Michael Ventura Quotes & Sayings

They think I may be dangerous, and I am, but not in the way they fear. I have tasted of Paradise. Not because I wanted to. I didn't want to. But it has borne down upon me and there is no escaping it any more. All Things Are Possible. It bears down upon everyone and we run from it as hard as we can and many manage to keep it at bay, but I have not, I am condemned, now, never ... to settle ... for the lesser ... ever ... again. And yes, that makes me a dangerous man.
They think I have become one of the wild animals at the zoo, and I have become one of the wild animals at the zoo.
This is a great day. — Michael Ventura

That's what America's all about, man, if it's about anything. You can choose your own name. — Michael Ventura

Good is not the opposite of evil, joy is the opposite of evil. — Michael Ventura

Most of us aren't very graceful about not having our needs met, when and how we want them met. — Michael Ventura

Stop tolerating in your leaders what you would not tolerate in your friends. — Michael Ventura

The people that you have to lie to, own you. The things you have to lie about, own you. When your children see you owned, they are not your children any more, they are the children of what owns you. If money owns you, they are the children of money. If your need for pretense and illusion owns you, they are the children of pretense and illusion. If your fear of loneliness owns you, they are the children of loneliness. If your fear of the truth owns you, they are the children of fear of the truth. — Michael Ventura

My employer uses twenty-six years of my life for every year I get to keep. And what do I get in return for the enormous thing I am giving? What do I get in return for my life? — Michael Ventura

The people you have to lie to, own you. The things you have to lie about, own you. — Michael Ventura

All paths cause pain, so to chose the safe over the audacious will not give you less pain, only less beauty. — Michael Ventura

Leave people alone when they tell you to leave them alone.
If they mean it, they need it. — Michael Ventura

When the people clamor to be shielded from reality, when they praise their government for keeping things from them, when they choose to conduct their lives within the limits of whatever fantasy the government supplies, then they are no longer consenting to be governed, they are begging to be ruled. — Michael Ventura

Our choices are truncated in evil's presence. — Michael Ventura

Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods your enemy has won. The rest is suffering and historical opera. — Michael Ventura

He became a surgeon because he was afraid of knives. He got married because he was afraid of women. He had a child because he was afraid of responsibility. Now, his marriage over and his child no longer speaking to him, he turned off all the lights in the house because he was afraid of the dark — Michael Ventura

Work is a sacrament. Don't despise anyone's. — Michael Ventura

To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind
is to be crazy, not healthy. — Michael Ventura

It may be that it is not given to us to know when we are angels. We may only be given to know when others are. This may be one of the reasons we need each other so. — Michael Ventura

If I had the money and the drinking capacity, I'd probably live at a roulette table and let my life go to hell. — Michael Ventura

The value of having an inner map of the world as it is (not as it's broadcast) is this: it allows you to know that your task is larger than yourself. If you choose, just by virtue of being a decent person, you are entrusted with passing on something of value through a dark, crazy time-preserving your integrity, in your way, by your acts and your very breathing for those who will build again when this chaos exhausts itself. — Michael Ventura