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O Quotes

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All O Quotes

“Our model of Nature should not be like a building-a handsome structure for the populace to admire, until in the course of time some one takes away a corner stone and the edifice comes toppling down. It should be like an engine with movable parts. We need not fix the position of any one lever; that is to be adjusted from time to time as the latest observations indicate. The aim of the theorist is to know the train of wheels which the lever sets in motion-that binding of the parts which is the soul of the engine.”

“Our modern day, hyper-rat-race culture often leads us to mistakenly confuse 'busy' for 'success'. The truth of the matter is that if you're constantly having to tell people how busy you are and how overwhelmed with work or stressed you are, what you're really telling them is that you can't cope with what's on your plate. You're ‘failing’.”

“Our modern-day society is often so consumed with external appearances that living a virtuous life may sound boring and dull. However, the love and beauty that lies deep within the human spirit resonates with plain and simple goodness.”

“Our modern economy privileges pure profit, momentary transactions and rapid fluidity. Part of craft’s anchoring role is that it helps to objectify experience and also to slow down labor. It is not about quick transactions or easy victories. That slow tempo of craftwork, of taking the time you need to do something well, is profoundly stabilizing to individuals.”

“Our modern era embodies both the Tower of Babel and Pentecost simultaneously. Like Babel, globalization and technological advancement have created linguistic and cultural fragmentation… Yet, like Pentecost, the same global connections that fragment us enable unprecedented education and understanding.”

“Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress.”

“Our modern society is terrified of judging anything that's in any way subjective; it's almost like we're scared of human judgment. We create regulations to lower the power of human decision versus society, creating committees, and we encourage group identities while discouraging individual responsibility. The legendary German historian Oswald Spengler said, "Civilization switched into decay when society starts to strangle the individual's sense of judgment and choice and replace it with social collective controls." He feared this process would happen to Western society in the 20th century, which it largely did.”

“Our modern Western culture only recognises the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constituitions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realise their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires.”

“Our modern world defined God as a ‘religious complex’ and laughed at the Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED. Then, through the laughter came the shattering thunder of the World War. And now a blood-drenched, bitter world — no longer laughing — cries for a way out. There is but one way out. It existed before it was engraven upon Tablets of Stone. It will exist when stone has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not rules to obey as a personal favor to God. They are the fundamental principles without which mankind cannot live together.”

“Our modern world, though infinitely more complex than that of ancient Greece, is also far more superficial. Where the Greeks offered simple psychological training, we live in an age of style and spin in which perceptions of good and evil slither and shift with the political view of the moment.”

“Our modern world-view tragically misperceives and wrongly defines what it is to be human. We are conditioned by our society to believe happiness comes from pleasure, or from getting things or power over people or money or fame or even health and survival. None of these sometimes very good things can bring ultimate meaning to our lives. We are born to be deeply conscious, inwardly free and deeply capable of love. The longing for these things is the definition of what it means to be human.”

“Our modern, rootless times do seem to be a particularly inhospitable environment for loyalty. We come and go so relentlessly that our friendships can't but come and go too. What sort of loyalty is there in the age of Facebook, when friendship is a costless transaction, a business of flip reciprocity.... Friendship held together by nothing more permanent than hyperlinks is hardly the stuff of selfless fidelity.”

“Our Mom No matter how old we were, you make us feel young. Your grace, love and tenderness, those gifts from God above. Piercing with the sunlight your eyes guided us this way. Graciousness and kindness. These are your greatest gifts, we carry with us each day. Now that your there with God your wisdom will rest right here. You fulfilled our lives forever. In our hearts you always near.”

“Our Mom No matter how old we were, you make us feel young. Your grace, love and tenderness, those gifts from God above. Piercing with the sunlight your eyes guided us this way. Graciousness and kindness. These are your greatest gifts, we carry with us each day. Now that your there with God your wisdom will rest right here. You fulfilled our lives forever. In our hearts you’re always near.”

“Our moment had passed somehow. I was different. He was, too. Without our “madness” to unite us, there wasn’t anything much there. Or maybe too much had happened in too short a time. It’s like when you take a trip with someone you don’t know very well. Sometimes you can get very close very quickly, but then after the trip is over, you realise all that was a false sort of closeness. An intimacy based on the trip more than the travellers, if that makes any sense.”

“Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.”