Wisdom Status Quotes

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.

...Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don't develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.

The greatest hunger in life is not for food, money, success, status, security, sex, or even love from the opposite sex. Time and again people have achieved all these things and wound up still feeling dissatisfied- indeed, often more dissatisfied than when they began. The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found. The pearl is also called essence, the breath of god, the water of life…labels for what we, in our more prosaic scientific age, would simply call TRANSFORMATION.

This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social class, and perhaps common tastes and aspirations for lifestyle. The problem with these factors is that they are not durable. Physical attractiveness will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight. When people think they have found compatibility based on these things, they often make the painful discovery that they have built their relationship on unstable ground. A woman 'lets herself go' or a man loses his job, and the compatibility foundation falls apart.

There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.

I am opposed to animal welfare campaigns for two reasons. First, if animal use cannot be morally justified, then we ought to be clear about that, and advocate for no use. Although rape and child molestation are ubiquitous, we do not have campaigns for “humane” rape or “humane” child molestation. We condemn it all. We should do the same with respect to animal exploitation. Second, animal welfare reform does not provide significant protection for animal interests. Animals are chattel property; they are economic commodities. Given this status and the reality of markets, the level of protection provided by animal welfare will generally be limited to what promotes efficient exploitation. That is, we will protect animal interests to the extent that it provides an economic benefit.

Health, wealth, reputation, and status are all mere ingredients of happiness. The key to true well-being is being able to manage them capably.

Simplicity and humility, not power or status, will bring you joy and happiness.

Hero' is not an official status or designation, but if the world recognize you as a hero, it is the highest honor you will ever receive.

When God brought the first man his spouse, he brought him not just a lover but the friend his heart had been seeking. Proverbs 2:17 speaks of one's spouse as your "'allup," a unique word that the lexicons define as your "special confidant" or "best friend." In an age where women were often seen as the husband's property, and marriages were mainly business deals and transactions seeking to increase the family's social status and security, it was startling for the Bible to describe a spouse in this way. But in today's society, with its emphasis on romance and sex, it is just as radical to insist that your spouse should be your best friend, though for a different reason. In tribal societies, romance doesn't matter as much as social status, and in individualistic Western societies, romance and great sex matter far more than anything else. The Bible, however, without ignoring the importance of romance, puts great emphasis on marriage as companionship.

They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status—but rarely for your wisdom.

Every threat to the status quo is an opportunity in disguise.

If God were to remove all evil from our world (but somehow leave human beings on the planet), it would mean that the essence of 'humanness' would be destroyed. We would become robots. Let me explain what I mean by this. If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots. Let's take this a step further. Robots do not love. God created us with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one's right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one's freedom to choose to respond.

One mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies.

Politics is the art of promising heaven and delivering purgatory, and claiming hero status for saving your country from hell.

Your position may be highly powerful, but you will be a hero only when you are highly respected.

The position of a hero is not for the comparision, it is a reference point

Often, we will stay in a miserable status quo until the misery finally exceeds the resistance to change. True wisdom is seeing the future: what will happen if change does not happen?

Something must be radically wrong with a culture and a civilisation when its youth begins to desert it. Youth is the natural time for revolt, for experiment, for a generous idealism that is eager for action. Any civilisation which has the wisdom of self-preservation will allow a certain margin of freedom for the expression of this youthful mood. But the plain, unpalatable fact is that in America today that margin of freedom has been reduced to the vanishing point. Rebellious youth is not wanted here. In our environment there is nothing to challenge our young men; there is no flexibility, no colour, no possibility for adventure, no chance to shape events more generously than is permitted under the rules of highly organised looting. All our institutional life combines for the common purpose of blackjacking our youth into the acceptance of the status quo; and not acceptance of it merely, but rather its glorification.

Here’s to the misfits and foolish ones who think differently. They’re not fond of simplicity. They live unconventionally existing at a different level of intensity. They add elasticity and flexibility to what’s inflexibly rigid, bringing warmth to the frigid systems of existence. You can hate them acidicly, discredit their credibility or even oppose them ritualistically. Look down on them cynically, say they became great accidentally, rain on them torrentially or see brilliance academically. You can look and see density or see a lovely symphony. About the only thing you can’t do is disqualify their eligibility. Because they change history. Everything in existence moves them restlessly on to destiny backed by infinity. Their spirit is immensity, they overcome resiliently and follow their hearts existentially. Though they may be misunderstood until the next century, we see their opponents’ adrenaline as only minimally convincing, simply for a time because in them there’s a tendency for the divine to visit earth coincidentally. And while others may see misfits and foolishness we see wisdom and genius because the ones crazy enough to think they can live and love limitlessly are the ones who actually do.

I am aware that I fly in the face of polite convention in doing this. The times when we fall out of sync with everyday life remain taboo. We’re not raised to recognise wintering or to acknowledge its inevitability. Instead, we tend to see it as a humiliation, something that should be hidden from view lest we shock the world too greatly. We put on a brave public face and grieve privately; we pretend not to see other people’s pain. We treat each wintering as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored. This means we’ve made a secret of an entirely ordinary process and have thereby given those who endure it a pariah status, forcing them to drop out of everyday life in order to conceal their failure. Yet we do this at a great cost. Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact, and say: “This is not just.” It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to schoolteachers, social workers and other servants of the public to insure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

I’ve always maintained that if I wasn’t studying psychopaths in prison, I’d do so at the stock exchange,” he enthused. “Without doubt, there’s a greater proportion of psychopathic big hitters in the corporate world than there is in the general population. You’ll find them in any organization where your position and status afford you power and control over others, and the chance of material gain.

One’s relationship with money is lifelong, it colors one’s sense of identity, it shapes one’s attitude to other people, it connects and splits generations; money is the arena in which greed and generosity are played out, in which wisdom is exercised and folly committed. Freedom, desire, power, status, work, possession: these huge ideas that rule life are enacted, almost always, in and around money.

Wisdom isn't bound by wealth brackets, status or caste, religion or pedigree. She feeds all who come to her hungry.

It is wiser to love who you are than what you want.

