were there to listen: “Have I said nothing—
Nothing at all—of Norcross? Do you mean
To patronize him till his name becomes
A toy made out of letters? If a name
Is all you need, arrange an honest column
Of all the people you have ever known
268
That you have never liked. You’ll have enough;
And you’ll have mine, moreover. No, not yet.
If I assume too many privileges,
I pay, and I alone, for their assumption;
By which, if I assume a darker knowledge
Of Norcross than another, let the weight
Of my injustice aggravate the load
That is not on your shoulders. When I came
To know this fellow Norcross in his house,
I found him as I found him in the street—
No more, no less; indifferent, but no better.
‘Worse’ were not quite the word: he was not bad;
He was not… well, he was not anything.
Has your invention ever entertained
The picture of a dusty worm so dry
That even the early bird would shake his head
And fly on farther for another breakfast?”
“But why forget the fortune of the worm,”
I said, “if in the dryness you deplore
Salvation centred and endured? Your Norcross
May have been one for many to have envied.”
“Salvation? Fortune? Would the worm say that?
He might; and therefore I dismiss the worm
With all dry things but one. Figures away,
Do you begin to see this man a little?
Do you begin to see him in the air,
With all the vacant horrors of his outline
For you to fill with more than it will hold?
If so, you needn’t crown yourself at once
With epic laurel if you seem to fill it.
Horrors, I say, for in the fires and forks
Of a new hell—if one were not enough—
I doubt if a new horror would have held him
With a malignant ingenuity
More to be feared than his before he died.
You smile, as if in doubt. Well, smile again.
Now come into his house, along with me:
The four square sombre things that you see first
Around you are four walls that go as high
As to the ceiling. Norcross knew them well,
269
And he knew others like them. Fasten to that
With all the claws of your intelligence;
And hold the man before you in his house
As if he were a white rat in a box,
And one that knew himself to be no other.
I tell you twice that he knew all about it,
That you may not forget the worst of all
Our tragedies begin with what we know.
Could Norcross only not have known, I wonder
How many would have blessed and envied him!
Could he have had the usual eye for spots
On others, and for none upon himself,
I smile to ponder on the carriages
That might as well as not have clogged the town
In honor of his end. For there was gold,
You see, though all he needed was a little,
And what he gave said nothing of who gave it.
He would have given it all if in return
There might have been a more sufficient face
To greet him when he shaved. Though you insist
It is the dower, and always, of our degree
Not to be cursed with such invidious insight,
Remember that you stand, you and your fancy,
Now in his house; and since we are together,
See for yourself and tell me what you see.
Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise
Of recognition when you find a book
That you would not as lief read upside down
As otherwise, for example. If there you fail,
Observe the walls and lead me to the place,
Where you are led. If there you meet a picture
That holds you near it for a longer time
Than you are sorry, you may call it yours,
And hang it in the dark of your remembrance,
Where Norcross never sees. How can he see
That has no eyes to see? And as for music,
He paid with empty wonder for the pangs
Of his infrequent forced endurance of it;
And having had no pleasure, paid no more
For needless immolation, or for the sight
Of those who heard what he was never to hear.
To see them listening was itself enough
270
To make him suffer; and to watch worn eyes,
On other days, of strangers who forgot
Their sorrows and their failures and themselves
Before a few mysterious odds and ends
Of marble carted from the Parthenon—
And all for seeing what he was never to see,
Because it was alive and he was dead—
Here was a wonder that was more profound
Than any that was in fiddles and brass horns.
“He knew, and in his knowledge there was death.
He knew there was a region all around him
That lay outside man’s havoc and affairs,
And yet was not all hostile to their tumult,
Where poets would have served and honored him,
And saved him, had there been anything to save.
But there was nothing, and his tethered range
Was only a small desert. Kings of song
Are not for thrones in deserts. Towers of sound
And flowers of sense are but a waste of heaven
Where there is none to know them from the rocks
And sand-grass of his own monotony
That makes earth less than earth. He could see that,
And he could see no more. The captured light
That may have been or not, for all he cared,
The song that is in sculpture was not his,
But only, to his God-forgotten eyes,
One more immortal nonsense in a world
Where all was mortal, or had best be so,
And so be done with. ‘Art,’ he would have said,
‘Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;’
And with a few profundities like that
He would have controverted and dismissed
The benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them,
As he had heard of his aspiring soul—
Never to the perceptible advantage,
In his esteem, of either. ‘Faith,’ he said,
Or would have said if he had thought of it,
‘Lives in the same house with Philosophy,
Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn
As orphans after war. He could see stars,
On a clear night, but he had not an eye
271
To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words,
But had no ear for silence when alone.
He could eat food of which he knew the savor,
But had no palate for the Bread of Life,
That human desperation, to his thinking,
Made famous long ago, having no other.
Now do you see? Do you begin to see?”
I told him that I did begin to see;
And I was nearer than I should have been
To laughing at his malign inclusiveness,
When I considered that, with all our speed,
We are not laughing yet at funerals.
I see him now as I could see him then,
And I see now that it was good for me,
As it was good for him, that I was quiet;
For Time’s eye was on Ferguson, and the shaft
Of its inquiring hesitancy had touched him,
Or so I chose to fancy more than once
Before he told of Norcross. When the word
Of his release (he would have called it so)
Made half an inch of news, there were no tears
That are recorded. Women there may have been
To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing,
The few there were to mourn were not for love,
And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least,
Was in the meagre legend that I gathered
Years after, when a chance of travel took me
So near the region of his nativity
That a few miles of leisure brought me there;
For there I found a friendly citizen
Who led me to his house among the trees
That were above a railroad and a river.
Square as a box and chillier than a tomb
It was indeed, to look at or to live in—
All which had I been told. “Ferguson died,”
The stranger said, “and then there was an auction.
I live here, but I’ve never yet been warm.
Remember him? Yes, I remember him.
I knew him—as a man may know a tree—
For twenty years. He may have held himself
A little high when he was here, but now …
Yes, I remember Ferguson. Oh, yes.”
272
Others, I found, remembered Ferguson,
But none of them had heard of Tasker Norcross.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
796:Isaac And Archibald
(To Mrs. Henry Richards)
Isaac and Archibald were two old men.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them
A little; but I must have honored them
For they were old, and they were good to me.
I do not think of either of them now,
Without remembering, infallibly,
A journey that I made one afternoon
With Isaac to find out what Archibald
Was doing with his oats. It was high time
Those oats were cut, said Isaac; and he feared
That Archibald—well, he could never feel
Quite sure of Archibald. Accordingly
The good old man invited me—that is,
Permitted me—to go along with him;
And I, with a small boy’s adhesiveness
To competent old age, got up and went.
I do not know that I cared overmuch
For Archibald’s or anybody’s oats,
But Archibald was quite another thing,
And Isaac yet another; and the world
Was wide, and there was gladness everywhere.
We walked together down the River Road
With all the warmth and wonder of the land
Around us, and the wayside flash of leaves,—
And Isaac said the day was glorious;
But somewhere at the end of the first mile
I found that I was figuring to find
How long those ancient legs of his would keep
The pace that he had set for them. The sun
Was hot, and I was ready to sweat blood;
But Isaac, for aught I could make of him,
Was cool to his hat-band. So I said then
With a dry gasp of affable despair,
Something about the scorching days we have
128
In August without knowing it sometimes;
But Isaac said the day was like a dream,
And praised the Lord, and talked about the breeze.
I made a fair confession of the breeze,
And crowded casually on his thought
The nearness of a profitable nook
That I could see. First I was half inclined
To caution him that he was growing old,
But something that was not compassion soon
Made plain the folly of all subterfuge.
Isaac was old, but not so old as that.
So I proposed, without an overture,
That we be seated in the shade a while,
And Isaac made no murmur. Soon the talk
Was turned on Archibald, and I began
To feel some premonitions of a kind
That only childhood knows; for the old man
Had looked at me and clutched me with his eye,
And asked if I had ever noticed things.
