Rise Above Other Quotes & Sayings

The ordinary man cannot imagine this Providence in any other form but that of a greatly exalted father, for only such a one could understand the needs of the sons of men, or be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. It is even more humiliating to discover what a large number of those alive today, who must see that this religion is not tenable, yet try to defend it inch by inch, as if with a series of pitiable rearguard actions. — Sigmund Freud

When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form
or a species
will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap. — Eckhart Tolle

The origin of superstition above given affords us a clear reason for the fact, that it comes to all men naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to mankind, and also tends to show, that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. — Christopher Hitchens

Certain mystical philosophers have personified Destiny, and from this point of view each man's personal destiny is his archetype or "other self"
his "angel"
with whom he must be reunited if he is to rise above his fragmentary identity as a worldling and become whole, as he is (and always has been) in the mind of God. — Charles Le Gai Eaton

track, each one mile long, laid end to end (see figure 1). The tracks are nailed down at their end points but simply meet in the middle. Now, suppose it gets hot and the railroad tracks expand, each by one inch. Since they are attached to the ground at the end points, the tracks can only expand by rising like a drawbridge. Furthermore, these pieces of track are so sturdy that they retain their straight, linear shape as they go up. (This is to make the problem easier, so stop complaining about unrealistic assumptions.) Here is your problem: Consider just one side of the track. We have a right triangle with a base of one mile, a hypotenuse of one mile plus one inch. What is the altitude? In other words, by how much does the track rise above the ground? — Richard H. Thaler

Strike experienced a moment of pure clarity: he would never make it out of here, would never rise above his current position as Rodney's lieutenant, because all the intelligence and prudence and vision came to nothing if it wasn't tempered and supported by a certain blindness, an oblivious animal will that Rodney had, that he, Strike, did not have.
Rodney would survive all this not because of his guts or his brains, but because he understood that there was no real life out here on the street, no real lives other than his own, and that what really mattered was coming first in all things, in all ways and at all costs. — Richard Price

Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance. — Sivananda Saraswati

Detachment is being apathetic or aloof to other people, while un-attachment is acknowledging and honoring other people, while choosing not to let them influence your emotional well being. Detached would mean I do not care, while un-attached means I care, although I am not going to alter my emotional state due to your emotions, words, or actions. — Alaric Hutchinson

It is not that we had any unfair knowledge that other people didn't have, it is just that we did our homework. People just don't want to believe that anyone can break away from the crowd and rise above mediocrity. — Paul Tudor Jones

But if it is true that human minds are themselves to a very great degree the creations of memes, then we cannot sustain the polarity of vision we considered earlier; it cannot be "memes versus us," because earlier infestations of memes have already played a major role in determining who or what we are. The "independent" mind struggling to protect itself from alien and dangerous memes is a myth. There is a persisting tension between the biological imperative of our genes on the one hand and the cultural imperatives of our memes on the other, but we would be foolish to "side with" our genes; that would be to commit the most egregious error of pop sociobiology. Besides, as we have already noted, what makes us special is that we, alone among species, can rise above the imperatives of our genes - thanks to the lifting cranes of our memes. — Daniel C. Dennett

He possessed the tact of becoming instantly intimate with women without giving rise to any fear of impertinence. He had about him somewhat of the propensities of a tame cat. It seemed quite natural that he should be petted, caressed, and treated with familiar good nature, and that in return he should purr, and be sleek and graceful, and above all never show his claws. Like other tame cats, however, he had his claws, and sometimes made them dangerous. — Anthony Trollope

If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway or, worse, the bus. — Chuck Palahniuk

Rise above selfishness. This includes spiritual selfishness, when one looks toward personal edification and strengthening and has no other interest than one's own salvation. To be blessed is not an end in itself; we must be a blessing to others. All people have a talent in one way or another to touch and inspire other people's lives. Let us not only look inward and proudly say 'all is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth' (2 Ne. 28:21), but let us be a light unto a chaotic world. — Hans B. Ringger

When you challenge other people's ideas of who or how you should be, they may try to diminish and disgrace you. It can happen in small ways in hidden places, or in big ways on a world stage. You can spend a lifetime resenting the tests, angry about the slights and the injustices. Or, you can rise above it. — Carly Fiorina

She trained the girls in her Girl Scout troop to believe that they could be anything, and she went to lengths to prevent negative stereotypes of their race from shaping their internal views of themselves and other Negroes. It was difficult enough to rise above the silent reminders of Colored signs on the bathroom doors and cafeteria tables. But to be confronted with the prejudice so blatantly, there in that temple to intellectual excellence and rational thought, by something so mundane, so ridiculous, so universal as having to go to the bathroom...In the moment when the white women laughed at her, Mary had been demoted from professional mathematician to a second-class human being, reminded that she was a black girl whose piss wasn't good enough for the white pot. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self..We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. (34) Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular.(7) Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness ... We can rise above this unreality and recover our hidden reality ... (281) God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self. (41) — Thomas Merton

But women are very differently situated with respect to eachother - for they are all rivals ( ... ) Is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of woman centres in beauty, and interest gives vanity additional force, perpetual rivalships should ensue? They are all running the same race, and would rise above the virtue of morals, if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye. — Mary Wollstonecraft

My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances. We lived in San Francisco's Chinatown. Like most of the other Chinese children who played in the back alleys of restaurants and curio shops, I didn't think we were poor. My bowl was always full, three five-course meals every day, beginning with a soup full of mysterious things I didn't want to know the names of. — Amy Tan

