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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.”

“When we ask ourselves what is an economy; I think the best place to find the answer to that question is in a forest. Go and sit in a forest and observe with all of your sensory faculties, and meditate there. And while you're observing and meditating, ask yourself questions about everything. And if you want maybe hit a few puffs of a certain herb while you're meditating there. And you'll find out exactly what an economy is. And you'll also find out exactly what business is. And all of the economic and business concepts like capital allocation and liquidity and service and profit and growth... It'll all start to make more sense as you sit there meditating in that forest.”

“When we ask ourselves, “What is it that makes one work of art good and another bad?” we might initially wonder if there is any satisfactory answer. Upon mature consideration, however, we can at least conclude with a reasonable degree of certitude that since the function of art is to unearth some particle of truth, good art must be good in consequence of its revelatory capacity, and bad art must be bad, conversely, because of its failure to engender revelation.”

“When we ask somebody if they believe in God, we expect them to believe or not in what we think our idea of God is. But what if God is not what we think it is? Many believe that some undetectable higher Force they do not understand governs the Universe. This kind of belief is more rational because there is something they believe in, but religious books do not describe it.”

“When we ask what ought to be the relative remunerations of a nurse or a butcher, or a coal miner and a judge at a high court, of the deep sea diver of the cleaner of sewers, of the organiser of a new industry and a jockey, of the inspector of taxes and the inventor of a life-saving drug, of the jet-pilot or the professor of mathematics, the appeal to 'social justice' does not give us the slightest help in deciding.”

“When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is.”

“When we assume God to be a guiding principle well, sure enough, a god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum: God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God.”

“When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our Private Stations in the bosom of a free, peacefully and happy Country.”

“When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.”

“When we awaken each morning, we see around the globe what appear to be Fascism’s early stirrings: the discrediting of mainstream politicians, the emergence of leaders who seek to divide rather than to unite, the pursuit of political victory at all costs, and the invocation of national greatness by people who seem to possess only a warped concept of what greatness means. Most often, the signposts that should alert us are disguised: the altered constitution that passes for reform, the attacks on a free press justified by security, the dehumanization of others masked as a defense of virtue, or the hollowing out of a democratic system so that all is erased but the label.”

“When we awaken the love for God, that love naturally extends toward every living being. Also, the concept of Krishna and Radha, the masculine and feminine aspect of the one supreme God, was so inclusive that it touched my heart. So when Prabhupada came, I was already following his path. But it was when I saw his compassion, concern and deep wisdom, that I accepted him as my guru and decided to try and assist him. I felt that was where my real home was.”

“When we bear witness, when we become the situation - homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death - the right action arises by itself. We don't have to worry about what to do. We don't have to figure out solutions ahead of time. Peacemaking is the functioning of bearing witness. Once we listen with our entire body and mind, loving action arises.”