Initially when our foundations are rocked, when we lose our external security, we feel very fragile. In that moment, we have a choice. Am I the Phoenix and rise from the ashes or do I just keep wallowing in the ashes?
The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification.
Initially I was very drawn to the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist philosophy. It was helping me deal with the balance of these external and internal issues with my chess life. Tai chi is the martial embodiment of Taoist philosophy. Initially, I had no intention of competing in the martial arts; it was just the meditation.
Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.
All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.
Life is the external text, the burning bush by the edge of the path from which God speaks.
Ifit be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt.
The power for authentic leadership is found not in external arrangements, but in the human heart.
The cause of Sense, is the External Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediately, as in theTaste and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter- pressure, or endeavor of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavor because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without.
Only the subject's individual consciousness can testify for the unwitnessed acts, and there is no act more deprived of external testimony than the act of knowing.
External conditions can, to a certain extent, reduce, but never cancel individual repsonsibility.
The more that all of the external things began to materialize, the less the internal things began to crystallize.
Fashion is not a real element of beauty in external objects; and to persons who possess a good endowment of Form, Constructiveness and Ideality, intrinsic elegance is much more pleasing and permanently agreeable, than forms of less merit, recommended merely by being new. Hence there is a beauty which never palls, and there are objects over which fashion exercises no control.
The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'.
[Albert Camus] wasn't writing under the influence of the Nobel Prize. That was an external thing for the artist in him.
. . . the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely where the shoe pinches. . . Physical conceptions are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
. . . the realm of freedom does not commence until the point is passed where labor under the compulsion of necessity and of external utility is required.
Peace is the result of an inner state of harmony. It is not obtained by eliminating anything external, it is inside ourselves that we must find and suppress the causes of war.
Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.
[But if things continue the way they are]. . . the society that I envision, if my dream is not just a false notion, this society will have to begin to create itself in the midst of fuss, noisiness and panic, and will have to face the prospects of both internal and external war.