I told him that I could not think of them,
And I knew then, by the frown that left his face
Unsatisfied, that I had injured him.
“My good young friend,” he said, “you cannot feel
What I have seen so long. You have the eyes—
Oh, yes—but you have not the other things:
The sight within that never will deceive,
You do not know—you have no right to know;
The twilight warning of experience,
The singular idea of loneliness,—
These are not yours. But they have long been mine,
And they have shown me now for seven years
That Archibald is changing. It is not
So much that he should come to his last hand,
And leave the game, and go the old way down;
But I have known him in and out so long,
And I have seen so much of good in him
That other men have shared and have not seen,
And I have gone so far through thick and thin,
Through cold and fire with him, that now it brings
To this old heart of mine an ache that you
Have not yet lived enough to know about.
129
But even unto you, and your boy’s faith,
Your freedom, and your untried confidence,
A time will come to find out what it means
To know that you are losing what was yours,
To know that you are being left behind;
And then the long contempt of innocence—
God bless you, boy!—don’t think the worse of it
Because an old man chatters in the shade—
Will all be like a story you have read
In childhood and remembered for the pictures.
And when the best friend of your life goes down,
When first you know in him the slackening
That comes, and coming always tells the end,—
Now in a common word that would have passed
Uncaught from any other lips than his,
Now in some trivial act of every day,
Done as he might have done it all along
But for a twinging little difference
That nips you like a squirrel’s teeth—oh, yes,
Then you will understand it well enough.
But oftener it comes in other ways;
It comes without your knowing when it comes;
You know that he is changing, and you know
That he is going—just as I know now
That Archibald is going, and that I
Am staying.… Look at me, my boy,
And when the time shall come for you to see
That I must follow after him, try then
To think of me, to bring me back again,
Just as I was to-day. Think of the place
Where we are sitting now, and think of me—
Think of old Isaac as you knew him then,
When you set out with him in August once
To see old Archibald.”—The words come back
Almost as Isaac must have uttered them,
And there comes with them a dry memory
Of something in my throat that would not move.
If you had asked me then to tell just why
I made so much of Isaac and the things
He said, I should have gone far for an answer;
130
For I knew it was not sorrow that I felt,
Whatever I may have wished it, or tried then
To make myself believe. My mouth was full
Of words, and they would have been comforting
To Isaac, spite of my twelve years, I think;
But there was not in me the willingness
To speak them out. Therefore I watched the ground;
And I was wondering what made the Lord
Create a thing so nervous as an ant,
When Isaac, with commendable unrest,
Ordained that we should take the road again—
For it was yet three miles to Archibald’s,
And one to the first pump. I felt relieved
All over when the old man told me that;
I felt that he had stilled a fear of mine
That those extremities of heat and cold
Which he had long gone through with Archibald
Had made the man impervious to both;
But Isaac had a desert somewhere in him,
And at the pump he thanked God for all things
That He had put on earth for men to drink,
And he drank well,—so well that I proposed
That we go slowly lest I learn too soon
The bitterness of being left behind,
And all those other things. That was a joke
To Isaac, and it pleased him very much;
And that pleased me—for I was twelve years old.
At the end of an hour’s walking after that
The cottage of old Archibald appeared.
Little and white and high on a smooth round hill
It stood, with hackmatacks and apple-trees
Before it, and a big barn-roof beyond;
And over the place—trees, house, fields and all—
Hovered an air of still simplicity
And a fragrance of old summers—the old style
That lives the while it passes. I dare say
That I was lightly conscious of all this
When Isaac, of a sudden, stopped himself,
And for the long first quarter of a minute
Gazed with incredulous eyes, forgetful quite
Of breezes and of me and of all else
131
Under the scorching sun but a smooth-cut field,
Faint yellow in the distance. I was young,
But there were a few things that I could see,
And this was one of them.—“Well, well!” said he;
And “Archibald will be surprised, I think,”
Said I. But all my childhood subtlety
Was lost on Isaac, for he strode along
Like something out of Homer—powerful
And awful on the wayside, so I thought.
Also I thought how good it was to be
So near the end of my short-legged endeavor
To keep the pace with Isaac for five miles.
Hardly had we turned in from the main road
When Archibald, with one hand on his back
And the other clutching his huge-headed cane,
Came limping down to meet us.—“Well! well! well!”
Said he; and then he looked at my red face,
All streaked with dust and sweat, and shook my hand,
And said it must have been a right smart walk
That we had had that day from Tilbury Town.—
“Magnificent,” said Isaac; and he told
About the beautiful west wind there was
Which cooled and clarified the atmosphere.
“You must have made it with your legs, I guess,”
Said Archibald; and Isaac humored him
With one of those infrequent smiles of his
Which he kept in reserve, apparently,
For Archibald alone. “But why,” said he,
“Should Providence have cider in the world
If not for such an afternoon as this?”
And Archibald, with a soft light in his eyes,
Replied that if he chose to go down cellar,
There he would find eight barrels—one of which
Was newly tapped, he said, and to his taste
An honor to the fruit. Isaac approved
Most heartily of that, and guided us
Forthwith, as if his venerable feet
Were measuring the turf in his own door-yard,
Straight to the open rollway. Down we went,
Out of the fiery sunshine to the gloom,
Grateful and half sepulchral, where we found
132
The barrels, like eight potent sentinels,
Close ranged along the wall. From one of them
A bright pine spile stuck out alluringly,
And on the black flat stone, just under it,
Glimmered a late-spilled proof that Archibald
Had spoken from unfeigned experience.
There was a fluted antique water-glass
Close by, and in it, prisoned, or at rest,
There was a cricket, of the brown soft sort
That feeds on darkness. Isaac turned him out,
And touched him with his thumb to make him jump,
And then composedly pulled out the plug
With such a practised hand that scarce a drop
Did even touch his fingers. Then he drank
And smacked his lips with a slow patronage
And looked along the line of barrels there
With a pride that may have been forgetfulness
That they were Archibald’s and not his own.
“I never twist a spigot nowadays,”
He said, and raised the glass up to the light,
“But I thank God for orchards.” And that glass
Was filled repeatedly for the same hand
Before I thought it worth while to discern
Again that I was young, and that old age,
With all his woes, had some advantages.
“Now, Archibald,” said Isaac, when we stood
Outside again, “I have it in my mind
That I shall take a sort of little walk—
To stretch my legs and see what you are doing.
You stay and rest your back and tell the boy
A story: Tell him all about the time
In Stafford’s cabin forty years ago,
When four of us were snowed up for ten days
With only one dried haddock. Tell him all
About it, and be wary of your back.
Now I will go along.”—I looked up then
At Archibald, and as I looked I saw
Just how his nostrils widened once or twice
And then grew narrow. I can hear today
The way the old man chuckled to himself—
Not wholesomely, not wholly to convince
Another of his mirth,—as I can hear
133
The lonely sigh that followed.—But at length
He said: “The orchard now’s the place for us;
We may find something like an apple there,
And we shall have the shade, at any rate.”
So there we went and there we laid ourselves
Where the sun could not reach us; and I champed
A dozen of worm-blighted astrakhans
While Archibald said nothing—merely told
The tale of Stafford’s cabin, which was good,
Though “master chilly”—after his own phrase—
Even for a day like that. But other thoughts
Were moving in his mind, imperative,
And writhing to be spoken: I could see
The glimmer of them in a glance or two,
Cautious, or else unconscious, that he gave
Over his shoulder: … “Stafford and the rest—
But that’s an old song now, and Archibald
And Isaac are old men. Remember, boy,
That we are old. Whatever we have gained,
Or lost, or thrown away, we are old men.
You look before you and we look behind,
And we are playing life out in the shadow—
But that’s not all of it. The sunshine lights
A good road yet before us if we look,
And we are doing that when least we know it;
For both of us are children of the sun,
Like you, and like the weed there at your feet.
