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O Quotes

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All O Quotes

“Our culture is making a big difference and, whether it's our curries or movies like "Slumdog Millionaire" or whether it's just the Bollywood numbers to which a lot of the world is rocking, I think India's soft power is going up. And we are contributing a lot of entrepreneurs to the world as well whether it's people like Lakshmi Mittal or Indra Nooyi or thinkers like Amalti Singh. This is all happening because of there's something fundamentally right and thoughtful about Indian society.”

“Our culture is obsessed with youth because we have lost the ancient knowledge that growth never stops. We are not transient, momentary mistakes in the cosmos- evolutionary curiosities that rise like mayflies, swarm for a day, and are gone. We are players who are here to stay, and the universe was built with us in mind. We reflect it, with our deepest loves and loftiest aspirations, just as it reflects us.”

“Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it's no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there's no room for deviation from the norm. It's important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don't fit in, the consequences are psychological tragic, you stand alone when all you've ever known is being part of the group.”

“Our culture's response to egotism is as misguided as our approach to inadequacy. When people feel and act as if they're better than others—belittling those around them, for instance, or persistently interrupting to assert their own views—we're encouraged to "bring them down a peg." According to my guides, however, people who strive for superiority are wrestling with a deep internal conflict. Disconnected at a conscious level from the genuine magnificence of their Spirit, they retain an unconscious remembrance of this innate grandeur. Longing to realize the potential they sense within, but confused by identifying only with what is commonly referred to as the ego—the limited, human aspect of their being—they believe they can feel powerful and significant only through dominating and outshining others.”

“Our culture, so proud of its mind-over-matter philosophy, cuts us off from our bodily experience and from the earth itself. In this severance, our sexuality is negated, our senses assaulted, our environment abused, and our power manipulated. Our ground is our form, and without it we lose our individuality.”

“Our culture tells us to set goals and make treatment plans. Because we are so dedicated to relieving suffering, we can feel capitulated into efforts to change what is hurting our people. We develop agendas and then often generate expectations of what should come next, leaving us vulnerable to disappointment in ourselves or our patients when the uniqueness of the situation brings a different outcome.”

“Our culture tells us to want sex, pleasure, and instant gratification. Every hit song raves about it. Consumerism tells us that we need it now. There are a thousand voices that will sell us on these things; they’ll tell you everything you want to hear, being sure only to leave in the good parts and leave out the bad. They’ll sell you 'til you’re hooked, then you’ll sell yourself. Heck, at that point, you’ll sell your soul.”

“Our culture trains us to consume “happy meat” from the “happy farm.” The meat industry regularly feeds us images of cows in buttercup pastures, lamb frolicking in clover, chickens in straw nests, always blue sky and sunshine. To see anything else, to see the reality of the filthy feed lots and sheds packed with millions of animals living in the near dark, to slip through the blood and entrails in a slaughterhouse full of knives, to hear the sound of their screams and the clanking of chains, the cursing of the workers, and continue to consume animals, would make us complicit. We want to remain innocent and oblivious, shame-free.”

“Our culture's adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now all but complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane. And if some of our institutions seem not to fit the template of the times, why it is they and not the template, that seem to us disordered and strange.”

“Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self- collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour.”

“Our cultures make it seem as if male children are worthier than female ones, but that is not the case. The value of a child is not a function of what he or she can bring to the family, ability to work in the farm or protect their clan or community. The value of a child is not in whether he or she will carry on the name of the family. ... All children are worth in the same way, irrespective of gender. ...children are a gift from God, and the worst thing is when the person receiving this gift fails to appreciate its value.”