If you maintain the status quo, you wind up fighting for survival, and gradually your fan base disappears.

Your divine sagacity is your life's status symbol.

If where you are is worthwhile then where you are from doesn't matter.

The shrewd marry for money, the scheming marry for status, the calculating marry for power, but the wise marry for love.

Without doubt, there’s a greater proportion of psychopathic big-hitters in the corporate world than there are in the general population. You’ll find them in any organisation where your position and status afford you power and control over others, and the chance of material gain.

Free your mind. Disentangle your mindset from what can set your mind from your true purpose. Dare when you have to. Enjoy when it is a must. Relax when there is the need to, but, don’t spend the time. Don’t let wealth be a hindrance to fulfilling your true you. Don’t let poverty captivate your true you. Don’t let the environment engulf your true purpose; if possible flee to be free to dare. We all have excuses. Yourself is the most important factor in fulfilling your true you. Free your mind!!!

question the status quo; rebuke the existing rules, though it may be at the discomfort of the masses. They may however come to a later realization that it was really worth it and you may now have the status quo

The thing about marriage a lot of people don’t understand is that you don’t get everything. Some people get passion, others get security. Some get companionship. Children. Money. Wisdom. Status. Then there is trust and fidelity.

There is ONE difference between a successful and unsuccessful people. There is ONE difference between happy and unhappy people. There is ONE difference between wise and unwise people. There is ONE difference between achievers and non-achievers. And that ONE difference is the BEHAVIOUR of an individual. It is neither your education nor your wealth or social status but your BEHAVIOUR that decides your happiness, success and wisdom. Mind your behaviour and it will take care of everything else.

The first condition is to know your goals, such as what you want to do, or even what kind of person you want to become; the second condition is knowing what resources you have, such as status, money, interpersonal relationships, and even abilities.

It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher.

... everything based on arguments involving the ''is'' of identidy and the older el (elementalistic) 'logic' and 'psychology', such as the prevailing doctrines, laws, institutions, systems. , cannot possibly be in full accordance with the structure of our nervous system. This, in turn, affects the latter and results in the prevailing private and public un-sanity. Hence, the unrest, unhappines, nervous strain, irritability, lack of wisdom and absence of balance, the instability of our instituitions, the wars and revolutions, the increase of ''mental ills, prostitution, criminality, commercialism as a creed, the inadequate standards of education, the low professional standards of lawyers, priests, politicians, physicians, teachers, parents, and even of scientists - which in the last-named field often lead to dogmatic and antisocial attitudes and lack of creativeness.

What is so often said about the solders of the 20th century is that they fought to make us free. Which is a wonderful sentiment and one witch should evoke tremendous gratitude if in fact there was a shred of truth in that statement but, it's not true. It's not even close to true in fact it's the opposite of truth. There's this myth around that people believe that the way to honor deaths of so many of millions of people; that the way to honor is to say that we achieved some tangible, positive, good, out of their death's. That's how we are supposed to honor their deaths. We can try and rescue some positive and forward momentum of human progress, of human virtue from these hundreds of millions of death's but we don't do it by pretending that they'd died to set us free because we are less free; far less free now then we were before these slaughters began. These people did not die to set us free. They did not die fighting any enemy other than the ones that the previous deaths created. The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. Solders are paid killers, and I say this with a great degree of sympathy to young men and women who are suckered into a life of evil through propaganda and the labeling of heroic to a man in costume who kills for money and the life of honor is accepting ordered killings for money, prestige, and pensions. We create the possibility of moral choice by communicating truth about ethics to people. That to me is where real heroism and real respect for the dead lies. Real respect for the dead lies in exhuming the corpses and hearing what they would say if they could speak out; and they would say: If any ask us why we died tell it's because our fathers lied, tell them it's because we were told that charging up a hill and slaughtering our fellow man was heroic, noble, and honorable. But these hundreds of millions of ghosts encircled the world in agony, remorse will not be released from our collective unconscious until we lay the truth of their murders on the table and look at the horror that is the lie; that murder for money can be moral, that murder for prestige can be moral. These poor young men and woman propagandized into an undead ethical status lied to about what is noble, virtuous, courageous, honorable, decent, and good to the point that they're rolling hand grenades into children's rooms and the illusion that, that is going to make the world a better place. We have to stare this in the face if we want to remember why these people died. They did not die to set us free. They did not die to make the world a better place. They died because we are ruled by sociopaths. The only thing that can create a better world is the truth is the virtue is the honor and courage of standing up to the genocidal lies of mankind and calling them lies and ultimate corruptions. The trauma and horrors of this century of staggering bloodshed of the brief respite of the 19th century. This addiction to blood and the idea that if we pour more bodies into the hole of the mass graves of the 20th century, if we pour more bodies and more blood we can build some sort of cathedral to a better place but it doesn't happen. We can throw as many young men and woman as we want into this pit of slaughter and it will never be full. It will never do anything other than sink and recede further into the depths of hell. We can’t build a better world on bodies. We can’t build peace on blood. If we don't look back and see the army of the dead of the 20th century calling out for us to see that they died to enslave us. That whenever there was a war the government grew and grew. We are so addicted to this lie. What we need to do is remember that these bodies bury us. This ocean of blood that we create through the fantasy that violence brings virtue. It drowns us, drowns our children, our future, and the world. When we pour these endless young bodies into this pit of death; we follow it.

Your attachments to objects, status, your culture, and even other people prevent you from being free

Listen, To be modernize it doesn't mean to be rich in wealth or by status but to be rich in wisdom......!

An Urban Monk doesn’t worry about status; therefore, she is free. Her

Normalize not caring about your status. Life is not a competition.

We usually think that envy happens over one's appearance, wealth, status. But that's not what causes intense forms of envy. Intense forms of envy are caused by one's energy: the atmosphere you bring into a room, the way your eyes glisten and sparkle when you laugh from your soul, the way another person's eyes glisten and sparkle when they mention your name. Envy of your energy can be the most damaging form of harshness you'll ever become victim of. People will do ANYTHING to rob you of the soul - space you inhabit. Anything to dull that glow in your eyes.

I am astonished at this arrogance of yours, since through God’s authority and my own you have enjoyed the office and status of wise men, yet you have neglected the study and application of wisdom. For this reason, I command you either to relinquish immediately the offices of worldly power that you posses, or else to apply yourselves much more attentively to the pursuit of wisdom.

I embrace you despite your race. I accept you despite your religion. I admire you despite your education. I welcome you despite your gender. I love you despite your status. I need you despite your politics. You are my brothers, you are my sisters, you are my mothers, and you are my fathers. I am as you are, you are as I am; we are as we are. Let us become as we were meant to become.

Looking from a distance, we find something attractive and excitedly commit to it. When we come near, we find it unbearable. Then we have to continue with it because we have already committed to it. Everything in Maya (Time-Space) is like that. You current status in life is something your younger self would find very attractive. It looked exciting from the distance of Time. Now it’s not.

Curiosity, humility and compassion, these are the fundamental pillars of monkhood, if you have these in your life, then you are a monk, regardless of your financial status and relationship status.

Three psychologists, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ken Sheldon, and David Schkade, reviewed the available evidence and realized that there are two fundamentally different kinds of externals: the conditions of your life and the voluntary activities that you undertake.33 Conditions include facts about your life that you can’t change (race, sex, age, disability) as well as things that you can (wealth, marital status, where you live). Conditions are constant over time, at least during a period in your life, and so they are the sorts of things that you are likely to adapt to. Voluntary activities, on the other hand, are the things that you choose to do, such as meditation, exercise, learning a new skill, or taking a vacation. Because such activities must be chosen, and because most of them take effort and attention, they can’t just disappear from your awareness the way conditions can. Voluntary activities, therefore, offer much greater promise for increasing happiness while avoiding adaptation effects.

The masses often let themselves down and even those at the forefront who are hoisting the flag of the cause that is intended to alleviate their miseries. However, they do not do so out of wickedness or malice. Often times, they betray their interests out of incomprehension, docility and resignation to the status quo. In a subtle way, the masses often end up collaborating with those oppressing them.

I pity those reviewers above, and people like them, who ridicule authors like R.A. Boulay and other proponents of similar Ancient Astronaut theories, simply for putting forth so many interesting questions (because that's really what he often throughout openly admits is all he does does) in light of fascinating and thought-provoking references which are all from copious sources. Some people will perhaps only read the cover and introduction and dismiss it as soon as any little bit of information flies in the face of their beliefs or normalcy biases. Some of those people, I'm sure, are some of the ones who reviewed this book so negatively without any constructive criticism or plausible rebuttal. It's sad to see how programmed and indoctrinated the vast majority of humanity has become to the ills of dogma, indoctrination, unverified status quos and basic ignorance; not to mention the laziness and conformity that results in such acquiescence and lack of critical thinking or lack of information gathering to confirm or debunk something. Too many people just take what's spoon fed to them all their lives and settle for it unquestioningly. For those people I like to offer a great Einstein quote and one of my personal favorites and that is: "Condemnation without investigation is the highest form of ignorance" I found this book to be a very interesting gathering of information and collection of obscure and/or remote antiquated information, i.e. biblical, sacred, mythological and otherwise, that we were not exactly taught to us in bible school, or any other public school for that matter. And I am of the school of thought that has been so for intended purposes. The author clearly cites all his fascinating sources and cross-references them rather plausibly. He organizes the information in a sequential manner that piques ones interest even as he jumps from one set of information to the next. The information, although eclectic as it spans from different cultures and time periods, interestingly ties together in several respects and it is this synchronicity that makes the information all the more remarkable. For those of you who continue to seek truth and enlightenment because you understand that an open mind makes for and lifelong pursuit of such things I leave you with these Socrates quotes: "True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

The three main concepts – private property, social sanction for selfcentred individualism and a materialistic outlook – are marked as the key features that elevated economics to its current dominant status.

We can’t overcome workaholism if we love money and status too much. We can’t overcome bitterness or slander if we love our reputation too much. It is not just willpower but a reordering of our desires that will bring wisdom.

Ego serves me well when I surrender the need to be right, to win, feel superior or seek approval. Let me see past what might be called failings, achievement or status...so that I may know many hearts and love unconditionally.

We treat each wintering as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored. This means we’ve made a secret of an entirely ordinary process and have thereby given those who endure it a pariah status, forcing them to drop out of everyday life in order to conceal their failure. Yet we do this at a great cost. Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.

Huh! Mankind always comes up with ideas to make up for the follies of the status quo. But what happens if those ideas are inflexible and fail to respond to the changing times. They end up betraying the people who believed in them.

God's response to your situation or problem will mock and insult your knowledge, wisdom, status-quo and poor character because of its simplicity. Solutions , breakthroughs and answers from God Almighty will always require your humility.

The whole concept of “competition” needs to be revisited. In my view, competition and wisdom are two different paths that will never intersect ... we need to seek wisdom rather than playing games and politics against our peers to get status and power.

What does it mean to be cultured? Who is the cultured person? The cultured individual is not defined nor determined by status in society nor by wealth; but the cultured individual is determined and defined by his or her sense for the art of life. And what is the art of life? The art of life is the reflection of the mind and the soul upon the world, upon other people, upon the respect and understanding of other people and upon the things that are in this world and beyond. There is a joy that is always sought in beautiful things. Being cultured is being conscious, reflective, understanding, feeling, aware. Knowing how to feel, to listen, to understand. A desire to find or to create joy in many things— that is the art of life. And these things define a cultured person.

Historically, those with the least social status have been people of color, women, and those with physical disabilities. The paradox here is that the individuals who had more social power because of their bodies did not experience themselves as defined by their bodies, but they made choices that affected the day-to-day bodily realities of others. Obvious examples of this include men determining the reproductive rights of women, or people without disabilities designing buildings that restrict building access for those with disabilities.

The earth is an arena of champions. We are all champions. We all did overcome millions of potential human beings’ before making it unto the earth. Our spectators watching our race of life are the Seen and the Unseen. Thought, attitude and choice are what bring the differences in the arena of mother earth. The real champions in this life are they that will run the race of life facing the storms, overcoming the hurdles, unraveling the puzzles of life, questioning the status quo in wit, over ruling environmental mediocrity and daring for great and indelible change out of comfort or discomfort.

When a person consistently hurts others it is because they deeply hurt within theirself. They disconnect from that side of them that is accountable for their actions. They cast empathy to the darkest part of their soul and choose to live life not in God's light, but the superficial light of significance (compliments, achievements, status, personal gain, other people's approval and ego). This dimmed light will never be greater than the one God gives to those that consistently show compassion, mercy and empathy. These light deprived souls are the ones that will be the hardest to rescue from hell.

Surely something along these lines would have to do with their research and development of their OWN forms of consciousness – at least to the degree that such development has taken them, at the very least, somewhat beyond massively destroying themselves before they could achieve the status of being “advanced.

John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, summed up this phenomenon well when he said, “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” Succeeding unconventionally carries with it the risk of experiencing failure as a result of veering from the status quo.

There is no such thing as maintaining the status quo. If you do not advance, you will retreat. It is that simple. In my aspect, being cautious is not the perfect way to succeed. No matter what we do, or even our lives, we must choose between taking risks and being cautious. And sometimes, the chance of winning by taking risks is much greater than by being cautious.

The people’s hero does not only have to be someone in possession of the scepter of power. It can be anyone capable of giving unity, prosperity, security, peace and a sense of worthiness to his people. Such a figure gets elevated to the status of a revered hero with the human touch if he imparts a sense of oneness on a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious group; especially a diverse people who have been fighting one another for years and centuries...

David Brooks Oprah: I love how you say we should rank our loves in highs and lows. Tell me what that does. David Brooks: That’s a concept from the great theologian Augustine. And he asked the question, what is sin? When we use the word sin now, we only use the word in the context of fattening deserts. But in traditional morality, it’s the sense that we have something broken. And I don’t like the word sin when it’s meant to suggest we’re dark and depraved inside. But Augustine had a beautiful formula. He said, “We sin when we have our loves out of order.” And what he meant by that— Oprah: Oh, this is good. “We sin when we have our loves out of order.” Yes. David: So we all love a lot of things. We love family. We love money. We love a little affection. Status. Truth. And we all know that some loves are higher. We know that our love of family is higher than our love of money. Or our love of truth should be higher than our love of money. And if we’re lying to get money, we’re putting our loves out of order. And so sometimes just by our nature, we get them out of order. So, for example, if a friend tells you a secret, and you blab it at a dinner party, you’re putting your love of popularity above your love of friendship. And we know that’s wrong. That’s the wrong order. And so it’s useful to sit down and say, “What do I love? What are the things I really love? And in what order do I love them? Am I spending time on my highest love? Or am I spending time on a lower love?

Soviet Union, he had used his iconic status to join the ranks of the liberal foreign policy establishment, counting as personal friends men like Gen. George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson and McGeorge Bundy. Liberals had then embraced Oppenheimer as one of their own. His humiliation thus implicated liberalism, and liberal politicians understood that the rules of the game had changed. Now, even if the issue was not espionage, even if one’s loyalty was unquestioned, challenging the wisdom of America’s reliance on a nuclear arsenal was dangerous.

The process of having fruitful crops depends on being crushed under the soil, becoming soil, and being no one; only then a second existence becomes possible. So whatever status one has in society, true wisdom requires one to see oneself this way. Individuals with such considerations are already prepared for self-effacement and will therefore not lose in the face of even the hardest tests by God’s grace. Such people do not feel dizzy before victories, and do not give up in the face of pressures, attacks, and insults, because a man who sees himself as a seed under the soil does not mind others walking on him.

There is no evil in things changing, just as there is no good in persisting in a new state.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 4.42 When people say change is good, they’re usually trying to reassure someone (or themselves). Because instinctively we view change as bad—or at least we’re suspicious of it. The Stoics want you to do away with those labels altogether. Change isn’t good. The status quo isn’t bad. They just are. Remember, events are objective. It’s only our opinion that says something is good or bad (and thus worth fighting against or fighting for). A better attitude? To decide to make the most of everything. But to do that you must first cease fighting.

Southerners have a lot to be proud of. We have survived, and we have overcome. Southern women, especially, have learned to be proud of what they have and patient for what they want--even revenge. That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, as the old saying goes, and darlin’, there is just no way to ever kill the pride and joy of being a Grits. Wisdom, courage, sacrifice, and determination are the lessons of our history. Southerners know and understand our past as a people, which is why we are all connected, no matter our status in life. We recognize kinship as the golden threads that are woven through our past: the struggles, the pain, and the power of overcoming.

Perhaps nothing separates modern man from the Greeks as much as his aversion to thinking about the human in terms of perfection. The artistic embodiment of the Homeric deities served as an optimal status criterion of the form and content of human perfection. Extremely elevated standards were maintained in physiognomy, creativity, and discernment, always with a view to the interconnectedness of warfare, wisdom, and beauty. Grandeur, prowess, dignity, and nobility seem available for all who act heroically and with nobility... As Otto deftly explains, only a spiritually poor age would think to reduce the human capacity for heroic action to a search for bourgeois comfort, safety, and happiness.

Google had a built-in disadvantage in the social networking sweepstakes. It was happy to gather information about the intricate web of personal and professional connections known as the “social graph” (a term favored by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg) and integrate that data as signals in its search engine. But the basic premise of social networking—that a personal recommendation from a friend was more valuable than all of human wisdom, as represented by Google Search—was viewed with horror at Google. Page and Brin had started Google on the premise that the algorithm would provide the only answer. Yet there was evidence to the contrary. One day a Googler, Joe Kraus, was looking for an anniversary gift for his wife. He typed “Sixth Wedding Anniversary Gift Ideas” into Google, but beyond learning that the traditional gift involved either candy or iron, he didn’t see anything creative or inspired. So he decided to change his status message on Google Talk, a line of text seen by his contacts who used Gmail, to “Need ideas for sixth anniversary gift—candy ideas anyone?” Within a few hours, he got several amazing suggestions, including one from a colleague in Europe who pointed him to an artist and baker whose medium was cake and candy. (It turned out that Marissa Mayer was an investor in the company.) It was a sobering revelation for Kraus that sometimes your friends could trump algorithmic search.