The shadow calls us, and it frightens us—
We think; but there’s a light behind the stars
And we old fellows who have dared to live,
We see it—and we see the other things,
The other things … Yes, I have seen it come
These eight years, and these ten years, and I know
Now that it cannot be for very long
That Isaac will be Isaac. You have seen—
Young as you are, you must have seen the strange
Uncomfortable habit of the man?
He’ll take my nerves and tie them in a knot
Sometimes, and that’s not Isaac. I know that—
And I know what it is: I get it here
A little, in my knees, and Isaac—here.”
The old man shook his head regretfully
134
And laid his knuckles three times on his forehead.
“That’s what it is: Isaac is not quite right.
You see it, but you don’t know what it means:
The thousand little differences—no,
You do not know them, and it’s well you don’t;
You’ll know them soon enough—God bless you, boy!—
You’ll know them, but not all of them—not all.
So think of them as little as you can:
There’s nothing in them for you, or for me—
But I am old and I must think of them;
I’m in the shadow, but I don’t forget
The light, my boy,—the light behind the stars.
Remember that: remember that I said it;
And when the time that you think far away
Shall come for you to say it—say it, boy;
Let there be no confusion or distrust
In you, no snarling of a life half lived,
Nor any cursing over broken things
That your complaint has been the ruin of.
Live to see clearly and the light will come
To you, and as you need it.—But there, there,
I’m going it again, as Isaac says,
And I’ll stop now before you go to sleep.—
Only be sure that you growl cautiously,
And always where the shadow may not reach you.”
Never shall I forget, long as I live,
The quaint thin crack in Archibald’s voice,
The lonely twinkle in his little eyes,
Or the way it made me feel to be with him.
I know I lay and looked for a long time
Down through the orchard and across the road,
Across the river and the sun-scorched hills
That ceased in a blue forest, where the world
Ceased with it. Now and then my fancy caught
A flying glimpse of a good life beyond—
Something of ships and sunlight, streets and singing,
Troy falling, and the ages coming back,
And ages coming forward: Archibald
And Isaac were good fellows in old clothes,
And Agamemnon was a friend of mine;
Ulysses coming home again to shoot
135
With bows and feathered arrows made another,
And all was as it should be. I was young.
So I lay dreaming of what things I would,
Calm and incorrigibly satisfied
With apples and romance and ignorance,
And the still smoke from Archibald’s clay pipe.
There was a stillness over everything,
As if the spirit of heat had laid its hand
Upon the world and hushed it; and I felt
Within the mightiness of the white sun
That smote the land around us and wrought out
A fragrance from the trees, a vital warmth
And fullness for the time that was to come,
And a glory for the world beyond the forest.
The present and the future and the past,
Isaac and Archibald, the burning bush,
The Trojans and the walls of Jericho,
Were beautifully fused; and all went well
Till Archibald began to fret for Isaac
And said it was a master day for sunstroke.
That was enough to make a mummy smile,
I thought; and I remained hilarious,
In face of all precedence and respect,
Till Isaac (who had come to us unheard)
Found he had no tobacco, looked at me
Peculiarly, and asked of Archibald
What ailed the boy to make him chirrup so.
From that he told us what a blessed world
The Lord had given us.—“But, Archibald,”
He added, with a sweet severity
That made me think of peach-skins and goose-flesh,
“I’m half afraid you cut those oats of yours
A day or two before they were well set.”
“They were set well enough,” said Archibald,—
And I remarked the process of his nose
Before the words came out. “But never mind
Your neighbor’s oats: you stay here in the shade
And rest yourself while I go find the cards.
We’ll have a little game of seven-up
And let the boy keep count.”—“We’ll have the game,
Assuredly,” said Isaac; “and I think
136
That I will have a drop of cider, also.”
They marched away together towards the house
And left me to my childish ruminations
Upon the ways of men. I followed them
Down cellar with my fancy, and then left them
For a fairer vision of all things at once
That was anon to be destroyed again
By the sound of voices and of heavy feet—
One of the sounds of life that I remember,
Though I forget so many that rang first
As if they were thrown down to me from Sinai.
So I remember, even to this day,
Just how they sounded, how they placed themselves,
And how the game went on while I made marks
And crossed them out, and meanwhile made some Trojans.
Likewise I made Ulysses, after Isaac,
And a little after Flaxman. Archibald
Was injured when he found himself left out,
But he had no heroics, and I said so:
I told him that his white beard was too long
And too straight down to be like things in Homer.
“Quite so,” said Isaac.—“Low,” said Archibald;
And he threw down a deuce with a deep grin
That showed his yellow teeth and made me happy.
So they played on till a bell rang from the door,
And Archibald said, “Supper.”—After that
The old men smoked while I sat watching them
And wondered with all comfort what might come
To me, and what might never come to me;
And when the time came for the long walk home
With Isaac in the twilight, I could see
The forest and the sunset and the sky-line,
No matter where it was that I was looking:
The flame beyond the boundary, the music,
The foam and the white ships, and two old men
Were things that would not leave me.—And that night
There came to me a dream—a shining one,
With two old angels in it. They had wings,
And they were sitting where a silver light
Suffused them, face to face. The wings of one
137
Began to palpitate as I approached,
But I was yet unseen when a dry voice
Cried thinly, with unpatronizing triumph,
“I’ve got you, Isaac; high, low, jack, and the game.”
Isaac and Archibald have gone their way
To the silence of the loved and well-forgotten.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them;
But there’s a laughing that has honor in it,
And I have no regret for light words now.
Rather I think sometimes they may have made
Their sport of me;—but they would not do that,
They were too old for that. They were old men,
And I may laugh at them because I knew them.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
157 Integral Yoga
9 Fiction
8 Psychology
8 Occultism
7 Philosophy
4 Poetry
2 Yoga
1 Theosophy
1 Science
1 Christianity
1 Baha i Faith
131 Sri Aurobindo
75 The Mother
64 Satprem
28 Nolini Kanta Gupta
9 H P Lovecraft
6 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Carl Jung
3 Aleister Crowley
3 A B Purani
2 Jordan Peterson
2 George Van Vrekhem
39 The Synthesis Of Yoga
20 The Life Divine
17 Record of Yoga
9 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
9 Lovecraft - Poems
9 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
8 Agenda Vol 08
7 Agenda Vol 12
7 Agenda Vol 07
6 Letters On Yoga IV
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
6 Agenda Vol 10
5 Twilight of the Idols
5 The Human Cycle
5 Agenda Vol 13
4 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
4 Savitri
4 Essays On The Gita
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
4 Agenda Vol 09
4 Agenda Vol 03
4 Agenda Vol 01
3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
3 Questions And Answers 1956
3 On the Way to Supermanhood
3 Mysterium Coniunctionis
3 Letters On Yoga II
3 Letters On Yoga I
3 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
3 Agenda Vol 11
3 Agenda Vol 02
3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Words Of The Mother II
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 Preparing for the Miraculous
2 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Magick Without Tears
2 Isha Upanishad
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
2 Agenda Vol 06
2 Agenda Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 04
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species.
In view of this situation it is doubly reassuring to know that, even in the midst of chaotic concepts and conditions there still remains a door through which man, individually, can enter into a vast store-house of knowledge, knowledge as dependable and immutable as the measured tread of Eternity.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
By his marriage Sri Ramakrishna admitted the great value of marriage in man's spiritual evolution, and by adhering to his monastic vows he demonstrated the imperative necessity of self-control, purity, and continence, in the realization of God. By this unique spiritual relationship with his wife he proved that husband and wife can live together as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the householder and the monk.
--- THE "EGO" OF THE MASTER
--
But to the young men destined to be monks he pointed out the steep path of renunciation, both external and internal. They must take the vow of absolute continence and eschew all thought of greed and lust. By the practice of continence, aspirants develop a subtle nerve through which they understand the deeper mysteries of God. For them self-control is final, imperative, and absolute. The sannyasis are teachers of men, and their lives should be totally free from blemish. They must not even look at a picture which may awaken their animal passions. The Master selected his future monks from young men untouched by "woman and gold" and plastic enough to be cast in his spiritual mould. When teaching them the path of renunciation and discrimination, he would not allow the householders to be anywhere near them.
