Gurdjieff Quotes & Sayings

LIBERATION LEADS TO LIBERATION. These are the first words of truth - not truth in quotation marks but truth in the real meaning of the word; truth which is not merely theoretical, not simply a word, but truth that can be realized in practice. The meaning behind these words may be explained as follows: By liberation is meant the liberation which is the aim of all schools, all religions, at all times. This liberation can indeed be very great. All men desire it and strive after it. But it cannot be attained without the first liberation, a lesser liberation. The great liberation is liberation from influences outside us. The lesser liberation is liberation from influences within us. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Real love is a cosmic force which goes through us. If we crystallize it, it becomes the greatest power in the world. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it. — G.I. Gurdjieff

you see it." Gurdjieff, a great spiritual teacher who taught in Europe and America in the early decades of the twentieth century, noted that if you think you're free and you don't know you are in prison, you can't escape. Gurdjieff saw us as being in a prison of our own habits of mind. Unless we understand how we are conditioned by our desires, we remain stuck in the reality they create, like a television program with an ad that keeps repeating over and over, implanting a subliminal message while we watch the show. BEYOND THOUGHT In the West we get rewarded for rational knowledge and learning. But only when you see that the assumptions you've been working under are not valid, — Ram Dass

If a sufficient number of people who wanted to stop war really did gather together, they would first of all begin by making war upon those who disagreed with them. And it is still more certain that they would make war on people who also want to stop wars but in another way. — G.I. Gurdjieff

One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind. — G.I. Gurdjieff

All who have come to me must have enema each day. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Meat is necessary when there is hard physical work to be done, or in a very cold climate, or when edible plants cannot be found ... Animal flesh provides all the substances we need, both for the intensive working of our organism and for maintaining a normal temperature in cold climates. — G.I. Gurdjieff

From my point of view, he can be called a remarkable man who stands out from those around him by the resourcefulness of his mind, and who knows how to be restrained in the manifestations which proceed from his nature, at the same time conducting himself justly and tolerantly towards the weaknesses of others. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel's book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Love without knowledge is demonic. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Consider everything belonging to another as if it were your own, and so treat it. — G.I. Gurdjieff

There is a cosmic law which says that every satisfaction must be paid for with a dissatisfaction. — G.I. Gurdjieff

It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Modern art is childish - not childlike, remember, childish; not innocent but stupid, insane, pathological. We have to get rid of this trend. We have to create a new kind of art, a new kind of creativity. We have to bring to the world again what Gurdjieff calls objective art. — Rajneesh

Knowledge by itself does not give understanding. Nor is understanding increased by an increase of knowledge alone. Understanding depends upon the relation of knowledge to being ... It appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Common aim is stronger than blood. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Time began when you were born. It will end when you die. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Humanity is moving in a circle. The progress in mechanical things of the past hundred years has proceeded at the cost of losing many other things which perhaps were much more important for it. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering. — G.I. Gurdjieff

If you can serve a cup of tea right, you can do anything. — G.I. Gurdjieff

An honest being who does not behave absurdly has no
chance at all of becoming famous, or even of being noticed, however kind
and sensible he may be. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. Laughter is the antidote. — George Gurdjieff

Wish' is the most powerful thing in the world. Higher than God. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. — G.I. Gurdjieff

I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Personality in man is what is "not his own" ... what come from outside, what he has learned, or reflects, all traces of exterior impressions left in the memory. — G.I. Gurdjieff

When you come to the realization that the totality of yourself, what you have treasured, what your friends have admired, is totally useless, you will suffer, but we say, that it is only from this point that there is any hope for your becoming. We are so incredibly small, mere specks in our whole solar system. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Never will he understand the sufferings of another, who has not experienced them himself, though he have divine Reason and the nature of a genuine devil! — G.I. Gurdjieff

Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine. — George Gurdjieff

When my grandmother - may she attain the Kingdom of Heaven - was dying, my mother, as was then the custom, took me to her bedside and, as I kissed her right hand, my dear grandmother placed her dying left hand on my head and said in a whisper, yet very distinctly: "Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do." Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and, evidently noticing my perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, added somewhat angrily and imperiously: "Either do nothing - just go to school - or do something nobody else does Whereupon she immediately, without hesitation and with a perceptible impulse of disdain for all around her, and with commendable self-cognizance, gave up her soul directly into the hands of His Faithfulness, the Archangel Gabriel. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Man must use what he has, not hope for what is not. — G.I. Gurdjieff

A 'sin' is something which is not necessary. — George Gurdjieff

In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him. — George Gurdjieff

Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feelings is slavery
Hope of body is disease. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The only type of sexual relations possible are those with someone who is as advanced and capable as oneself. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Those who have not sown anything during their responsible life will have nothing to reap in the future. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Life is real only then, when "I am". — G.I. Gurdjieff

Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings. — Idries Shah

Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all. — G.I. Gurdjieff

SENTENCES OF THE KHAJAGAN
RUDBARI : Heart to heart is an essential means of passing on the secrets of the Path. — Idries Shah

That which is easy is bad for your inner life. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Modern civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Better to die than live in sleep. — G.I. Gurdjieff

A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Many people who are in reality dead are walking in the streets; many who are in their graves are in reality alive. — Idries Shah

