Materially Quotes & Sayings

the American system of checks and balances disperses federal lawmaking authority among multiple, overlapping political forums. As a result, federal policymaking power is shared: Congress is given the primary power to draft laws, subject to the president's veto and judicial review; the executive branch is given the primary power to implement laws, subject to congressional oversight and judicial review; and the courts have the primary power to interpret laws, subject to a variety of legislative and executive checks, including the appointment process, budgetary powers, and the passage of "overrides"-laws that explicitly reverse or materially modify existing judicial interpretations of statutes. — Mark C. Miller

Both men and women remain in dysfunctional, loveless relationships when it is materially opportune. — Bell Hooks

Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ever before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal; although this barrage is generally seen as a collective sexual fantasy, there is in fact little that is sexual about it. It is summoned out of political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women's freedom, and it exploits female guilt and apprehension about our own liberation
latent fears that we might be going too far. — Naomi Wolf

Given that a significant percentage of children suffer from attention deficit problems in today's world, especially in more materially affluent societies, I am told that substantial efforts are being made to understand the faculty of attention and its causal dynamics. — Dalai Lama XIV

Not only are mortals rotten, the very atmosphere in which we live is materially and physically rotten, swarming with maggots, with obscene appearances, poisonous minds, and foul organisms. — Antonin Artaud

Mr. President, passage of this bill will visit the heel of oppression on all the people, vitiate their constitutional shield against tyranny, and materially hasten the destruction of the best design for self-government yet devised by the minds of men. Its passage will mark one of the darkest days in history — Strom Thurmond

The yoga tradition asserts that lasting happiness is dependent on prospering both materially and spiritually. — Rod Stryker

I was successful materially, but I know life is much more than worldly success. I saw all these blessings God had given me. The way to give thanks is obedience to God. — Hakeem Olajuwon

Soviet people are better off materially and richer spiritually. — Leonid Brezhnev

Conversely, real life is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it. — Guy Debord

It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste of the nation. — David Sarnoff

If I had a choice of living in a society where I was materially much better off than I am now, but was among the poorest, or in one where I was the richest, but much worse off than I am now, I'd take the first option. If I had children, it would arguably be immoral not to. It's absolute poverty you want to avoid, not relative poverty. — Paul Graham

It is of man's essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose ... Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge. — Henri Bergson

Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. — Booker T. Washington

I invested in the album. Look, if I never did anything again in music, it wouldn't affect my life materially. I live a very satisfying life. Not because I've made a few dollars, but because I have a wife who loves me and children who wait for me to come home. And that is beautiful. I think that's the American dream: to be at peace at home. — RZA

I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving. — Faith Baldwin

The materialists, or some of them, would have us believe that the brain produces thoughts as an organ secretes fluids; this is to overlook What constitutes the very essence of thought, namely the materially unexplainable miracle of subjectivity: as if the cause of consciousness - immaterial and non-spatial by definition - could be a material object. — Frithjof Schuon

Throughout history, it took centuries for the habits of one culture to materially affect another. Now, that which becomes popular in one country can sweep through others within months. — Dee Hock

Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him? — Wernher Von Braun

The only part of evolution in which any considerable interest is felt is evolution applied to man. A hypothesis in regard to the rocks and plant life does not affect the philosophy upon which one's life is built. Evolution applied to fish, birds and beasts would not materially affect man's view of his own responsibilities except as the acceptance of an unsupported hypothesis as to these would be used to support a similar hypothesis as to man. The evolution that is harmful - distinctly so - is the evolution that destroys man's family tree as taught by the Bible and makes him a descendant of the lower forms of life. This ... is a very vital matter. — William Jennings Bryan

A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race [the Yankees]; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion ... A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world. — Samuel Eliot Morison

[ ... ]How can a great civilization have destroyed itself so completely?"
"Perhaps,"said Apollo, "by being materially great and materially wise and nothing else. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

As for the Republicans
how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage' ... ) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead. — H.P. Lovecraft

On the one hand poetry is useless. It can't change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence. It came into the world when humans did. It's what makes human beings human. — Bei Dao

Boredom presents a very real, if insidious peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington post:"Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding. Examples abound ... Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly." The backcountry traveler, then, in addition to developing such skills as the use of a map and compass, or the prevention and treatment of blisters, must prepare mentally and materially to cope with boredom, lest his tail grow scaly. — Jon Krakauer