--- RAM AND MANOMOHAN
--
Girish Chandra Ghosh was a born rebel against God, a sceptic, a Bohemian, a drunkard. He was the greatest Bengali dramatist of his time, the father of the modem Bengali stage. Like other young men he had imbibed all the vices of the West. He had plunged into a life of dissipation and had become convinced that religion was only a fraud. Materialistic philosophy he justified as enabling one to get at least a little fun out of life. But a series of reverses shocked him and he became eager to solve the riddle of life. He had heard people say that in spiritual life the help of a guru was imperative and that the guru was to be regarded as God Himself. But Girish was too well acquainted with human nature to see perfection in a man. His first meeting with Sri Ramakrishna did not impress him at all. He returned home feeling as if he had seen a freak at a circus; for the Master, in a semi-conscious mood, had inquired whether it was evening, though the lamps were burning in the room. But their paths often crossed, and Girish could not avoid further encounters. The Master attended a performance in Girish's Star Theatre. On this occasion, too, Girish found nothing impressive about him. One day, however, Girish happened to see the Master dancing and singing with the devotees. He felt the contagion and wanted to join them, but restrained himself for fear of ridicule. Another day Sri Ramakrishna was about to give him spiritual instruction, when Girish said: "I don't want to listen to instructions. I have myself written many instructions. They are of no use to me. Please help me in a more tangible way If you can." This pleased the Master and he asked Girish to cultivate faith.
As time passed, Girish began to learn that the guru is the one who silently unfolds the disciple's inner life. He became a steadfast devotee of the Master. He often loaded the Master with insults, drank in his presence, and took liberties which astounded the other devotees. But the Master knew that at heart Girish was tender, faithful, and sincere. He would not allow Girish to give up the theatre. And when a devotee asked him to tell Girish to give up drinking, he sternly replied: "That is none of your business. He who has taken charge of him will look after him. Girish is a devotee of heroic type. I tell you, drinking will not affect him." The Master knew that mere words could not induce a man to break deep-rooted habits, but that the silent influence of love worked miracles. Therefore he never asked him to give up alcohol, with the result that Girish himself eventually broke the habit. Sri Ramakrishna had strengthened Girish's resolution by allowing him to feel that he was absolutely free.
--
This was a very rich and significant experience for Narendra. It taught him that Sakti, the Divine Power, cannot be ignored in the world and that in the relative plane the need of worshipping a Personal God is imperative. Sri Ramakrishna was overjoyed with the conversion. The next day, sitting almost on Narendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Narendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no difference. A stick floating in the Ganges seems to divide the water; But in reality the water is one. Do you see my point? Well, whatever is, is the Mother — isn't that so?" In later years Narendra would say: "Sri Ramakrishna was the only person who, from the time he met me, believed in me uniformly throughout. Even my mother and brothers did not. It was his unwavering trust and love for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to love. Worldly people, only make a show of love for selfish ends.
--- TARAK
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yoga, a specialising and separative tendency which, like all things in Nature, had its justifying and even imperative utility and we seek a synthesis of the specialised aims and methods which have, in consequence, come into being.
But in order that we may be wisely guided in our effort, we must know, first, the general principle and purpose underlying this separative impulse and, next, the particular utilities upon which the method of each school of Yoga is founded. For the general principle we must interrogate the universal workings of Nature herself, recognising in her no merely specious and illusive activity of a distorting Maya, but the cosmic energy and working of God Himself in His universal being formulating and inspired by a vast, an infinite and yet a minutely selective
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the world cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the forces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it.
We have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God's intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But in knowledge it is precisely finality that we seek for and no mere progressive, asymptotic, rapprochement ad infinitum. No less than the Practical Reason, the Theoretical Reason also demands a categorical imperative, a clean affirmation or denial. If Reason cannot do that, it must be regarded as inefficient. It is poor consolation to man that Reason is gradually finding out the truth or that it is trying to grapple with the problems of God, Soul and Immortality and will one day pronounce its verdict. Whether we have or have not any other instrument of knowledge is a different question altogether. But in the meanwhile Reason stands condemned by the evidence of its own limitation.
It may be retorted that if Reason is condemned, it is condemned by itself and by no other authority. All argumentation against Reason is a function of Reason itself. The deficiencies of Reason we find out by the rational faculty alone. If Reason was to die, it is because it consents to commit suicide; there is no other power that kills it. But to this our answer is that Reason has this miraculous power of self-destruction; or, to put it philosophically, Reason is, at best, an organ of self-criticism and perhaps the organ par excellence for that purpose. But criticism is one thing and creation another. And whether we know or act, it is fundamentally a process of creation; at least, without this element of creation there can be no knowledge, no act. In knowledge there is a luminous creativity, Revelation or Categorical imperative which Reason does not and cannot supply but vaguely strains to seize. For that element we have to search elsewhere, not in Reason.
Does this mean that real knowledge is irrational or against Reason? Not so necessarily. There is a super-rational power for knowledge and Reason may either be a channel or an obstacle. If we take our stand upon Reason and then proceed to know, if we take the forms and categories of Reason as the inviolable schemata of knowledge, then indeed Reason becomes an obstacle to that super-rational power. If, on the other hand, Reason does not offer any set-form from beforehand, does not insist upon its own conditions, is passive and simply receives and reflects what is given to it, then it becomes a luminous and sure channel for that higher and real knowledge.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and
He is He. That is all about it.
--
- for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine.
I am not saying that there is to be no Ananda. The selfgiving itself is a profound Ananda and what it brings, carries in its wake an inexpressible Ananda - and it is brought by this method sooner than by any other, so that one can say almost,
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This neo-spirituality which might claim its sanction and authority from the real old-world Indian disciplinesay, of Janaka and Yajnavalkyalabours, however, in reality, under the influence of European activism and ethicism. It was this which served as the immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been thoroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the lan of the ethical man,the spiritual element, as a consciousness of supreme unity in the Absolute (Brahman) or of love and delight in God, serving only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity.
Sri Aurobindo has raised action completely out of the mental and moral plane and has given it an absolute spiritual life. Action has been spiritualised by being carried back to its very source and origin, for it is the expression in life of God's own Consciousness-Energy (Chit-Shakti).
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All she foresees in masked imperative depths;
The dumb intention of the unconscious gulfs
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nietzsche as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquersuch is the ideal man, according to Nietzsche,the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power"he is Ubermensch, the Superman. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not lead to the kingdom of Heaven. The world has tried it for the last twenty centuries of its Christian civilisation and the result is that we are still living in a luxuriant abundance of misery and sordidness and littleness. This is how Nietzsche thinks and feels. He finds no virtue in the old rgimes and he revolts from them. He wants a speedy and radical remedy and teaches that by violence only the Kingdom of Heaven can be seized. For, to Nietzsche the world is only a clash of forces and the Superman therefore is one who is the embodiment of the greatest force. Nietzsche does not care for the good, it is the great that moves him. The good, the moral is of man, conventional and has only a fictitious value. The great, the non-moral is, on the other hand, divine. That only has a value of its own. The good is nothing but a sort of makeshift arrangement which man makes for himself in order to live commodiously and which changes according to his temperament. But the great is one with the Supreme Wisdom and is absolute and imperative. The good cannot create the great; it is the great that makes for the good. This is what he really means when he says, "They say that a good cause sanctifies war but I tell thee it is a good war that sanctifies all cause." For the goodness of your cause you judge by your personal predilections, by your false conventionalities, by a standard that you set up in your ignoranceBut a good war, the output of strength in any cause is in itself a cause of salvation. For thereby you are the champion of that ultimate verity which conduces to the ultimate good. Do not shrink, he would say, to be even like the cyclone and the avalanche, destructive, indeed, but grand and puissant and therefore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to destroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Any real reconstruction of society, any permanent reformation of the world presupposes a real reconstruction, a permanent reformation of human nature. Otherwise any amount of casting and recasting the mere machineries would not bring about any appreciable result, but leave the thing as it is. Change the laws as much as you like, but if you do not change the nature of man, the world will not change. For it is man that makes laws and not laws that make man. Laws express at best the demand which man feels within himself. A truth must realise itself in human nature before it can be codified. You may certainly legalise an ideal, but that does not necessarily mean realising it. The realisation must come first in nature and character, then it is naturally translated into laws and institutions. A man lives the laws of his soul and being and not the law given him by the shastras. He violates the shastras, modifies them, utilises them according to the greater imperative of his Swabhava.
The French Revolution wanted to remould human society and its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled down the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" remained always in effect a cry in the wilderness. Another wave of idealism is now running over the earth and the Bolshevists are its most fiercely practical exponents. Instead of dealing merely with the political machinery, the Socialistic Revolution tries to break and remake, above all, the social machinery. But judged from the results as yet attained and the tendencies at work, few are the reasons to hope but many to fear the worst. Even education does not seem to promise us anything better. Which nation was better educatedin the sense we understood and still commonly understand the wordthan Germany?
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It might be objected here however that actually in the history of humanity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, for example, it was considered the imperative duty of the faithful to kill or convert by force or otherwise as many as possible belonging to other faiths: it was the mission of the good shepherd to burn the impious and the heretic. In recent times, it was a sense of high and solemn duty that perpetrated what has been termed "purges"brutalities undertaken, it appears, to purify and preserve the integrity of a particular ideological, social or racial aggregate. But the real name of such a spirit is not duty but fanaticism. And there is a considerable difference between the two. Fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with itself; but what we are concerned with here is not the aberration of duty, but duty proper self-poised.
One might claim also on behalf of the doctrine of Right that the right kind of Right brings no harm, it is as already stated another name for liberty, for the privilege of living and it includes the obligation to let live. One can do what one likes provided one does not infringe on an equal right of others to do the same. The measure of one's liberty is equal to the measure of others' liberty.
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the difficult hours of life, the imperative duty of each one is
to overcome his ego in a total and unconditional self-giving to
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This vision took place early in the night and woke me up with a rather unpleasant feeling. Then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it; but a little while ago, when I was thinking of the question put to me, it returned. It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now, just as I wanted to tell you what kind of collectivity we wish to realize according to the ideal described by Sri Aurobindo in the last chapter of The Life Divinea gnostic, supramental collectivity, the only kind that can do Sri Aurobindos integral yoga and be realized physically in a progressive collective body becoming more and more divine the recollection of this vision became so imperative that I couldnt speak.
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
0 1958-08-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So the door had to be opened and I felt and said, Lord, may your will be done. I opened the door and behind it was Z1 in the same clothes he wears when he drives, and he was leaning against one of those big tractor tiresor perhaps he was holding it at the same time. I was so dumbfounded that I woke up. It took me a little while to be able to understand what it might mean, and afterwards Even now, I still dont know What was I? Was I India, or was I the world? I dont know. And what did Z represent? It was as imperative and clear, as positive and absolute as could be: the certitude that destruction was behind the door, that it was inevitable. And it had the form of those great Tartar or Mongol invaders, those people who came from the North and invaded India, who pillaged everything Thats what it was like. But what Z was doing there I dont know. What does he represent? The first impulse was to tell Abhay Singh, Forbid him to drive the tractor.
(Pavitra:) What was he holding in his hands, Mother?
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was as if the doors of destruction had been flung open. Floodsfloods as vast as an oceanwere rushing down onto something the earth? A formidable current pouring down at an insane speed, with an unstoppable power. It was brackish waternot transparent, but brackish. And it was imperative to reach a certain spot BEFORE the water. Had the water reached there ahead of me, nothing could have been done. Whereas if I got there first (I say I, but it was not I with this body), if I got to the other side before the water, I would be completely safe; and from this safe position, I would be able, I would have a chance to help those left behind.
And this vehicle was going faster than the flood (I saw and felt it by its motion)a formidable flood, but the vehicle was going still faster. It was so wonderful. In places there were some especially difficult and dangerous spots, but I ALWAYS got there before the water, just before the water barred the way. And we kept going and going and going. Then, with a final effort (there was no effort, really, it was willed), with a final push, we made it to the other side and the water came rushing just behind! It rushed down at a fantastic speed. We had made it. Then, just on the other side, it changed color. It was it changed in color to a predominant blue, this powerful blue which is the force, the organizing force in the most material world. So there we were, and the vehicle stopped. And then, after having been looking straight ahead the whole time we were speeding along, I turned around and said, Ah, now I can start helping those who are behind.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This interests me, for these things do not at all enter through the mind (he doesnt receive a thing there, hes closed there). So in his letter he says that this thing or that is necessary (he describes it in his own words), and he adds, This is why we must be so grateful to have among us the the great Mother7 (as he puts it), the great Mother who knows these things.Good! I said to myself. (It had to do with something specific concerning the capacity for discrimination in the outside world, the different qualities and different functions of different beings, all of which depends on ones inner construction, as it were.) So I see that even this, even these physical experiences, is received (and yet I hadnt tried, I had never tried to make him receive it); it merely works like this, you see (gesture of a widespread diffusion), and the experience is veryhow should I say?drastic, with a kind of (power of radiation). imperative.
Original English.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A little later, concerning the Saraswati Puja photos that Mother first refused to send to X on the 21st, then decided to send on the 25th, with a kind of imperative cubic certainty.)
X has replied. He said something like this, which Amrita translated: I have received the photos. It is a I dont know whether he said illumination or flame, ascending towards the Truth, leading towards the Truth. Thats the impression it gave him: that it was leading somewhere.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The movement of initiating the action always proceeds in the same wayas something imperatively SEEN. Consequently, it should ALWAYS have an effect; but all kinds of things enter and cause a disturbance. So I dont call that Powerits too haphazard. But dont worry yourself over all this chatter.
Oh, listen!
0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Three or four years ago I had to make a little effort to meditate or give a meditation to someone in a very bad condition. But now absolutely no more effort. No effort at all. And I dont notice a bit when X is having difficulty, not a bit. I prepare myself as usual before he comes and as soon as he arrives, all I have to do is call (although generally thats not necessary); I call, and then I become blissful. And I havent found more difficulties in certain cases than in others I DONT FEEL THE RESISTANCE, neither in the atmosphere nor in people. The Force is imperative. Thats why I was so astounded those other times when he began to say he needed at least ten minutes to put himself into meditationit seemed fantastic to me! He said so himself, otherwise I would never have believed it.3
Well, we shall see.
0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I mean it may beit may be that even an inner transformation (a complete conversion of the vital being, for instance) wouldnt necessarily bring an improvement in your health. It is here where. Its not something I see imperatively. And to go back to ordinary life would be the end of everythingof your physical life and your inner life too.
I have absolutely no desire to do that!
0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Material knowledge, I think I mean the higher use of the physical mind, which keeps you from entering the true room.2 Because I simply kept repeating, I have to say: I WANT TO GO THERE (in other words, it was a crystal clear, imperative will coming from the highest level) I have to say: I WANT TO GOnot that, not your methods! (Mother laughs.)
***
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it was so imperative!
It took me a long while to formulate it. What I am telling you now came gradually, slowly, through a sort of silent revelation. At the moment, it was nothing but Sat, an immobile Existence.
0 1962-11-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Id had the contact with the inner Divine, Id had the realization of Eternity, Id had all those realizations, but as long as I was living with Sri Aurobindo I felt the absolute through him, and (what shall I say?). All those imperative needs I called the seeds of evolution are the levers or springboards to make man realize that the ONE AND ONLY, the one and only absolute is the Supreme; the one and only permanence is the Supreme; the one and only security is the Supreme; the one and only immortality is the Supreme. That the only purpose of manifestation is to lead YOU THERE.