Begin with the possible; begin with one step. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Ancient art has a specific inner content. At one time, art possessed the same purpose that books do in our day, namely: to preserve and transmit knowledge. In olden days, people did not write books, they incorporated their knowledge into works of art. We would find a great many ideas in the works of ancient art passed down to us, if only we knew how to read them. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Of course, there can be clear indications that a teacher is not worth paying attention to. A history as a fabulist or a con artist should be considered fatal; thus, the spiritual opinions of Joseph Smith, Gurdjieff, and L. Ron Hubbard can be safely ignored. A fetish for numbers is also an ominous sign. Math is magical, but math approached like magic is just superstition - and numerology is where the intellect goes to die. Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. One can extrapolate from scientific data or technological trends (climate models, Moore's law), but most detailed predictions about the future lead to embarrassment right on schedule. — Sam Harris

Practice love on animals first; they react better and more sensitively. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Consciousness is a state in which a man knows all at once everything that he in general knows and in which he can see how little he does know and how many contradictions there are in what he knows. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "i". And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion. — G.I. Gurdjieff

If you meditate and the Devil comes, make the Devil meditate. — G.I. Gurdjieff

My way is to develop the hidden potentialities of man; a way that is against Nature and against God. — G.I. Gurdjieff

As long as our ideas are the same, we will never be apart. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The first thing, the very very first thing, "Find out what your greatest characteristic is, your greatest undoing, your central characteristic of unconsciousness." Each one's is different. Somebody is sex-obsessed. In a country like India, where for centuries sex has been repressed, that has become almost a universal characteristic; everybody is obsessed with sex. Somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your basic obsession. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Practice love first on animals, they are more sensitive. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Patience is the mother of will. — G.I. Gurdjieff

With thorns in the inner world there will always be roses in the outer world, in law-able compensation. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo. — G.I. Gurdjieff

You must learn not what people round you consider good or bad, but to act in life as your conscience bids you. An untrammelled conscience will always know more than all the books and teachers put together. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Live a life of friction. Let yourself be disturbed as much as possible, but observe. — G.I. Gurdjieff

If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The one great art is that of making a complete human being of oneself. — G.I. Gurdjieff

There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. — G.I. Gurdjieff

From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go. — G.I. Gurdjieff

You can never awaken using the same system that put you to sleep in the first place. — G.I. Gurdjieff

You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape. — G.I. Gurdjieff

To know all, it is necessary to know very little; but to know that very little, one must first know pretty much. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave. — G.I. Gurdjieff

A moment's reflection will show you that you play many roles in the course of a day . . . and that who you are from moment to moment changes. There is the angry you, and the kind you, the lazy you, the lustful you - hundreds of different you's. Gurdjieff points out that sometimes one "you" does something for which all the other "you's" must pay for years or possibly the rest of this life. — Ram Dass

Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books. — George Gurdjieff

One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good. — G.I. Gurdjieff

In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source which induces the hypnosis.
... One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man. — G.I. Gurdjieff

To know means to know all. Not to know all means not to know. In order to know all, it is only necessary to know a little. But, in order to know this little, it is first necessary to know pretty much. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Let us take some event in the life of humanity. For instance, war. There is a war going on at the present moment. What does it signify? It signifies that several millions of sleeping people are trying to destroy several millions of other sleeping people. They would not do this, of course, if they were to wake up. Everything that takes place is owing to this sleep. — G.I. Gurdjieff

man lies to himself a lot. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The highest that a man can attain is to be able to do. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Would a CONSCIOUS human being destroy himself through war, and crime, and quarrels? No, a man simply knows not what he does to himself. — G.I. Gurdjieff

I will tell you one thing that will make you rich for life. There are two struggles: an Inner-world struggle and an Outer-world struggle ... you must make an intentional contact between these two worlds; then you can crystallize data for the Third World, the World of the Soul. — G.I. Gurdjieff

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself - only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Try to understand what I am saying: everything is dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is. — G.I. Gurdjieff

There is in Shaw, as in Gurdjieff and Nietzsche, a recognition of the immense effort of Will that is necessary to express even a little freedom, that places them beside Pascal and St. Augustine as religious thinkers. Their view is saved from pessimism only by its mystical recognition of the possibilities of pure Will, freed from the entanglements of automatism — Colin Wilson

Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. — George Gurdjieff

What you need to know is very little, but to know that little takes very very much. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Never think of results, just do! — G.I. Gurdjieff

When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty - what difference does it make what your decisions are? — Idries Shah

We must strive for freedom if we strive for self-knowledge. The task of self-knowledge and of further self-development is of such importance and seriousness, it demands such intensity of effort, that to attempt it any old way and amongst other things is impossible. The person who undertakes this task must put it first in his life, which is not so long that he can afford to squander it on trifles. — G.I. Gurdjieff

I also very well remember that on another occasion the father dean said: 'In order that at responsible age a man may be a real man and not a parasite, his education must without fail be based on the following ten principles. 'From early childhood there should be instilled in the child: Belief in receiving punishment for disobedience. Hope of receiving reward only for merit. Love of God - but indiference to the saints. Remorse of conscience for the ill-treatment of animals. Fear of grieving parents and teachers. Fearlessness towards devils, snakes and mice. Joy in being content merely with what one has. Sorrow at the loss of the goodwill of others. Patient endurance of pain and hunger. The striving early to earn one's bread. — G.I. Gurdjieff

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows. — George Gurdjieff

If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest. — G.I. Gurdjieff

What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West-and then seek. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Only super-efforts count. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The degree of consciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed of vibrations. The denser the matter, the less conscious it is. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The greatest untold story is the evolution of God. — G.I. Gurdjieff

You are here having realized the necessity of contending with yourself; then thank everyone who provides an opportunity. — G.I. Gurdjieff