Someone asked me the other day - 'could you tell me, what is right human living' - I put my hand on his shoulder and asked him to sit beside me, with a gentle smile on my face, then uttered softly, 'I don't know your religious belief or disbelief, I don't know your professional background, I don't know your economic or social status, all I need to know is that you are a human being, a reflection of my own self, so I treat you with kindness and acceptance, same as I treat myself'. The world is flooded with judgments and opinions - for once my friend, take a step beyond that flood, and you shall see a beautiful world, where being human is a beautiful thing - in that world being human is all that matters.

Lakota may have had to endure the omega status at the bottom of the hierarchy for many years, but he was as much a cherished member of the family as any of the others. He always ate, he howled with the group, he played with his packmates, and he helped raise the pups. We have marveled at each individual wolf’s intelligence and been fascinated by observing each unique personality, but the family bond shared among these wolves is what we have admired the most. Caring for the young ones—and for each other—was the central mission in their lives. A wolf is impelled by many individual desires—it wants to breed, hunt, perhaps explore—but its most profound desire is the one that touches us at our very core as human beings: A wolf wants to belong.

Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Evolution is cyclical. You also have to understand the West and East are only directions, not absolute places. Historically and conventionally, the west is associated with Development, and the east with Wisdom. People who went west were typically people who stretched boundaries, who wanted to challenge the status quo and believed that they could control things at will. They were young and daring, risk-takers. They were ambitious and intelligent; however, not necessarily wise. Buy you see, the Earth is round. In a thousand years from now, if the world population is able to sustain itself despite the erosion of natural resources that has been done so far, the West might be the new East and the East the new West.

Be happy with pleasure, but only content with comfort. Be happy with amusement, but only content with fulfillment. Be happy with excitement, but only content with bliss. Be happy with wants, but only content with needs. Be happy with patience, but only content with long-suffering. Be happy with hope, but only content with faith. Be happy with passion, but only content with joy. Be happy with emotion, but only content with love. Be happy with riches, but only content with happiness. Be happy with titles, but only content with respect. Be happy with possessions, but only content with peace. Be happy with power, but only content with integrity. Be happy with status, but only content with skill. Be happy with degrees, but only content with experience. Be happy with connections, but only content with opportunities. Be happy with success, but only content with excellence. Be happy with knowledge, but only content with wisdom. Be happy with insight, but only content with understanding. Be happy with intelligence, but only content with intuition. Be happy with education, but only content with enlightenment. Be happy with theories, but only content with proof. Be happy with speculation, but only content with certainty. Be happy with questions, but only content with answers. Be happy with problems, but only content with solutions. Be happy with yesterday, but only content with today. Be happy with now, but only content with tomorrow. Be happy with maybe, but only content with certainly. Be happy with destiny, but only content with eternity.

Right now in this world, a child is dying from an ailment because its family cannot afford to buy charcoal for boiling water. Right now in this world, a girl is striving to find firewood from trees that no more exist, and water from sources that are poisonous. Right now in this world, a boy is out fishing in a lake rich with inedible species. Right now in this world, a mother is drowning in heavy rainfall, to save her belongings. Right now in this world, a man has lost his dignity because all his eff orts to save have been wiped away to poverty by unforeseen calamities. Right now in this world, a family is starving because drought has invaded their once fertile land. Right now in this world, a nation is planning for refugee status due to adverse climate conditions. Right now in this world, you have a choice to help alleviate environmental problems caused by humankind.

and here instead’s another version of what was happening that morning, as if from a novel in which sophia is the kind of character she’d choose to be, prefer to be, a character in a much more classic sort of story, perfectly honed and comforting, about how sombre yet bright the major-symphony of winter is and how beautiful everything looks under a high frost, how every grassblade is enhanced and silvered into individual beauty by it, how even the dull tarmac of the roads, the paving under our feet, shines when the weather’s been cold enough and how something at the heart of us, at the heart of all our cold and frozen states, melts when we encounter a time of peace on earth, goodwill to all men; a story in which there’s no room for severed heads; a work in which sophia’s perfectly honed minor-symphony modesty and narrative decorum complement the story she’s in with the right kind of quiet wisdom-from-experience ageing-female status, making it a story that’s thoughtful, dignified, conventional in structure thank god, the kind of quality literary fiction where the slow drift of snow across the landscape is merciful, has a perfect muffling decorum of its own, snow falling to whiten, soften, blur and prettify even further a landscape where there are no heads divided from bodies hanging around in the air or anywhere, either new ones, from new atrocities or murders or terrorisms, or old ones, left over from old historic atrocities and murders and terrorisms and bequeathed to the future as if in old french revolution baskets, their wickerwork brown with the old dried blood, placed on the doorsteps of the neat and central-heating-interactive houses of now with notes tied to the handles saying please look after this head thank you, well, no, thank you, thank you very much:

I pray that you must have peace within yourself. Have you seen yourself lately. You are always angry & busy fighting. You are fighting everything & fighting everyone. First you had valid good reasons why you should be fighting. Now you have excuses why you are fighting. I pray that you have peace within yourself. Its foreigners your fighting. After winning. It's racism war your fighting. After winning. It tribalism your fighting. After winning. Its culture vs religion war your fighting. After winning. Its gender war ,boys verses girls your fighting. After winning . Its girls against other girls (feminine war) & boys against other boys (muscular war) your fighting. After winning . Its your thoughts against your heart war your fighting. After winning . Its your feelings against spirituality war your fighting. After winning. its something else your fighting................ Money you have. Status you have. Job and friends you have. Pride and ego you have, but I pray you have peace. and I pray that you have inner peace. Some battles you fight them but the real war is within yourself.