Thats essentially it: from my experience of the Supreme through the manifestation of Sri Aurobindo, I was projected into a direct experience, with no intermediary.
0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have finished my translation [of the Synthesis]. When you have finished your book and we have prepared the next Bulletin and we have a nice quiet moment, well go over it again. And then Ive begun Savitriah! As you know, I prepare some illustrations with H., and for her illustrations she has chosen some passages from Savitri (the choice isnt hers, its A.s and P.s and made intelligently), so she gives me these passages one by one, neatly typed (which is easier for my eyes). Its from the Book I, Canto IV. And then, as I expected, the experience is rather interesting. I had noticed, while reading Savitri, that there was a sort of absolute understanding, that is to say, it cant mean this or that or thisit means THAT. It comes with an imperative. And thats what led me to think, When I translate it, it will come in the same way. And it did. I take the text line by line and make a resolve (not personal) to translate it line by line, without the slightest regard for the literary point of view, but rendering what he meant in the clearest possible way.
The way it comes is both exclusive and positiveits really interesting. Theres none of the minds ceaseless wavering, Is this better? Is that better? Should it be like this? Should it be like that? Noit is LIKE THIS (Mother brings down her hand in a gesture of imperative descent). And then in certain cases (without anything to do with the literary angle or even the sound of the wordnei ther sound nor anything, but meaning), Sri Aurobindo himself suggests a word. Its as if he were telling me, Isnt this better French, tell me?(!)
I am simply the recording machine.
0 1963-12-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a feeling that something is pressing to eliminate in my active consciousness that discernment which is so sharp, so imperativesharp, you know, with a vision (like the vision I had the other day of the nearness and farness), a vision almost microscopically exact. Obviously, this is helpful to get rid of all the things that shouldnt be, but now there is a will for this attitude to move into the background, and for the active consciousness to see constantly and almost exclusively only WHAT SHOULD BE.
Which means there are movements of elimination, of rejection, movements (for a second) of transformation, and also movements of constructionit seems the time has come to step into the movement of construction.
0 1964-09-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is, so to speak, the practical means to compel the doctor to enter a higher consciousness. That must be the crisis that has come to your brother; he has come to a point when he is imperatively obligedprofessionally obligedto enter a higher consciousness. Because, in his present state, he must be lying very badlyhe says he is a very good liar, but with the perception he has now, the result must be that, along with his lie, doubt enters the patients consciousness. So he isnt doing whats considered to be the useful thing.
In my opinion, from a practical and external standpoint, I have more often seen cases in which the lie had a bad effect than cases in which the truth had a bad effect. But everything depends on the doctors consciousness.
0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, the inner Power is put into action (that Power which obviously is always increasing), but it never used to be exerted in that way, in detail, on tiny things of that sort, like someones wrong attitude or an action that doesnt conform to the Truth, anyway lots of things pitiable things, which I used to watch: I would smile, put the Truth-Light on them (gesture from above), and would leave them. But now, its not that way: that comes, and its like something that comes and says to people, things, circumstances and individuals (in an imperative tone): You shall do what the Lord willsyou shall do what He wills. And beware! you shall do what He wills. (Mother laughs)
It makes me laugh, but it must be having some effect!
0 1965-06-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are all kinds! Complications, lots of complications; there are all kinds of ill will, at least of people who go round in circles instead of going forward. And stupid inventions. The other night Because the head is always still, like this (gesture to the forehead, palms open to the Light from above); I give thanks to the Lord for that, and its always like that; so I dont decide whats to be done, I dont decide whats to be answerednothing: when it comes, it comes. And some people had played a really nasty trick ([laughing] I couldnt care less!) and I wasnt budging. And as it happens, in the middle of the night, a force comes, takes hold of me and tells me, Heres the answer, here is what you must say. I say, Very well (I was lying in bed, of course) and I dont budge. (Mother puts on a more imperative tone:) Here is what you must say.Oh, very well! And I still dont budge. (In a still more imperious tone:) Here is what you must say. (Mother laughs)
So I got up, went over there, and in the dark I wrote what I had to say!
0 1965-08-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was imperative to get you out of the vital at all costs, because you were receiving blows there, it wasnt good. Its much better here. Its luminous, very peaceful; its very vast, very vast, as if there were no partitions, no walls.
A glass prison.
0 1966-03-04, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the strange thing the strange thingis that outwardly you go on living automatically according to certain ways of life, which no longer even have the virtue of appearing necessary, which no longer even have the force of being that habits have, but which are accepted and lived almost automatically with the sense (a kind of feeling, of sensation, but its neither feeling nor sensation, its a sort of very subtle perception) that Something, so immense that its undefinable, wants it so. I say wants it so or I say chooses it so, but its wants it so; its a Will that doesnt function like the human will, but that wants it sowants it or sees it or decides it so. And in each thing, there is that luminous, golden, imperative Vibration which is necessarily all-powerful. And it results in a background of perfect well-being of Certitude, which, a little lower down in the consciousness, is expressed as a benevolent and amused smile.
I feel like asking you a question. A little further on, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the worlds having neither beginning nor end, and he says that their creation and destruction is a play of hide and seek with our outward consciousness.2
0 1966-08-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And from everywhere, but everywhere, the opposition, the resistance is rising up; and the more it rises up, the more imperative That is.
But at such times one feels how precarious the equilibrium of material life is. Oh, its very, very interesting. When I am able to say all this, it will be worthwhile.
0 1966-10-05, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont receive any command: when I have something to say, I receive the exact word or sentence, in an absolute way; but for action, I dont receive any command, because I dont think I have any hesitation, I never wonder, Should I do this or should I do that? Never. My whole effort is to live from minute to minute. I mean, to do every minute exactly what should be done, without making plans, without thinking, without because it all becomes mental; as soon as you start thinking something out, thats no longer it. But quite instinctively and spontaneously, I do what needs to be done: this, that, this. When something needs a response, it comes. As for money, its the same thing; the only thing I am led to do is to say, So-and-so has asked for so much, such-and-such Service needs so much, like that (not a long time in advance, but when it becomes imperative). And thats all. Its like that. So I dont know what will happen tomorrow; I dont at all seek to know whats going to happen. But on that day, I seemed to be asking, Well, give me proof that You are interested.Poff! it came just at the right time. So I laughed, I said to myself, What a baby I must still be!
And for two days, just when I needed to give some money, it came. So I said, All right, thats fine. But now its no longer so amusing! It was really amusing.
0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to the law of men, the guilty must be punished. But there is a more imperative law than the human law: it is the law of the Divine, the law of compassion and mercy. It is thanks to this law that the world can last and progress
The vision was so clear. It was such a clear vision. If you follow this law of the guilty who must be punished, then little by little, with the unfolding of things, everything should be punished! (Mother laughs) Nothing would remain! So Sri Aurobindo said:
0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont hear words. I receive something, which is always direct and imperative (and I clearly feel its from there [gesture above], somewhere around there). But it may, for instance, be expressed almost simultaneously, almost at the same time, in English and in French. And I am convinced that if I knew other languages, if I were familiar with other languages, it could be expressed in several languages. Its the same thing as what in the past used to be called the gift of tongues. There were prophets who spoke, and everyone heard in his native tonguehe spoke in any particular language, but each of those present heard in his native tongue. I had that experience a very long time ago (I didnt do it purposely, I knew nothing about it): I spoke at a Bahai gathering, and people from different countries came and congratulated me because I knew their language (which I didnt know at all!): they had heard in their language.
You understand, what comes is something that arousesit arouses words or gets clothed in words. Then it depends: it may arouse different words. And its in a universal storehouse, not necessarily an individual one; its not necessarily individual since it can be clothed in words. Languages are such narrow things, while that is universal. What could I call it? Its not the soul but the spirit of the thing (though its more concrete than that): its the POWER of the thing. And because of the quality of the power, the best quality of words is attracted. Its inspiration that arouses the words; the inspired person isnt the one who finds or adapts them, not at all: its inspiration that AROUSES the words.
--
I dont know, there may exist somewhere in the mental region something ready-made, but I think it would then be like some of those things Sri Aurobindo wrote,2 which came ready-made, as they were; there were even things that didnt conform to his own view: it came imperatively. But now I dont have that experience at all. Or else, it would be like what happened the other day: for two or three minutes, as I told you, there was someone playing. It must have been the same phenomenon. But then, the feeling is quite different: you no longer exist, you are hardly conscious of what goes on. And that would be incorrigible, I may say, in the sense that it would come ready-made and you couldnt change anything in it, or else it would no longer be the same thing, it would be something you did actively. As soon as the mind becomes active, its finished. Finished. It may come from your supraconscient, but it becomes a quite personal thing.
But that inspiration comes from the highest region, the region beyond all individualizations. Thats why its something we find difficult to formulate and explain. Its complete, perfect in itself, but it doesnt have anything of the character of our mental formulation, not at all; it doesnt even have the character of a formulated idea. And its absolutely imperative, absolutely. But then, as soon as it touches the mental zone, it seems to attract words. My impression is that the more silent I am, the more precise it is; in other words, the more inactive the mind is, the more precise the expression. So thats what it is, its that force coming down and attracting words. Its not even ideas (it doesnt come through the region of ideas): its an experience, its something living which comes and which, to take expression, catches hold of words. What came on Sunday was like that: I was asked that question on the Grace, then I was seized by a concentrated, extremely strong silence for maybe a minute (not even that long), and it came. Then I spoke. I heard myself speaking. But then it clearly came through Sri Aurobindo.
If it were already written, fully ready somewhere, you couldnt change anything in it; when it was there you would feel its perfect in itself and you cant change anything in it.
--
But thats what Ive told you, its that direct inspiration. Because if you knew how imperative what comes from above is! All thoughts appear neutral, powerless
Yes.
0 1966-12-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The choice is imperative:
Truth or the abyss.
0 1966-12-24, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Truth is a living, changing thing, which expresses itself every second and is ONE way of approaching the Supreme. Everyone has his own way of approaching the Supreme. There may be some who can approach Him from every side at the same time, but there are those who approach through Love, those who approach through Power, those who approach through Consciousness, and those who approach through Truth. And each of these aspects is as absolute, imperative and indefinable as the supreme Lord himself is. The supreme Lord is absolute, imperative and indefinable, ungraspable in his entirety, and his attributes have that same quality.
Once he knows this, one who puts himself at the service of one of these aspects will know (its translated in life, in Time, in the movement of time), he will know every moment what the Truth is thats very interestingor he will know every minute what Consciousness is, or he will know every minute what Power is, or he will know every minute what Love is. And its a multiform Power, Love, Consciousness, Truth, which express themselves innumerably in the manifestation, just as the Lord expresses himself innumerably in the manifestation.
0 1967-01-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because this intimation was very imperative, it was an imperative necessitywhich to me seems to prove that it will happen. Because of the necessities of the transformation That was when the experience was there and I became aware of all that had to change for this body to be capable of holding the thing constantly, for it to be there all the time. So that came. And I wanted to write it down, but didnt have the time, I was already terribly late; then came very clearly from Sri Aurobindo, On Saturday, when Satprem is there.
I forgot to tell you at first!
0 1967-02-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Why is the choice imperative?
Because we are at one of the hours of God as Sri Aurobindo puts itand the transforming evolution of the world has taken a hastened and intensified movement.
0 1967-03-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss."
***
0 1967-03-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, there is an overall vision which becomes more and more total, in which each thing has its own purpose, its own place, and which excludes nothing. That need to exclude the mind in order to surpass it no longer exists. Now the mind is perfectly tranquil, peaceful, and it sets itself in motion only when it receives a command, an imperative command. It receives a command, then it does something precise for a precise reason, a very precise action, and then silence and calm.
So then, that rehabilitates everything. Its only the quagmire that we have made of it that ceases to be.
0 1967-05-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding the New Year message: "Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss." A disciple asks Mother, "What is the meaning of 'abyss' in your New Year message?" Mother's reply, in English:)
Right now there is a great tension. They have all taken positions as if to start war. It is the blind passion that men put into their international relations.
0 1967-11-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Very early in the morning, while you must have been still asleep. Last night and the night before, very early, around four in the morning, I made a speech. Not quite I (and whats I, in the first place, where is I? I dont know), its At times it comes from high above, like that, imperative; sometimes, it comes from Sri Aurobindo, and thats much closer, intimate. And it was Sri Aurobindo, both times. I made a speech to you.
What was it?
0 1967-12-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats quite a remarkable phenomenon: a second before, its absolutely blank, empty, there isnt one word, one thought, one idea, nothing, just like that: not a thought. I am asked for a message, and I reply, I have nothing to say. It comes like that, imperatively; if I can (that is, if Mother is free), I write it down and its over; if I cant (that is, if Mother is busy with people), it comes back obstinately until its written. Once its written, gone! Nothing remains. Another way to present it comes, another form: that also, gone!
This (gesture to the forehead), you know, is like an empty box (very pleasant, its very pleasant), an empty, peaceful box, like that: not closed, not compact, its open, but its a boxan empty box. Inside its all white, nothing moving. And then, I dont even make an effort to bring something down, nothing: Its not my business. If I am asked, I answer, Nothing, I have nothing to say. Or else, something goes like this immediately (gesture on the alert, wide awake), stands up and remains attentive, and after one minute, two minutes, ten minutes (I dont know), suddenly, plop! down it drops. Then I write it. And as it falls, it gathers words and makes its sentence. Sometimes its in French, sometimes in Englishit depends mostly on the person its intended for, but it also depends on the subject. So then, if (thats why I keep pieces of paper and pencils everywhere), if I have my piece of paper and pencil, I write it down and its over; if I dont write it, if I say, Oh well, Ill note it down a little later, then it keeps coming and coming and coming back every second until its written down. And once its written, gone!
0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like a progressive victory over all constraints. So naturally, all the laws of Nature, all the human laws, all habits, all rules, they all become increasingly supple and finally nonexistent. Yet it is possible to keep a regular rhythm that facilitates actionits not contrary to this suppleness. But its a suppleness in the execution, in the adaptation, which comes and changes everything. From the point of view of hygiene, health, organization, from the point of view of relationships with others, all that has not only lost its aggressiveness (because for that, it suffices to be wisewise and level-headed and calm), but also its absolutism, its imperative rule: thats completely gonegone.
And then you see: as the process grows more and more perfectperfect means integral, total, leaving nothing behindit NECESSARILY, inevitably means victory over death. Not that this dissolution of the cells which death represents stops existing, but it would exist only when necessary: not as an absolute law, but as ONE of the processes, when necessary.
0 1968-02-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not me who wrote all this. I noticed something so interesting: when it comes its imperative, theres no room for arguing; I write it downwhatever I may be doing I am FORCED to write it down. But when its not there, its just not there! Even if I try to remember, nothing comes, its not there! So its clear that it doesnt come from here: it comes from somewhere above.
Image 1
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Look, Ill give you an interesting example (Mother goes over a paragraph of her note again). You see, in my state of consciousness, I would have said (as the nearest approximation to the thing): Consciousness is, in its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it CONDENSES into material forms, etc. And there came insistently, No, CLOTHES ITSELF in forms. But my spontaneous impulse was to say condenses into forms, because I saw that movement: a movement of condensation, manifestation, and, when that is over, of expansion. A continuous movement condensing and spreading, condensing and spreading (gesture like the pulsation of an ocean). But it was imperative: it had to be clothes itself. So its quite certain its written by someone else. But theres no sense of being someone and that someone else wants to write or speakits not that! Similarly, when I say (I feel and know) its Sri Aurobindo, its not that I see him materially and he takes my hand and makes me writenothing of all that. Its something fluid that concentrates and causes to write. And its the quality of that fluidity that lets me know who it is. Its quite odd. Theres a sort of complete disappearance of the sense of separation, yet a sense of diversity remainsdiversity of modes of being but its no longer demarcated, as if cut off and separate (Mother draws small cubes): its like vibratory modes of perception and action (and the quality of the vibration is different), vibratory modes of perception and action succeeding one another, intermingling, superposed on one another. A sort of fluid play: no longer separate little puppets.
