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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“We have been saying, Lucy, that 'tis the strangest thing in the world people should quarrel about religion, since we undoubtedly all mean the same thing; all good minds in every religion aim at pleasing the Supreme Being; the means we take differ according to where we are born, and the prejudices we imbibe from education; a consideration which ought to inspire us with kindness and indulgence to each other.”

“We have been south and suffered a great deal down there. Many have died of diseases which we have no name for. Our hearts looked and longed for this country where we were born. There are only a few of us left, and we only wanted a little ground, where we could live. We left our lodges standing, and ran away in the night. The troops followed us. I rode out and told the troops we did not want to fight; we only wanted to go north, and if they would let us alone we would kill no one. The only reply we got was a volley. After that we had to fight our way, but we killed none who did not fire at us first. My brother, Dull Knife, took one-half of the band and surrendered near Fort Robinson. [...] They gave up their guns, and then the whites killed them all.”

“We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, 'schooling,' but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prison.”

“We have been taught that life is a fight and a struggle. We have been taught that life is an enemy. We have been taught that we have to conquer life, we have to conquer existence, but the part cannot conquer the whole. The part can only dissolve into the whole. One cannot win against the whole, one can only win with the whole. If the part is in conflict with the whole, the part will always fail. Friendship means to be a friend to existence. Friendship means to not be in conflict with existence. Friendship means to be in a love affair with existence. Friendship means to be in a deep love affair with the trees, the birds, the animals, the people, the rocks, the rivers and the mountains. Friendship is the highest state of love. Let friendship become your path to friendship with all unconditionally.”

“We have been taught that life is a fight and a struggle. We have been taught to fight, because of the the idea that man has to continuously fight for his survival. We have been taught to fight, because of the idea that man and nature are enemies. Nature is not our enemy. Nature is our home. The universe is not antagonosiotic to us. The universe means the earth, which the universe fills with flowers, trees, animals, people, rivers and mountains. The universe is supporting them. Why would the flowers, the trees and the rivers otherwise grow? Man is part of this existence. But the idea that we have to fight creates a separation between us and the whole. Man becomes an isolated island. Then we live in fear, anxiety and worry. So how can we be happy? Instead we feel alienated, alone and meaningless, because the whole seems to be a constant fight and struggle. For the person who have been fighting with existence, death seems to be the ultimate thing. But for the person who have surrendered to existence, who is in tune with existence, death is not the ultimate thing. Surrender means to let go of your ego, so for him there is no death. It is only the egothat dies, because the ego is a separation from the whole. Itis the ego that fights with the whole. Surrender means to drop all that is superficial and shallow. Surrender means to become egoless. Surrender means that our heart starts to beat in tune with the universal heart. Instead of being an isolated island, we become part of the whole continent. And then we live in love, joy, silence, trust, truth, freedom and the eternal. Suddenly we know the joy and beauty of surrender. Surrender means to yes to the whole.”

“We have been taught to keep the commandments, and we have kept them all too well. We have enshrined them like religious relics in sealed containers on the altar. Thus, it could be said that one lives by the commandments in much the same way as many persons live by a neighbor, never learning his name, let alone having any understanding communication with him.”

“We have been taught to wish for it, but the wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults , to our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.”

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Abraham Lincoln, “A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer.” Proclamation March 30, 1863”

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.”

“We have been through, over these years, some difficult times. During the period that I have served as President of the United States, we have been through some difficult times together, and I can only say that the friendship that we have for this nation, the respect and the admiration we have for the people of this nation, their courage, their tenacity, their firmness in the face of very great odds, is one that makes us proud to stand with Israel, as we have in the past in times of trouble, and now to work with Israel in a better time, a time that we trust will be a time of peace.”

“We have been told . . . that this life is a necessary part in the course of progression designed by our Father. We have been taught . . . to look upon these bodies of ours as gifts from God. . . . It has been declared in the solemn word of revelation, that the spirit and the body constitute the soul of man; and, therefore, we should look upon this body as something that shall endure in the resurrected state, beyond the grave, something to be kept pure and holy.”

“We have been trained to feel shame and guilt basically as a means to cause fear and hesitation, to control behavior, or to oppress real freedom and joy. The origins of that are communal fear, jealousy and the desire for power over others. Consequently, many people have the addiction of using shame or guilt simply to avoid possibilities in life, and have, at the same time, a reason to avoid them—if you act spontaneously or feel joy, the result will eventually bring suffering, so you had better watch out, and don’t ever forget the past shame and guilt.”

“We have been trained to think of patterns, with the exception of those of music, as fixed affairs. It is easier and lazier that way but, of course, all nonsense. In truth, the right way to begin to think about the pattern which connects is to think of it as primarily (whatever that means) a dance of interacting parts and only secondarily pegged down by various sorts of physical limits and by those limits which organisms characteristically impose.”