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M Quotes

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All M Quotes

“Most of us are searching-consciously or unconsciously- for a degree of internal balance and harmony between ourselves and the outside world, and if we happen to become aware-like Stravinsky- of a volcano within us, we will compensate by urging restraint. By that same token, someone who bore a glacier within them might urge passionate abandon. The danger is, as Bergman points out, that a glacial personality in need of passionate abandon may read Stravinsky and apply restraint instead.”

“Most of us are so used to living amidst the noise of modern life that we have forgotten the value of silence. Imagine that you switch off all the fans and ACs at your home. You can now hear the slightest sound of the horn from a vehicle plying on the road, or a conversation between people or the crying of a child in your neighbourhood. When it is night and the silence is deep, you can hear the ticking of your clock. When the silence is even deeper, you can even hear the vibrations of the universe and the beating of your own heart.”

“Most of us are still in some small way victims of the Industrial Revolution. Whether through our grandparents, our parents, or our own experience, we were raised to believe that our place in life required compliance and conformity rather than creativity and uniqueness. We have been raised in a world where information is deemed far more important than imagination. Adults replaced dreams with discipline when they were finally ready to grow up and be responsible for their lives. Whether this contrast was reinforced on an assembly line, in a cubicle, or in a classroom, the surest path to acceptance in society is accepting standardization. And we more than willingly, relinquish our uniqueness.”

“Most of us are suffering from fake selective outrage . We choose to be angry at the people and not being angry at the problem. We choose to be angry at a person, because we hate the person. We don’t care about the problem they caused or crime they committed. If we love the person, then we choose to ignore the problem or crime they committed. Well, all the bad things you choose to ignore don’t go away. They will come back to you.”

“Most of us at one time or another have been part of a great 'team', a group of people who functioned together in an extraordinary way-who trusted one another, who complemented each other's strengths and compensated for each other's limitations, who had common goals that were larger than an individual's goals, and who produced extraordinary results ... the team that became great didn't start off great-it learned how to produce extraordinary results.”

“Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.”

“Most of us believe we can spot a drowning person when we see one. But we always make the mistake of thinking that drowning only involves what. believe it or not, you have missed quite a number of drowned and drowning people. Some of us are thought to save some one drowning in water, most of us can spot that too, but none of us has been thought to see the other kinds of drowners, nor how to save them.”

“Most of us can learn to live in perfect comfort on higher levels of power. Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon - deeper and deeper strata of explosible material, ready for use by anyone who probes so deep. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.”

“Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)”

“Most of us carry a faded old picture in our heads of what a great captain looks like. It’s usually an attractive person who possesses an abundance of strength, skill, wisdom, charisma, diplomacy, and unflappable calm. These people are not supposed to be difficult to spot. In our imaginations they’re talkative and articulate, charismatic but firm, tough but gracious, and respectful of authority. We expect leaders, especially in sports, to pursue their goals with gusto but to never wander from the principles of sportsmanship and fair play. We believe, as the Stanford social psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld put it, that power is reserved for the kind of person “who possesses some combination of superior charm and ruthless ambition that the rest of us don’t.”