My nights are ENTIRELY like that. During the day, there is still something of the old habit, but in the night, its instantly like that.
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Most of the time, its a sort of laziness, something unwilling to make an effort, to make a resolve: it prefers to leave the responsibility to others. In English I would call it the remnant, the residue of the Inconscient. Its a sort of spinelessness (gesture of groveling) which accepts a general, impersonal law: you paddle about in illness. And in response to that, there is inside, every minute, the sense of the true attitude, which in the cells is expressed with great simplicity: There is the Lord, who is the all-powerful Master. Something like that. It depends entirely on Him. If a surrender is to be made, its to Him. I make sentences, but for the cells its not sentences. Its a tiny little movement that expresses itself by repeating the mantra; then the mantra is fullfull of force and there is instantly the surrender: May Your Will be done, and a tranquillitya luminous tranquillity. And one sees that there was absolutely no imperative need to be ill or for the disequilibrium to occur.
The phenomenon recurs HUNDREDS of times a day, for very small things.
--- Overview of noun imperative
The noun imperative has 2 senses (no senses from tagged texts)
1. imperative mood, imperative, jussive mood, imperative form ::: (a mood that expresses an intention to influence the listener's behavior)
2. imperative ::: (some duty that is essential and urgent)
--- Overview of adj imperative
The adj imperative has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (2) imperative ::: (requiring attention or action; "as nuclear weapons proliferate, preventing war becomes imperative"; "requests that grew more and more imperative")
2. imperative ::: (relating to verbs in the imperative mood)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun imperative
2 senses of imperative
Sense 1
imperative mood, imperative, jussive mood, imperative form
=> mood, mode, modality
=> grammatical relation
=> linguistic relation
=> relation
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
imperative
=> duty, responsibility, obligation
=> social control
=> group action
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun imperative
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun imperative
2 senses of imperative
Sense 1
imperative mood, imperative, jussive mood, imperative form
=> mood, mode, modality
Sense 2
imperative
=> duty, responsibility, obligation
--- Similarity of adj imperative
2 senses of imperative
Sense 1
imperative (vs. beseeching)
=> adjuratory
=> clamant, crying, exigent, insistent, instant
=> peremptory
=> desperate
=> pressing, urgent
=> strident, shrill
Also See-> assertive#1, self-asserting#1, self-assertive#1
Sense 2
imperative
--- Antonyms of adj imperative
1 of 2 senses of imperative
Sense 1
imperative (vs. beseeching)
beseeching (vs. imperative), pleading, imploring
=> adjuratory
=> importunate
=> mendicant
=> petitionary
=> precatory, precative
=> suppliant, supplicant, supplicatory
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun imperative
2 senses of imperative
Sense 1
imperative mood, imperative, jussive mood, imperative form
-> mood, mode, modality
=> indicative mood, indicative, declarative mood, declarative, common mood, fact mood
=> subjunctive mood, subjunctive
=> optative mood, optative
=> imperative mood, imperative, jussive mood, imperative form
=> interrogative mood, interrogative
Sense 2
imperative
-> duty, responsibility, obligation
=> job
=> guardianship, keeping, safekeeping
=> moral obligation
=> noblesse oblige
=> burden of proof
=> civic duty, civic responsibility
=> filial duty
=> imperative
=> incumbency
=> legal duty
=> line of duty
=> white man's burden
=> prerequisite, requirement
=> requirement, demand
--- Pertainyms of adj imperative
2 senses of imperative
Sense 1
imperative (vs. beseeching)
Sense 2
imperative
Pertains to noun imperative mood (Sense 1)
=>imperative mood, imperative, jussive mood, imperative form
=> mood, mode, modality
--- Derived Forms of adj imperative
1 of 2 senses of imperative
Sense 1
imperative (vs. beseeching)
RELATED TO->(noun) imperativeness#1
=> imperativeness, insistence, insistency, press, pressure
--- Grep of noun imperative
categorical imperative
hypothetical imperative
imperative
imperative form
imperative mood
imperativeness
Wikipedia - Categorical Imperative
Wikipedia - Categorical imperative
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https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Zero_Imperative_(home_video)
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Quest:The_Sovereign_Imperative
Boku no Hero Academia the Movie 2: Heroes:Rising -- -- Bones -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Super Power Shounen -- Boku no Hero Academia the Movie 2: Heroes:Rising Boku no Hero Academia the Movie 2: Heroes:Rising -- Izuku "Deku'' Midoriya and his fellow students in Class 1-A of UA High's hero course have been chosen to participate in a safety program on Nabu Island. To further improve their skills and gain experience in more ordinary heroics, the students aid the kind citizens with small services and everyday chores. With the low crime rate in the quiet community, all seems well and good, but the rise of a new villain threatens to put the students' courage to the test and challenge their capabilities as heroes. -- -- A merciless villain by the name of Nine is in search of a certain "quirk" needed to fulfill his diabolical plan—creating a society where only those with the strongest quirks reign supreme. As his attack on Nabu Island endangers the lives of the residents, securing the citizens becomes the first priority for Class 1-A; defeating Nine along with his wicked accomplices is also imperative. A straightforward strategy is formulated until a young boy named Katsuma Shimano, whom Deku had befriended, suddenly requires particular protection. Concerned for the boy's wellbeing, Deku and his classmates must now devise a plan to ensure Katsuma's safety at all costs. -- -- With Nine wreaking havoc to find the catalyst for his ill-intended schemes and the heroes desperate to defend Katsuma from harm, will Deku and his friends be able to come out victorious, or will they find themselves unable to escape a hopeless situation? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Dec 20, 2019 -- 311,218 8.07
Boku no Hero Academia the Movie 2: Heroes:Rising -- -- Bones -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Super Power Shounen -- Boku no Hero Academia the Movie 2: Heroes:Rising Boku no Hero Academia the Movie 2: Heroes:Rising -- Izuku "Deku'' Midoriya and his fellow students in Class 1-A of UA High's hero course have been chosen to participate in a safety program on Nabu Island. To further improve their skills and gain experience in more ordinary heroics, the students aid the kind citizens with small services and everyday chores. With the low crime rate in the quiet community, all seems well and good, but the rise of a new villain threatens to put the students' courage to the test and challenge their capabilities as heroes. -- -- A merciless villain by the name of Nine is in search of a certain "quirk" needed to fulfill his diabolical plan—creating a society where only those with the strongest quirks reign supreme. As his attack on Nabu Island endangers the lives of the residents, securing the citizens becomes the first priority for Class 1-A; defeating Nine along with his wicked accomplices is also imperative. A straightforward strategy is formulated until a young boy named Katsuma Shimano, whom Deku had befriended, suddenly requires particular protection. Concerned for the boy's wellbeing, Deku and his classmates must now devise a plan to ensure Katsuma's safety at all costs. -- -- With Nine wreaking havoc to find the catalyst for his ill-intended schemes and the heroes desperate to defend Katsuma from harm, will Deku and his friends be able to come out victorious, or will they find themselves unable to escape a hopeless situation? -- -- Movie - Dec 20, 2019 -- 311,218 8.07
Black Women's Health Imperative
Categorical imperative
Collective cognitive imperative
Imperative
Imperative (film)
Imperative logic
Imperative mandate (Ukraine)
Imperative mood
Imperative programming
Imperative Reaction
Kileak: The DNA Imperative
Moral imperative
Social Progress Imperative
Territorial Imperative
The 2010 Imperative
The Thanos Imperative
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