An untrained observer will see only physical labor and often get the idea that physical labor is mainly what the mechanic does. Actually the physical labor is the smallest and easiest part of what the...
After a while he says, Do you believe in ghosts? No, I say. Why not? Because they are un-sci-en-ti-fic. The way I say this makes John smile. They contain no matter, I continue, and have no energy and...
A slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, If you don’t whip me, I won’t work. He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work.
A complex assembly is best described first in terms of its substances: its subassembles and parts. Then, next, it is described in terms of its methods: its functions as they occur in sequence.
The track of Quality preselects what data we’re going to be conscious of, and it makes this selection in such a way as to best harmonize what we are with what we are becoming.
The thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then ev...
The reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good los...
The idea that one person’s mind is accessible to another’s is just a conversational illusion, just a figure of speech, an assumption that makes some kind of exchange between basically alien creatures...
Physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong.
Not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that’s why I talk so much.
Huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.
Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.
You never gain something but that you lose something. And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms...
You don’t count. You’re not what they’re looking for. You’re not on TV.
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fana...
You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate.
What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down – you’re going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not – but slow down deliberately and go o...
What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness. Familiarity can blind you too.
What I am is a heretic who’s recanted, and thereby in everyone’s eyes saved his soul. Everyone’s eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.
Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you’re trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to come. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is...