One of Socrates' greatest and most enduring legacies, one for which he ultimately gave his life, was to fundamentally transform the meaning of 'Know yourself' by turning it inward. In other words, when Socrates advised his fellow Athenians --- the aristocrats, more often than not --- to examine their lives, to 'know themselves,' he was exhorting them to give far less time and attention to external circumstances like social status and wealth and to give much more time and attention to the things that matter most: internal goals, like wisdom, truth, and ethical character. As Socrates himself expressed the point in defense of his teachings: 'I will not cease from philosophy...and from exhorting you, and declaring the truth to every one of you I meet..."are you not embarassed by caring for money ...and fame and reputation, and not caring or taking thought for wisdom and truth and for your soul, and how to make it as good as possible?' I go about doing nothing else but urging you, young and old alike, not to care for your bodies or for money sooner than, or as much as, for you soul, and how to make it as good as you can.

As we go forward in life, we come more and more to realize the wisdom of being obedient, not because we are afraid of the law, but because we recognize the importance, wisdom, and necessity of law in civilized life. Freedom within the law is indispensable if your life is to be rich and radiant. Liberty is a prized possession, which should be jealously guarded, but it may be jeopardized by disobedience. We should not assume that liberty and license are synonymous. Sometimes we find people of all ages who resent regulations, restraints, or prohibitions of any kind. They seem to assume that rebellious disregard for rules or laws indicates emancipation and independence. In a foolish attempt to demonstrate their freedom they lose it, forgetting that real liberty can only be enjoyed by obedience to law. Consider for a moment our traffic laws, with their daily toll of suffering, loss, and death. It must be evident to all that these laws are enacted and enforced for the good and protection of people and property. Is it not, therefore, foolhardy to endanger oneself and others simply to show one's independence or importance. Of course, we may disregard the traffic laws, drive on the wrong side of the street, exceed speed limits, go through red lights, just for the satisfaction of showing off and doing as we please, but if we continue to act in such an irresponsible manner, we must eventually pay a price all out of proportion to any momentary satisfaction. . . . Speaking of the duty of parents to children, [John] Locke said, "Liberty and indulgence can do no good to children; their want of judgment makes them stand in need of restraint." . . . Any person is stupid who thinks he can defy the law with impunity. They who obey the law find it to be a safeguard and protection, a guarantee against privilege and favoritism; it applies to all, regardless of rank, station, or status. When properly administered, its rewards and punishments are inflexible. They are at once a warning, a promise, and a safeguard. If they whose duty it is to enforce the law were whimsical or capricious, or if the laws were not administered and enforced with undeviating justice and equity, there would be confusion, defiance, and rebellion. With the average, normal person, force will not become necessary, but sometimes, for the safety of society, drastic measures must be employed.

1 – Thinking Straight Maxim 1 - When you are having trouble getting your thinking straight, go to an extreme case Maxim 2 - When you are having trouble getting your thinking straight, go to a simple case Maxim 3 – Don’t take refuge in complexity Maxim 4 - When trying to understand a complex real-world situation, think of an everyday analogue 2 – Tackling Uncertainty Maxim 5 - The world is much more uncertain than you think Maxim 6 - Think probabilistically about the world Maxim 7 - Uncertainty is the friend of the status quo 3 – Making Decisions Maxim 8 - Good decisions sometimes have poor outcomes Maxim 9 - Some good decisions have a high probability of a bad outcome Maxim 10 - Errors of commission should be weighted the same as errors of omission Maxim 11 - Don’t be limited by the options you have in front of you Maxim 12 - Information is only valuable if it can change your decision 4 – Understanding Policy Maxim 13 - Long division is the most important tool for policy analysis Maxim 14 - Elasticities are a powerful tool for understanding many important things in life Maxim 15 - Heterogeneity in the population explains many phenomena Maxim 16 - Capitalize on complementarities

It’s been said that the personal is political, and there’s no doubt that parenting is intensely personal. To argue against traditional ways of raising children, or to suggest that we can help children stand up for what they think is right, doesn’t introduce politics into parenting. It’s always been there. If we’ve failed to notice the political implications of child rearing, it may be because most advice on the subject has the effect of perpetuating the status quo. Hence the need to keep asking, “Cui bono?” When, for example, a researcher such as Diana Baumrind defends the idea of “moral internalization,” which she defines as “the process by which children come to espouse and conform to society’s rules, even when they are free of external surveillance or the expectation of external inducement,” that’s intensely political.3 The cornerstone of her notion of “authoritative” discipline is the creation of built-in supervisors to ensure conformity. But too many people respond by asking, “What’s the most efficient way to achieve such internalization?” and skirting the question of the value of those rules they’re being asked to internalize. In fact, we should invite our children to join us in asking which rules are worth following, and why.

Part of the problem is the extraordinary place that economics currently holds in the social sciences. In many ways it is treated as a kind of master discipline. Just about anyone who runs anything important in America is expected to have some training in economic theory, or at least to be familiar with its basic tenets. As a result, those tenets have come to be treated as received wisdom, as basically beyond question (one knows one is in the presence of received wisdom when, if one challenges some tenet of it, the first reaction is to treat one as simply ignorant—“You obviously have never heard of the Laffer Curve”; “Clearly you need a course in Economics 101”—the theory is seen as so obviously true that no one exposed to it could possibly disagree). What’s more, those branches of social theory that make the greatest claims to “scientific status”—“rational choice theory,” for instance—start from the same assumptions about human psychology that economists do: that human beings are best viewed as self-interested actors calculating how to get the best terms possible out of any situation, the most profit or pleasure or happiness for the least sacrifice or investment—curious, considering experimental psychologists have demonstrated over and over again that these assumptions simply aren’t true.2

I have taken a different approach. One that I hope is more easily accessible to the reader’s emotional imagination, though less analytically systematic. I have summoned back into life again—through my own translations from a selection of popular Chinese novel sand poems—some of the imagined worlds in which Chinese have passed their daily reality during the last two hundred years. I have tried to convey something of what it felt like to be a Chinese, living in Chinese society, in different settings of status, age, and gender, and how this has changed over time. For reasons of method, I have looked at a small number of organically coherent emotional spaces, contained in individual works or parts of works, and considered them in detail. ... It would be pretending to more wisdom than I have to claim that the selection I have made is the result of a rigorous intellectual winnowing process from a harvest of widespread reading in late-imperial and modern Chinese literature. Honesty compels the admission that it is more the outcome of chance, serendipity, and whatever happened to catch my imagination, for reasons that I am probably in no position to do more than guess at. ... In so far as there has been a guiding principle behind my choices it has been the desire to show as much as the constraints of space allow of the contrasts among those in different social position, different periods, and different ideologies.

You were raised with a very special status in Tibet. You must have come to this recognition of oneness over time.” “Yes, I have grown in my wisdom from study and experience. When I first went to Peking, now Beijing, to meet Chinese leaders, and also in 1956 when I came to India and met some Indian leaders, there was too much formality, so I felt nervous. So now, when I meet people, I do it on a human-to-human level, no need for formality. I really hate formality. When we are born, there is no formality. When we die, there is no formality. When we enter hospital, there is no formality. So formality is just artificial. It just creates additional barriers. So irrespective of our beliefs, we are all the same human beings. We all want a happy life.” I couldn’t help wondering if the Dalai Lama’s dislike of formality had to do with having spent his childhood in a gilded cage. “Was it only when you went into exile,” I asked, “that the formality ended?” “Yes, that’s right. So sometimes I say, Since I became a refugee, I have been liberated from the prison of formality. So I became much closer to reality. That’s much better. I often tease my Japanese friends that there is too much formality in their cultural etiquette. Sometimes when we discuss something, they always respond like this.” The Dalai Lama vigorously nodded his head. “So whether they agree or disagree, I cannot tell. The worst thing is the formal lunches. I always tease them that the meal looks like decoration, not like food. Everything is very beautiful, but very small portions! I don’t care about formality, so I ask them, more rice, more rice. Too much formality, then you are left with a very little portion, which is maybe good for a bird.” He was scooping up the last bits of dessert.

The Greeks, on the other hand, were passionately interested in logic and reason. Plato (ca. 428–ca. 348 BCE) was continually occupied with problems of epistemology and the nature of wisdom. Much of his early work was devoted to the defense of Socrates, who had forced men to clarify their ideas by his thought-provoking questions but had been sentenced to death in 399 on the charges of impiety and the corruption of youth. In a way that was not dissimilar to that of the people of India, he had become dissatisfied with the old festivals and myths of religion, which he found demeaning and inappropriate. Plato had also been influenced by the sixth-century philosopher Pythagoras, who may have been influenced by ideas from India, transmitted via Persia and Egypt. He had believed that the soul was a fallen, polluted deity incarcerated in the body as in a tomb and doomed to a perpetual cycle of rebirth. He had articulated the common human experience of feeling a stranger in a world that does not seem to be our true element. Pythagoras had taught that the soul could be liberated by means of ritual purifications, which would enable it to achieve harmony with the ordered universe. Plato also believed in the existence of a divine, unchanging reality beyond the world of the senses, that the soul was a fallen divinity, out of its element, imprisoned in the body but capable of regaining its divine status by the purification of the reasoning powers of the mind. In the famous myth of the cave, Plato described the darkness and obscurity of man’s life on earth: he perceives only shadows of the eternal realities flickering on the wall of the cave. But gradually he can be drawn out and achieve enlightenment and liberation by accustoming his mind to the divine light.

It is a great pity that this tendency towards religious thought can find no better outlet than the Jewish pettifoggery of the Old Testament. For religious people who, in the solitude of winter, continually seek ultimate light on their religious problems with the assistance of the Bible, must eventually become spiritually deformed. The wretched people strive to extract truths from these Jewish chicaneries, where in fact no truths exist. As a result they become embedded in some rut of thought or other and, unless they possess an exceptionally commonsense mind, degenerate into religious maniacs. It is deplorable that the Bible should have been translated into German, and that the whole of the German people should have thus become exposed to the whole of this Jewish mumbo-jumbo. So long as the wisdom, particularly of the Old Testament, remained exclusively in the Latin of the Church, there was little danger that sensible people would become the victims of illusions as the result of studying the Bible. But since the Bible became common property, a whole heap of people have found opened to them lines of religious thought which—particularly in conjunction with the German characteristic of persistent and somewhat melancholy meditation—as often as not turned them into religious maniacs. When one recollects further that the Catholic Church has elevated to the status of Saints a whole number of madmen, one realises why movements such as that of the Flagellants came inevitably into existence in the Middle Ages in Germany. As a sane German, one is flabbergasted to think that German human beings could have let themselves be brought to such a pass by Jewish filth and priestly twaddle, that they were little different from the howling dervish of the Turks and the negroes, at whom we laugh so scornfully. It angers one to think that, while in other parts of the globe religious teaching like that of Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed offers an undeniably broad basis for the religious-minded, Germans should have been duped by a theological exposition devoid of all honest depth.

