Jason Manford > Jason's Quotes

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein

“You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else's strength and greatness. He's proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
― Gandhi

“Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.”
― Robert Brault

“Be the flame, not the moth.”
― Giacomo Casanova

“Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Dare to be naïve.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
― Heraclitus

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”
― Orville Wright

“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
― Dogen

“Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
― Plato

“1. Accept everything just the way it is.
2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
6. Do not regret what you have done.
7. Never be jealous.
8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
11. In all things have no preferences.
12. Be indifferent to where you live.
13. Do not pursue the taste of good food.
14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
15. Do not act following customary beliefs.
16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
17. Do not fear death.
18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour.
21. Never stray from the Way.”
― Miyamoto Musashi

“Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. ”
― William James

“What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see.”
― Jean Piaget

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”
― May Sarton

“Universe consists of frozen light.”
― David Bohm

“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
― seneca, Peace of Mind: De Tranquillitate Animi

“Having a low opinion of yourself is not 'modesty.' It's self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not 'egotism.' It's a necessary precondition to happiness and success.”
― Bobbe Sommer

“Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions.”
― Edgar Cayce

“The postures are only the "skin" of yoga. Hidden behind them are the "flesh and blood" of breath control and mental techniques that are still more difficult to learn, as well as moral practices that require a lifetime of consistent application and that correspond to the skeletal structure of the body. The higher practices of concentration, meditation and unitive ecstasy(samadhi) are analogous to the circulatory and nervous system." Georg Feuerstein The Deeper Dimension of Yoga”
― Georg Feuerstein, The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
― Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science

“On the top of each peak you are on the edge of the abyss”
― Stanisław Jerzy Lec

“All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.”
― Stanisław Jerzy Lec

“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
― Plato

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark