Teaching means to show a person that something is possible.
I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.
As Albert Einstein once said to me: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. " But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing. . . playing helpless.
Learning is discovering that somethinkg is possible.
If you are bored, you are not paying attention.
I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.
I believe that any single dream contains the essential message about our existence.
The only difference between a wise man and a fool is that the wise man knows he's playing.
Humans don't really improve on our own functioning, we only interfere with it, distort it, and disguise it.
It feels much nobler to feel guilty than resentful, and it takes more courage to express resentment than guilt. With expressing guilt you expect to pacify your opponent; with expressing resentment you might stir up hostility in him.
Nothing changes until it becomes what it is.
You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage.
Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.
Have a dialogue between the two opposing parts and you will find that they always start out fighting each other until we come to an appreciation of difference.
Anxiety is the gap between now and later.
Learning is to discover that something is possible. We are using most of our energies for self-destructiv e games, self-preventing games. We prevent ourselves from growing the very moment something unpleasant, something painful comes up. At that moment we become phobic, we run away, we desensitize ourselves. Neurotic suffering is suffering in imagination, suffering in fantasy.
We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.
So if you find out how you prevent yourself from growing, from using your potential, you have away of increasing this, making life richer, making you more and more capable of mobilizing yourself. And our potential is based upon a very peculiar attitude: to live and review every fresh second
. . . nobody can stand truth if it is told to him. Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable.
Those that fight don't listen, those that listen don't fight.