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Quotations Database
16 years in the making, this 36,000 motivational quote search engine can identify quotations by the name of the author, keyword, gender, general ethnicity, and by phrase. It’s yours to use for free. I think it is the most diverse, deep, and far-reaching quotation search engine on values, ethics, and wisdom anywhere in the Milky Way galaxy. Enjoy! – Jason
Arrows of hate have been shot at me too; but they never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world, with which I have no connection whatsoever. It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service. If the believers of the present-day religions would earnestly try to think and act in the spirit of the founders of these religions, then no hostility on the basis of religion would exist among the followers of the different faiths. True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness. The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not what he is able to receive. In the case of political, and even religious, leaders it is often very doubtful whether they have done more harm or good. A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Because people choose to live in a social group (family, community, nation), and not be asocial hermits, they need to learn to care for themselves and for others, preserve — and help actualize — themselves as well as their society. They can choose — or not choose — to put themselves first in some respects, but preferably should put others — particularly some selected other — a close second. What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others. Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve. It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’ There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that’s your own self. Are you still to learn that the end and perfection of our victories are to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue? Is there no bright reversion in the sky
For those who greatly think, or greatly die? In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind’s concern is charity. To err is human; to forgive, divine. Many people are capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing. Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. I know of no country…where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. Like a green shoot forcing its way up between the concrete slabs of a city sidewalk, evidence of human caring and helping defies this culture’s ambivalence about — if not outright discouragement of — such activity. The fact that taking care of oneself is morally neutral or even praiseworthy can easily become a rationalization for excessive concern with one’s own desires and for overlooking or even actively trampling the claims of others. The altruist is to be characterized not as one who puts the interests of others ahead of his own, but as one who puts the interests of others on an equal footing with his own. Logically, if we act pro-socially, and if it cannot be demonstrated that we did so for self-serving reasons, one may conclude that we probably did so altruistically—at least if it is conceded that altruism need not be reserved for positively self-denying acts. Naturally it is possible that an individual is ignorant of his true motives or is deliberately misrepresenting them. But there is surely some value in hearing what people have to say on the subject of why they decided to help. The egoist may rejoin that the rewards and punishments motivating pro-social behavior have been internalized: people help just to feel pleased with themselves or to avoid guilt. And once again we concede that this account describes at least some part of the motivation of at least some people. But can it really explain all pro-social behavior in lieu of altruism? The decision to relieve someone else’s distress is sometimes motivated by a desire to relieve one’s own vicarious distress. This, as I have noted several times, is not altruism. It is rather striking, when one stops to think about it, that most of us do feel good about helping and bad about not helping. We ought not to take this for granted. A man who leapt onto the subway tracks in New York City to save a child—very nearly losing his own life in the process—told a reporter that had he not acted, ‘I would have died inside. I would have been no good to myself from then on.’ In my experience, cars do not spin their wheels on the ice for very long before someone stops to offer a push. We disrupt our schedules to visit sick friends, stop to give directions to lost travelers, ask crying people if there is anything we can do to help. Interestingly, tests of moral reason show that people who score at relatively high levels are more likely to be liberal than conservative. And the belief that the world is fundamentally, that people who suffer most have done something to deserve their fate, is empirically related to political conservativism. …there is virtually no connection one way or the other between religious affiliation or belief and prosocial activities. The ‘natural benevolence’ that David Hume attributed to our species is a function of precisely this capacity for what is today generally called empathy. Our experience with the frequency and devastating consequences of We versus They views of the world suggests that where shared humanness and individual uniqueness can be emphasized over group membership, this would be much to the good. We regard man as if nothing in his life were causally determined and as if every phenomenon could have been different…in psychology we cannot speak of causality or determinism. Neurosis is the natural, logical development of an individual who is comparatively inactive, filled with a personal, egocentric striving for superiority, and is therefore retarded in the development of his social interest. Man dreams of fame, while woman wakes to love. Men live like fishes; the great ones devour the small. The former allies have blundered in the past by offering Germany too little, and offering even that too late, until finally Nazi Germany had become a menace to all mankind. Human kindness shines like blazing torches. Kindness is an act of mercy given away responsibly by a person who has every right to express wrath. One deed is worth a thousand speeches. A realized soul is like a river or a tree, giving comfort and coolness to those who come to him. True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one’s own the suffering and joy of others. Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you. Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence, and more than any other one thing, a smile reassures them. The man who dies rich dies disgraced. The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he be willing to climb himself.
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Today's Quote
Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.
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