It is foolish to be in thrall to fame and fortune, engaged in painful striving all your life with never a moment of peace and tranquillity. Great wealth will drive you to neglect your own well-being in pursuit of it. It is asking for harm and tempting trouble. Though you leave behind at your death a mountain of gold high enough to prop up the North Star itself, it will only cause problems for those who come after you. Nor is there any point in all those pleasures that delight the eyes of fools. Big carriages, fat horses, glittering gold and jewels – any man of sensibility would view such things as gross stupidity. Toss your gold away in the mountains; hurl your jewels into the deep. Only a complete fool is led astray by avarice. Everyone would like to leave their name unburied for posterity – but the high-born and exalted are not necessarily fine people, surely. A dull, stupid person can be born into a good house, attain high status thanks to opportunity and live in the height of luxury, while many wonderfully wise and saintly men choose to remain in lowly positions, and end their days without ever having met with good fortune. A fierce craving for high status and position is next in folly to the lust for fortune. We long to leave a name for our exceptional wisdom and sensibility – but when you really think about it, desire for a good reputation is merely revelling in the praise of others. Neither those who praise us nor those who denigrate will remain in the world for long, and others who hear their opinions will be gone in short order as well. Just who should we feel ashamed before, then? Whose is the recognition we should crave? Fame in fact attracts abuse and slander. No, there is nothing to be gained from leaving a lasting name. The lust for fame is the third folly. Let me now say a few words, however, to those who dedicate themselves to the search for knowledge and the desire for understanding. Knowledge leads to deception; talent and ability only serve to increase earthly desires. Knowledge acquired by listening to others or through study is not true knowledge. So what then should we call knowledge? Right and wrong are simply part of a single continuum. What should we call good? One who is truly wise has no knowledge or virtue, nor honour nor fame. Who then will know of him, and speak of him to others? This is not because he hides his virtue and pretends foolishness – he is beyond all distinctions such as wise and foolish, gain and loss. I have been speaking of what it is to cling to one’s delusions and seek after fame and fortune. All things of this phenomenal world are mere illusion. They are worth neither discussing nor desiring.

For someone who constantly comes across this problem in the course of his professional activities, the question whether philosophy has the status of a “wisdom” or of a form of “knowledge” peculiar to itself is no longer an unnecessary or simply a theoretical problem; it is a vital question, since it affects the success or failure of thousands of scholars.

Relative and ultimate, These the two truths are declared to be. The ultimate is not the object of the mind. The mind is said to be the relative.2 It is said that all the phenomena of both samsara and nirvana subsist in the manner of two truths: the relative truth, which is the mere appearance of things in all their multiplicity, and the ultimate truth, which is the true status of these same things, namely, emptiness.

That’s the best thing about Facebook. You can ‘like’ a girl’s photograph and her status message and she likes it too – without even realising that you actually like her.

It is essential that the most destitute girl should be able to access higher education and be granted an equal status with men. ‘When a woman is educated, a people is educated,’ such is a saying of traditional wisdom.

Be like water my friend - the water doesn't discriminate between a glass made of gold and a glass made of plastic - it just acquires the shape of whichever glass you pour it in - likewise be one with all humans regardless of their religion, race or social status, for in oneness lies bliss, in oneness lies progress.

We might map thumos and eros onto Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs by viewing thumos as the higher, social needs, and eros as the source and container of the physiological ‘life energy’—a term in which sense the word eros has often been used in Greek philosophy. As we can see, both horses had a place and function in the human soul, and when a healthy mind holds the reins, it can drive the ‘chariot’ forwards. The logos, therefore—the charioteer in the analogy—was of utmost importance. This was where intellect had its throne, and from which reason and logic emerged. Whereas the horses pulled in the directions of social status and biological needs, the logos desired nothing but learning and wisdom. Only by means of this mental function was the soul able to balance the impulses and urges of the two winged horses. According to Plato, people dominated by the logos or logistikon made great philosophers or politicians.

You cannot get, buy or win love, with your wealth, status, wisdom, beauty, and even sex. Love needs the truth of the heart and mind. If you use the tools to have, love of someone, you possibly lose that.

… This was chronicled in a harsher book and McCaslin, fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, had seen it and the boy himself had inherited it as Noah’s grandchildren had inherited the Flood although they had not been there to see the deluge: that dark corrupt and bloody time while three separate people had tried to adjust not only to one another but to the new land which they had created and inherited too and must live in for the reason that those who had lost it were no less free to quit it than those who had gained it were: – those upon whom freedom and equality had been dumped overnight and without warning or preparation or any training in how to employ it or even just endure it and who misused it not as children would nor yet because they had been so long in bondage and then so suddenly freed, but misused it as human beings always misused freedom, so that he thought Apparently there is a wisdom beyond even that learned through suffiring necessary for a man to distinguish between liberty and license; those who had fought for four years and lost to preserve a condition under which that franchisement was anomaly and paradox, for the old reasons for which man (not the generals and politicians but man) has always fought and died in wars: to preserve a status quo or to establish a better future one to endure for his children; and lastly, as if that were not enough for bitterness and hatred and fear, that third race even more alien to the people whom they resembled in pigment and in whom even the same blood ran, than to the people whom they did not, – that race threefold in one and alien even among themselves save for a single fierce aged Quartermaster lieutenants and Army sutlers and contractors in military blankets and shoes and transport mules, who followed the battles they themselves had not fought and inherited the conquest they themselves had not helped to gain, sanctioned and protected even if not blessed, and left their bones and in another generation would be engaged in a fierce economic competition of small sloven farms with the black men they were supposed to have freed and the white descendants of fathers who had owned no slaves anyway whom they were supposed to have disinherited and in the third generation would be back once more in the little lost country seats as barbers and garage mechanics and deputy sheriffs and mill- and gin-hands and power-plant firemen, leading, first in mufti then later in an actual formalized regalia of hooded sheets and passwords and fiery Christian symbols, lynching mobs against the race their ancestors had come to save: and of all that other nameless horde of speculators in human misery, manipulators of money and politics and land, who follow catastrophe and are their own protection as grasshoppers are and need no blessing and sweat no plow or axe-helve and batten and vanish and leave no bones, just as they derived apparently from no ancestry, no mortal flesh, no act even of passion or even of lust: and the Jew who came without protection too since after two thousand years he had got out of the habit of being or needing it, and solitary, without even the solidarity of the locusts and in this a sort of courage since he had come thinking not in terms of simple pillage but in terms of his great-grand-children, seeking yet some place to establish them to endure even though forever alien: and unblessed: a pariah about the face of the Western earth which twenty centuries later was still taking revenge on him for the fairy tale with which he had conquered it. …

Life is so much more than our pity version of reality where we worry about financial wealth, social status, power, and interacting with machines that provide pleasures such as cars, boats, smart phones, and television. Life is limited and ultimate reality – the realm of potential knowledge – is unlimited.

it’s counterintuitive that the conventional wisdom is that current market success equates to future market success. But this is, for better or for worse, typical. It is important to actively counteract this dangerous contentment with the status quo