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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“What is mathematics? Ask this question of person chosen at random, and you are likely to receive the answer "Mathematics is the study of number." With a bit of prodding as to what kind of study they mean, you may be able to induce them to come up with the description "the science of numbers." But that is about as far as you will get. And with that you will have obtained a description of mathematics that ceased to be accurate some two and a half thousand years ago!”

“What is meant by charity? Charity is not fundamental. It is really helping on the misery of the world, not eradicating it. One looks for name and fame and covers his efforts to obtain them with the enamel of charity and good works. He is working for himself under the pretext of working for others. Every so-called charity is an encouragement of the very evil it claims to operate against.”

“What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.”

“What is meditation? Meditation is to learn to be with yourself, meditation is to delight in your own being. Meditation is a totally relaxed state of consciousness, where you are not doing anything. Meditation is just to be, not doing anything, no action, no thought and no emotion. You just are, and it is a sheer joy and delight. This joy and delight when you are not doing anything comes from nowhere or everywhere. The essence of existence is joy. Joy and happiness is your very being, your innermost core. When you look at the birds, the trees and the stars, you will see that the whole existence is joyful. Birds are happy for no reason, trees are happy for no reason and flowers are happy for no reason.  The whole existence is made of joy. If you can just be with yourself, not doing anything, just enjoying yourself, just being with yourself, not doing anything, then you are in meditation.”

“What is meditation? It is not your character, it is not what you do. It is what you are. It is not the character, it is the consciousness that you bring to whatsoever you do. The doing is irrelevant. Whether you are doing it consciously or not is the question, whether moral or immoral. Are you alert? If you are alert, meditation happens. If you are not alert, you live in sleep.”

“What is meditation?... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk.”

“What is memory but the fashioning of a deep and personal fiction? In memory, we shape the world around ourselves, as if to prove our own existence, to demonstrate the mark we have left upon the universe. We become heralds of something better; the guiding light by which we believe all others might navigate. This, then, is the comfort we award ourselves for the act of living, for to comprehend the truth – that the universe is cold and ambivalent at best, and at worst despises our very existence – is to contemplate madness. So it is that we grow to love the lie.”

“What is memory but the repository of things doomed to be forgotten, so you must have History. You must have labor to invent History. Being faithful to all that happens to you of significance, recording days, dates, events, names, sights not relying merely upon memory which fades like a Polaroid print where you see the memory fading before your eyes like time itself retreating.”

“What is missing from the policy analyst's tool kit -- and from the set of accepted, well-developed theories of human organization -- is an adequately specified theory of collective action whereby a group of principals can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts.”

“What is missing in a lot of urban music is perspective. You hear a lot of regurgitated perspective. It's a lot of: out at the club. Had drinks. Patrón. Big booties. It's this regurgitated idea of living in this, I don't know, one-night-stand moment that always starts at the club and Patrón. And so perspective, perspective, perspective is what I'm an advocate of.”

“What is missing in our time is not the willingness of God to act in biblical ways, but the willingness of his people to believe he is still the God of the Bible—and to act on that faith. To throw away fear, to stride against common wisdom, to risk all that we have and all that we are so we may follow only our simple belief that the God of the Scriptures is still alive and that he will still do what he says in his Word.”