The sum of the whole matter is this - our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually. — Woodrow Wilson

This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor. — John F. Kennedy

As long as we think our lives are not good enough (materially), we will not have happiness. As soon as we realize our lives are good enough, happiness immediately appears. That is the practice of contentment. — Nhat Hanh

Have you been holding back from a risky, costly course to which you know in your heart God has called you? Hold back no longer. Your God is faithful to you, and adequate for you. You will never need more than He can supply, and what He supplies, both materially and spiritually, will always be enough for the present. — J.I. Packer

They did not speak, surprised to see how simple, almost poor, happiness could be, yes, materially poor and yet so abundant. — Andrei Makine

Somewhere back a whiskey or so ago I wrote that thinking was a real thing in the world, just like anything else. I mean that very literally, materially. And it's true about poems, too. — Matthew Zapruder

I believe that proper eating will help all sorts of diseases. I can't say it will cure, but I can say it will materially help. — David H. Murdock

So what I realized when I was a child was that if I were traveling as fast as light while holding a mirror before me, I would not see my image in the mirror, because as fast as the image of my face in light moved toward the mirror, why, just as fast would the mirror be moving away ... It is a rather frightening idea, in fact, that if I moved at the speed of light, I could get no confirmation of my existence from an objective source of reflected light such as a mirror. I would be like a ghost in the universe, materially unverifiable in the stream of time. — E.L. Doctorow

If all persons with any trace of homosexual history, or those who were predominantly homosexual, were eliminated from the population today, there is no reason for believing that the incidence of the homosexual in the next generation would be materially reduced. The homosexual has been a significant part of human sexual activity since the dawn of history, primarily because it is an expression of capacities that are basic in the human animal. — Alfred Kinsey

In the past, I thought I should put serious effort into being less materially attached, to train myself to like expensive things less. Now it was happening organically and almost violently, with full conviction. — Charlotte Shane

In our view, though, investment students need only two well-taught courses-How to Value a Business, and How to Think about Market Prices. Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business who's earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now. — Warren Buffett

I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time. — Bill Bryson

You can legally lie about the real world to your heart's content, but until some human being is materially damaged, nobody will complain. — Richard Dawkins

Our return to an image-based culture means the destruction of the abstract thought made possible by a literate, print-based society. Image-based societies do not grasp or cope with ambiguity, nuance, doubt and the many layers of irrational motives and urges, some of them frightening, that make human actions complex and finally unfathomable. They eschew self-criticism for amusement. They build fantastic non-reality-based belief systems that cater to human desires and illusions rather than human reality. These illusions, whether religious or secular, offer a simple and unexamined myth that the human race is advancing morally, spiritually and materially toward paradise. This advance is proclaimed as inevitable. This faith in our advancement makes us passive and complacent. — Chris Hedges

Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now. Over time, you will find only a few companies that meet these standards - so when you see one that qualifies, you should buy a meaningful amount of stock. — Jeff Matthews

In so strong a light, nevertheless, do they appear to the Secretary, that, on their due observance, at the present critical juncture, materially depend, in his judgment, the individual and aggregate prosperity of the citizens of the United States; their relief from the embarrassments they now experience; their character as a people; the cause of good government. — Alexander Hamilton

Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made. — Theodore Roosevelt

I read and reread and recommended and rarely rejected, became one of those readers who will read trashy stories as long as they're not too terrible
well, even perhaps the truly terrible ones
and will reread something she's already read, even if it's something like a detective novel, when you'd suspect that knowing who had really killed the countess would materially detract from the experience. (It doesn't, and besides, I often can't remember who the murderer was in the first place.) — Anna Quindlen

My mother's death put me in touch with my most savage self. As I've grown up and come to terms with her death and accepted it, the pieces of her that I keep don't exist materially. — Cheryl Strayed

The Sweat and the Furrow was Silas Weekley being earthly and spade-conscious all over seven hundred pages. The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. It was not Silas's fault that its steam provided the only uprising element in the picture. If Silas could have discovered a brand of steam that steamed downwards, Silas would have introduced it. — Josephine Tey

Those who are materially poor, hungry, and grieving are called "blessed" by Jesus, because wealth, satisfactions, and pleasures do not blind them to their need for God's Kingdom ... Their misery helps them to cry out to God and to trust in Him since everything else has failed them. — Roch A. Kereszty

But defeating one's enemies is only half the game; for a war to be truly justifiable one has to materially gain. — Scott Anderson

Structurally, by reason of their smaller numbers and greater resources, virtually all ruling classes enjoy an advantage over the ruled in their capacity for collective action. Their internal lines of communication are more compact; their wealth offers an all-purpose medium of power, convertible into any number of forms of domination; their intelligence systems scan the political landscape from a greater height. More numerous and more dispersed, less equipped materially, less armed culturally, subordinate classes always tend, in the sociologist Michael Mann's phrase, to be 'organisationally outflanked — Perry Anderson

It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. — Henry David Thoreau

We eat light, drink it in through our skins. With a little more exposure to light, you feel part of things physically. I like feeling the power of light and space physically because then you can order it materially. Seeing is a very sensuous act-there's a sweet deliciousness to feeling yourself see something. — James Turrell

One feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable? — Dervla Murphy

Students need only two well-taught courses - How to Value a Business, and How to Think About Market Prices. Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now. Over time, you will find only a few companies that meet these standards - so when you see one that qualifies, you should buy a meaningful amount of stock. You must also resist the temptation to stray from your guidelines: If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value. Though it's seldom recognized, this is the exact approach — Warren Buffett

Yousef had been lighthearted during his questions, but there was something very serious and sad under his smile, and Alan knew what it was. It was the knowledge that there would be no fighting, and there would be no struggle, no stand taken, and that the two of them, because they were not lacking materially, because despite injustices in their countries they were the recipients of preposterous bounty, would likely do nothing. They were content, they had won. The fighting would be done by others, elsewhere. — Dave Eggers

Etymologically, "compassion" means to suffer together. "Together," however, is different from "identically." Compassion is not the same as selflessness, and not really the opposite of selfishness. Rather, it provides a basis for helping other people that is materially disinterested but emotionally self-regarding. As Rousseau wrote in Emile, "When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself ... " Or, as Jean Bethke Elshtain has said, "Pity is about how deeply I can feel. And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs. — William Voegeli

The power-loving temperament is more dangerous when it either prefers or is forced to operate in what is materially a void. Wehave everything to dread from the dispossessed. — Elizabeth Bowen

Our civilization cannot survive materially unless it is redeemed spiritually. It can be saved only by becoming permeated with the Spirit of Christ, and being made free and happy by practices which spring out of that spirit. Only thus can discontent be driven out and all shadows lifted from the road ahead. — Woodrow Wilson

That this gentleman [President John Adams] ought not to be the object of the federal wish, is, with me, reduced to demonstration. His administration has already very materially disgraced and sunk the government. There are defects in his character which must inevitably continue to do this more and more. And if he is supported by the federal party, his party must in the issue fall with him. — Alexander Hamilton

The spectacle cannot be understood as an abuse of the world of vision, as a product of the techniques of mass dissemination of images. It is, rather, a Weltanschauung which has become actual, materially translated. It is a world vision which has become objectified. 6. The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. — Guy Debord

[The] events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities [between Rome and Persia], undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect. — Edward Gibbon

When we look back over the landscape of our lives from any particular vantage point, we will find that the most valuable and the most precious things that we have ever enjoyed or experienced are caught up in the quality and quantity of the loving relationships that we have enjoyed. That if any time of life we look back and we have accomplished anything else in the world, financially or materially or politically or any other way, and we do not have high-quality loving relationships to fall back on and to remember and to think about and to enjoy, to that degree we have failed as human beings. — Brian Tracy

Landowners may contribute their property as equity - always scarce for the beginning developer - but they might also supply debt, via seller financing, at terms unavailable through financial institutions. Even if they do not materially participate, landowners can tie up land while financing and approvals are obtained. In income property, key tenants might also be offered partnerships to induce them to lease space in the project, particularly if the project can be designed around the tenant's specific needs. — Richard B. Peiser

My problem was not with comfort or monetary wealth. My problem was with a way of life in which those who have more than they need are envied or extolled, while those who are materially poor are scorned or forgotten. — John Robbins

Unsoundness in a slave, as well as in a horse, detracts materially from his value. If no warranty is given, a close examination is a matter of particular importance to the Negro jockey. — Solomon Northup

The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all it oceans. It killed 50 million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization. — John Keegan

A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded. — Roger Babson

The most consistently successful commanders, when faced by an enemy in a position that was strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever tackled it in a direct way. And when, under pressure of circumstances, they have risked a direct attack, the result has commonly been to blot their record with a failure. — B.H. Liddell Hart

The goal in life is the same as in basketball: make the effort to do the best you are capable of doing
in marriage, at your job, in the community, for your country. Make the effort to contribute in whatever way you can. You may do it materially or with time, ideas, or work. Making the effort to contribute is what counts. The effort is what counts in everything. — John Wooden

While Molly and Joseph Anning suffered materially that winter, with many days of weak soup and weaker fires, Mary barely noticed how little she was eating or the chilblains on her hands and feet. She was suffering inside. — Tracy Chevalier

When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed. — Jonathan Lethem

Is there some risk every day we walk out our front door? Every time we get in our car? Yeah. Are we materially less safe now than we were 10 years ago? Whatever delta there is, it's very small. — John Hickenlooper

When I awaken in the morning, I am thankful for a new day. I am thankful for everything that I have materially. I am thankful for everything I have spiritually. I thank God for allowing me to experience these things, even the experiences that may not seem so positive, such as developing an illness. I may not understand why I have the illness, but I sense that it is there for a purpose, and so I thank God for it. I ask Him to allow me to expand beyond my narrow-mindedness and self-centeredness so that I can see the good that comes from everything. — Betty Eadie

Rich people don't have to have a life-and-death relationship with the truth and its questions; they can ignore the truth and still thrive materially. I am not surprised many of them understand literature only as an ornament. Life is an ornament to them, relationships are ornaments, their "work" is but a flimsy, pretty ornament meant to momentarily thrill and capture attention. Why didn't I reread my F. Scott Fitzgerald sooner? I might have saved myself some time. — Sergio Troncoso

Most of what we acquire materially is found to not be worth what we must pay spiritually. — Boyd K. Packer

It is true that technical progress in modern times has linked men together like a complex nervous system. The means of travel are numerous and communication is instantaneous - we are joined together materially like the cells of a single body, but this body has as yet no soul. This organism is not yet aware of its unity as a whole. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Being on a board is not just about showing up for the meetings. A board member needs to materially contribute to the success of the business. — Scott Weiss

A country that has few museums is both materially poor and spiritually poor ... Museums, like theaters and libraries, are a means to freedom. — Wendy Beckett

Let us ask ... how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc ... we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects. — Michel Foucault

A seed does not contribute much materially to the plant it grows into; the material comes from the soil, sunlight, water, and air. What the seed contributes is information. It has the same DNA as every other living entity, but when its genes begin to be expressed, it pulls from the environment what is needed to make a plant of just a particular kind. — Anonymous

Believe truth! Shun error!-these, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance. — William James

Yet alongside this rebellion against the father, a respect for and acceptance of his authority continued to exist. This ambivalent attitude toward authority - rebellion against it coupled with acceptance and submission - is a basic feature of every middle-class structure from the age of puberty to full adulthood and is especially pronounced in individuals stemming from materially restricted circumstances. — Wilhelm Reich

The Bible is full of God's promises to provide for us spiritually and materially, to never forsake us, to give us peace in times of difficult circumstances, to cause all circumstances to work together for our good, and finally to bring us safely home to glory. Not one of those promises is dependent upon our performance. They are all dependent on the grace of God given to us through Jesus Christ. — Jerry Bridges

The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. — Josephine Tey

There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces. — Gustave Flaubert

UCC 2-207 ("Battle of the Forms" (O' MATE)): Under the UCC sec. 2-207, where both parties are merchants, additional or different terms become part of the contract unless: The terms are Objected to within a reasonable time; Terms MAterially alter the contract; or Offer is expressly conditioned on acceptance of those Exact Terms. — Mary Campbell Gallagher

I always hope that young people will think for themselves and also most importantly, understand that they should judge themselves on their own merit, their good deeds, however simple, to not judge themselves by what they have materially, by what other people think of them, through social media. — Patti Smith

I have now the gloomy prospect of retiring from office loaded with serious debts, which will materially affect the tranquility of my retirement. — Thomas Jefferson

Unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not as materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to — Henry David Thoreau

A spiritually established life is not an easy task. But a materially satisfied life is an impossible task. — Sri Chinmoy

The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize. — Thomas B. Macaulay

In the world in which we live, we give most attention to satisfying the appetites of the body and practically none to the soul ... We become fat physically and materially, while spiritually we are lean, weak, and anemic. — Billy Graham

Even those who are materially poor have something to offer, and in doing so, open themselves up to the circular energy of generosity and abundance. — Stephen Richards

Your children should have it impressed upon them that their adult life-style will bear very little resemblance to yours and that they should now be acquiring knowledge, skills, values, and tastes that will sustain them in less materially affluent circumstances. On the other hand, the fresh insights and imaginations of your children may help you find a viable future while there's still time. — Paul R. Ehrlich

The spectacle that falsifies reality is nevertheless a real product of that reality. Conversely, real life is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it. Objective reality is present on both sides. — Anonymous

Maximum Sustained Power workouts are much less taxing on the cardio endurance component and instead focus on going for max power or going home. Literally, you end your mini-sets when you can't lift the heavy bar again due to accumulated fatigue. Or, in the case of vertical jumps or calibrated exercise equipment, you stop the set when you fall materially short of your baseline absolute power performance standard that you started the workout with. — Mark Sisson

When we talk about books ... we are talking about our approximate recollections of books ... What we preserve of the books we read - whether we take notes or not, and even if we sincerely believe we remember them faithfully - is in truth no more than a few fragments afloat, like so many islands, on an ocean of oblivion ... We do not retain in memory complete books identical to the books remembered by everyone else, but rather fragments surviving from partial readings, frequently fused together and further recast by our private fantasies. ... What we take to be the books we have read is in fact an anomalous accumulation of fragments of texts, reworked by our imagination and unrelated to the books of others, even if these books are materially identical to ones we have held in our hands. — Pierre Bayard

Unhappy: People look around and think, why are there so many people that are unhappy? We have progressed so far, yet people are still unhappy. Why isn't this world the wonderful place it could be? Changing the world doesn't change us.

It does not matter how much we progress materially; it will not change anything. Only learning and seeing the truth will change us, and thus change everything.

The truth transforms a mortal man into an immortal spiritual being.
It does this because the truth just shows you what you truly are, and that changes everything. The truth does the same thing for the way we see the world and for the same reason. It shows you life clearly; it shows you true life for the first time. — Michael Smith

The interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meanings of Orientalism is a constant one and since the late eighteenth century there has been a considerable, quite disciplined
perhaps even regulated
traffic between the two. Here I come to the third meaning of Orientalism, which is something more historically and materially defined than either of the other two. Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed a the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient
dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. — Edward W. Said

Our lives are also measured in three dimensions: Spirit, mind, and body. However, the greatest of these is Spirit, because to refuse the Spirit is to choose death. "For example, the body of a man may be shackled and jailed. Still, his Spirit praises God continuously. Another one may be materially rich and free, but his oppressed Spirit curses his miserable existence. A child's mind may be humble, but glorious in love and faith, while a genius may be too proud to appreciate the humility and simplicity that fruitful faith requires. And regarding the body, even beautiful people are oftentimes unhappy and unfulfilled. It is the Spirit of Love that fulfills us. — Kenneth E. Nowell

Even if we don't want to admit it, the ability to overcome most obstacles is within our hands. We can't blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are not too many options when we realize that our job is useless, or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one's life, it is always a better deal to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult, and require great honesty with oneself. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

For the other end of the spectrum, the 50 to 85 percent of the world's population who are not the recipients of privilege, the world they know is almost certainly worse than any their earlier counterparts knew. It is likely they are worse off materially, despite the technological changes. In substantive as opposed to formal terms, they are more, not less, subject to arbitrary constraints, since the central mechanisms are more pervasive and more efficient. And they bear the brunt of the various kinds of psychic malaise, as well as of the destructiveness of civil wars. — Immanuel Wallerstein