We were not put here on this earth to barely squeak by and settle for a lukewarm, watered-down version of life, or to live in fear of what other people will think. Our lives can't rise any higher than our standards. Rise above settling in life or in love. And next time someone tells you your standards are too high, don't apologize. Tell them, "Thank you." The standards you set determine the life you get. And those who know their worth don't even entertain the lesser things. They hold out for the best things. — Mandy Hale

They still live. They breathe, they love each other, they find joy in the world around them for no other reason than because they are children. They are resilient. They will always rise above. Always. It is a curious facet of the innocent young. — Amelia Fisher

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.
We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in. — Oliver Sacks

Joy cannot be confused with the mere absence sorrow, misinterpreted as experiencing minimal despair, or misunderstood as living without crippling trepidation. Bliss necessarily encompasses uncompromising acceptance of life's defining permutations. Emotional harmony necessitates beholding the pleasant and unpleasant exigencies of life while expressing unstinting appreciation for the ordinary and the extraordinary events in our lives. Joyfulness transcends the variations in physical and emotional demands exerted upon us. Elation for life allows us to rise above environmental determinates and associated stresses that might otherwise vex our souls including death and other sorrowful events. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Sorry' is, indeed, one of the most difficult and most powerful words in the English language, provided one can feel and say it at the same time. It's difficult because you sincerely need to feel the pain of the other person and rise above your ego to say it; it's powerful because you overwhelm the other with the opposite reaction of what they were expecting. — Uday Mukerji

I have always thought of our Service as an institution, more than any other bureau, engaged in a field essentially of morality
the aim of man to rise above himself, and to choose the option of quality rather than material superfluity. — Freeman Tilden

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other - by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought. — Oscar Wilde

Resentment is a powerful and corrosive force, both on the slippery left and the slippery right, and the history of humankind can largely be read as a history of resentment. Aside from a profound philosophy of capital, what we really need is a profound psychology and philosophy of resentment. We must learn to live for ourselves, without reference to the other, and, at the same time, to rise above and beyond ourselves. Or else history will keep repeating itself, and our life will be a living death. — Neel Burton

There before you is perhaps the most important juncture in all the eastern empire." He slid down from his mount to point out one road after the other, naming the destinations. "The port of Joppa lies three days to the southwest, and beyond that the road continues on to Egypt. The southern road there leads to Jerusalem. Along the eastern route lies Tiberias, and beyond that Damascus and the province of Syria. That road leading north and west goes to Tyre, Sidon, and on to Tarsus." They stood upon a gentle rise, perhaps two hundred feet above the Megiddo Plains. — Davis Bunn

When I was certain he was going to kill me, my mind went blank, and I didn't have any hope anymore. All I could do was scream my lungs out. I felt so helpless, I couldn't even bring myself to believe someone might save me. And then you showed up Al, and I realized that if we don't take care of each other then no one else will. So I'll do anything in my power to get our bodies back, even if it means being the militaries lap dog. And we'll just have to hope our powers are good enough to help us rise above our own limits. Because we're not Gods, we're humans, tiny insignificant humans. Who couldn't even save a little girl.
Edward- Elric — Hiromu Arakawa

No man (sic) has learned to live until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Length without breadth is like a self-contained tributary having no outward flow to the ocean. Stagnant, still and stale, it lacks both life and freshness. In order to live creatively and meaningfully, our self-concern must be wedded to other concerns. — Martin Luther King Jr.

As I begin to recognise that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the Negro. But then I recognise that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it. I try then to find value for what is bad
since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is the colour of evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile, inhuman in short, I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and through one human being, to reach out for the universal.
When the Negro dives
in other words, goes under
something remarkable occurs. — Frantz Fanon

I wouldn't worry about it too much, son. Certainly not about the peasants and the servants. They don't feel things as we do."
"They're human."
"Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn't work the land. They would be at each other's throat if we weren't there to restrain them. Face it, they are driven by their instincts. Granted, that is a generalization, and there are some individuals who rise above that. Personally I think that is how the nobility originated. Even today, with the help of the Gods, hard work and some luck such a man can rise above his station. But as a group ... — Andrew Ashling

If we aim to act in harmony with the laws of Good, we rise above all other laws and become a law unto ourselves; co-workers with God and helpers in nature. Ours is the privilege, ours the loss, if we fail to live up to our highest possibilities. — Max Heindel

Nobody really enjoys having to pacify their feelings. It's too much like failure; it reminds you of weakness. but feelings don't want to be pacified, either. They want to be fulfilled. You fulfill your positive feelings (love, hope, optimism, appreciation, approval) by connecting with other people, expressing your best self. You fulfill your negative feelings by releasing them. Your whole system recognizes negative feelings as toxic. It's futile to bottle them up, divert them, ignore them, or try to rise above them. Either negativity is leaving or it's hanging on - it has no other alternative.
As you fulfill emotions, your brain will change and form new patterns, which is the whole goal. — Deepak Chopra

In my Future of an Illusion I was concerned [ ... ] with what the ordinary man understands by his religion, that system of doctrines and pledges that on the one hand explains the riddle of this world to him with an enviable completeness, and on the other assures him that a solicitous Providence is watching over him and will make up to him in a future existence for any shortcomings in this life. The ordinary man cannot imagine this Providence in any other from but that of a greatly exalted father, for only such a one could understand the needs of the sons of men, or be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud