Just some personal info about
me... and a little piece of my mind...
My philosophy, a few snapshots of
me, and some of my friends
MONA LISA'S
Philosophy
My vision for the world, the
thing I think is the most important ... is
that we shouldn't be fighting each other, and instead we should be
fighting
ignorance. The goal is to survive in health and happiness
and to make our world as close to a heaven on earth as possible and to
carry on in the
highest quality of life possible.
And life may not even last
til
the collision with another galaxy, as we could kill ourselves
through pollution, wars or contagion could run rampant and do the deed
for us... We are already witnessing vast areas of the planet's oceans
that have little or no life due to our foolish pollution, over fishing,
and those ghastly humongous lost nets killing sea life with absolutely
no value to humans nor sea kind.
We do not write because we want
to; we write because we have to.
W. Somerset
Maugham
It seems inevitable that our
planet will not always be here. For certain, as far
as scientists know the laws of physics we know that we are on a
catastrophic collision course with a neighboring galaxy called
Andromeda. I am not making this up. And though planet
Earth's almost certain demise seems far far away, we can't really know
for certain that some unforeseen intervening factor may come and
destroy our beautiful world at any time.
Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter,
and those who matter don't mind.....Dr. Seuss.
So
clearly our enemy should be
ignorance, and we should all be fighting it instead of each other. I do
not wish to scare anyone into hiding their heads under the sheets and
becoming paralyzed with fear. We just need to keep pointed towards
achieving our goals to safeguard life as we know it, or to make it even
better.
Investing
in stocks that
have managers who value the bottom line in the short term and not
taking into consideration their actions regarding the survival of life
on our planet is a good example where diffusion of responsibility comes
into play and can reek un-pleasant side effects - no one person would
feel responsible for, yet we must look for these pitfalls before we
foolishly squander our resources.
We
should take care to
invest in worthy goals and people. As Buddha taught, we should "Serve
those who are worthy of serving, and be kind to all others".
One
important goal should include being able to travel in space
so if and when we need to find a new home on another safer planet, we
will have already done all the preliminary colonizing work.
We
need to keep educating ourselves, and extending our life expectancy,
so we have time to accrue knowledge and put concepts into action. We
should encourage brilliant minds to procreate and make life easier for
such people to put their intellect towards our goals. Intelligence
should be revered, not feared.
Live as you will have
wished to have lived when you are dying
Is
there a God? I don't
know. I sure hope so, but the evidence is unclear. Perhaps there is.
Perhaps there was a
God or Gods, and he/she/it disappeared either temporarily or forever
for
whatever reason... Perhaps early in the history of humans on earth
people knew these answers but through
time, and for whatever reasons, the knowledge and truth about these
matters has been lost. If you hear anyone say they actually "converse
with God" these days, you would probably suspect they would be
somewhat delusional, joking, or just plain lying. But because the
belief some higher being is watching over us, and keeping a list of our
deeds to judge us later and the fear/pleasure principle can be very
motivating to keep humanity harmonic, lets count on there being a God,
and lets agree to act
accordingly - treating all humans with respect and love as we believe
is
the kind of behavior to allow us to enter into the beautiful realm
promised by our various religions. But on the other hand, lets prepare
for the other possibility. Let all of humanity ban together to work to find a
cure for illnesses and aging ... to prolong
our lives in health so we'll have time and ability to gain knowledge...
to save ourselves and in the meantime, make our lives in the hear and
now, more heavenly at the same time.
The World's Most Beautiful German Shepherd
IVAN ABBOTT
Glenn Abbott - Husband and
Partner since 1976 with Ivan
"Obedience keeps the rules,"
he would say.
"Love knows when
to break them."
This photo was taken by talented friend and fellow
portrait artist Mickey Adair
Below are some of my favorite quotations, and excerpts from writings of
other philosophers...
Norman Vincent Peale
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts
can do that.
John D. Rockefeller
I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been
my goal, I had an ambition to build.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities.
Charles Kettering
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
William Arthur Ward
A cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition.
Sam Walton
High expectations are the key to everything.
Norman Vincent Peale
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.
Lance Armstrong
I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days.
A cloudy day is
no match
for a sunny disposition.
An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the
pessimist always run to blow it out?
Dr. Robert Anthony
Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need
to find one good reason why it will.
Christian Furchtegott Gellert
Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.
W.W. Ziege
Nothing can stop the man with the
right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can
help
with man with the wrong mental attitude.
Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
William Shakespeare
Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Carl
Menninger
Attitudes are more important than facts.
German proverb
To change and to change for the better are two different things.
Zig Ziglar
Success doesn't make you and failure doesn't break you.
Seneca
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is
because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The time is always right to do what is right.
William Faulkner
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or
predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
Harry Truman
A pessimist
is one who makes
difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes
opportunities
of his difficulties.
Chris Evert
A champion hates to lose even more than she loves to win.
An artist is not paid for her
labor but for her vision.
.
Ann Landers
If I were asked to give what I
consider the most useful bit of advice for all humanity it would be
this:
Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold
your
head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, "I will be bigger than
you.
You cannot defeat me."
Albert Einstein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is
a miracle. The other is as if everything is.
James Dean
Dream as if you'll live forever ... live as if you'll die today.
W. Clement Stone
There is little difference
in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That
little
difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or
negative.
Earl Nightingale
Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us.
Let us so live
that when we come
to die even the
undertaker
will be sorry.....
Jim Valvano
My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person,
he believed in me.
Unknown Author
Do not regret growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.
Neil Simon
I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the
best thing they've come up with so far.
Norman Vincent Peale
Live your life and forget your age.
.
Albert Einstein
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Napoleon Hill
No man is ever whipped, until he quits - in his own mind.
Maya Angelou
If you dont like something, change it. If you can't change it, change
your attitude. Don't complain.
Each one of you here today has the
possibility of lighting up someone's path...
Sarah Brown
The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.
Our
happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate.
So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart,
develop
the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.
Norman Vincent Peale
Go forward confidently, energetically attacking problems, expecting
favorable outcomes.
Norman Vincent Peale
Realize that there are not hopeless situations; there are only people
who take hopeless attitudes.
Norman Vincent Peale
The person who sends out positive thoughts activates the world around
him positively and draws back to himslef positive results.
Sire Edmund Hillary
Nobody climbs mountains
for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the
expeditions,
but you really climb for the hell of it.
Robert F. Kennedy
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Henry Ford
Whether you think you can or
whether you think you can't, you're right.
Vincent Lombardi
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Ralph Marston
Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.
Lena Horne
It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.
Chinese Proverb
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.
Winston Churchill
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
Norman Vincent Peale
Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for
that determines our success or failure.
Mahatma Gandhi
If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the
capacity to do it even if i may not have it at the beginning.
Unknown Author
You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
Andrew Carnegie
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with
mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
Malcolm Forbes
Men who never get carried away should be.
Robert Schuler
Tough times never last, but tough people do.
Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way
things turn out.
Unknown Author
We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.
Scott Hamilton
The only disability in life is a bad attitude.
Cavett Robert
If you don't think every day is a good day, just try missing one.
Unknown author
Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?
Abraham Lincoln
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
Unknown author
Everyone has the power to make others happy. Some do it by entering the
room, others by leaving it.
Lou Holtz
Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you
respond to it.
Confucius
It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.
Charles Dickens
Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers and are famous
preservers of youthful looks.
Yes,
my parents, really named me Mona Lisa, but
I have learned to live with that.
Its a boring story, at least my husband sure thinks so - like most of
my history. But that's because he heard it all before, a few
times too many. But people always ask, so perhaps you are curious too.
Here is story as I know it...
Actually
I
was born the year the song "Mona Lisa" by
Nat King Cole was popular in the small town where I was born ...
Folkston,
Georgia. It was on the flip side of the big hit "Unforgettable"...
That was in the days, when you could get a little record called a 45
RPM single, but it had one song on each side...
Apparently
I sounded very much like a cat meowing when I cried...
that could be a sign of mental retardation ...lol! anyhoo my
big
sister - her name is Audrey Levene, who was 5 years older than
me, kept thinking there must be a cat in my crib or something
like that I've been told, so she would call for the kitty when she
heard me. Maybe they just liked that, or maybe they had second thoughts
about my name, but they started calling me Kitty and the nickname stuck
with me for a long time.
Many people assumed I was really a Katherine, so that was ok with me,
and
my actual name was really kind of a secret for many years. Both names
embarrassed me for many years, but one gets use to it, and life isn't
always perfect. It is what you make of your life that matters. Someone
once
conveyed the idea to me that I could change the connotation of my name
by my own life's actions, and I believe there is great truth to that...
I
gave up the nickname when I went into 8th grade at a new school in
Jacksonville,
Florida. It was Bartram School for Girls... a very ritzy, but intensive
school, where we used college textbooks even that young, and I had
special tutoring after school
and during the summer to catch up with the other students who had been
there longer. I enjoyed the most phenomenal teachers.
Perhaps
unfortunately, I only spent one year there, though it was the best
educational
institution I ever attended. The next year, my ninth grade, I went off
to boarding school, (incidentally reverted back to my nickname Kitty
when
Mom spilled the beans and kept calling me that in front of my new
roommates
and housemother). I loved that year in the boarding school... it was a
famous legendary school
named Howey Academy, in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida.... But that lasted
only
one year as well.
I
was just as happy if not more so when I moved on to the tenth grade in
a public school in Riverview, Florida named East Bay High School. At
East Bay, I insisted on using my middle name "Lisa". I'll never forget
the first day of school, I was standing in line in the cafeteria, and
one of the food servers thought I was a teacher. She said something
like "Teachers eat in a the faculty dining area." LOL...! I
looked mature for my
age that day I guess. Mom always bought me the prettiest and incredibly
expensive
clothes, I guess perhaps it had had something to do with that.
I
graduated
from there and then moved to Tallahassee to get my B.A. degree in
Psychology
at Florida State University.
At
FSU I went by "Mona" because it was on all my records as "Mona L.
Price, and lets face it, simplicity is beautiful... "Mona". Simple and
somewhat unique... it works. So call me Mona or call me Lisa... Or "hey
gal!" works too. I'm really easy to please.
But...
if I seemed to have a bunch of aliases, well its not my fault. I really
_didn't_ name myself (like many people assume).
The
intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant.
We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the
gift.
When
I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think
about
how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is
not
beautiful, I know it is wrong.
The
moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of
the
twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you
possess
the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely
anything
may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters
not
a jot. The possibility is always there.
Creative
ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free
from
supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and
democracy.
We
must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference,
ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up
to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
There
are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and
people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less
crowded.
The
most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making
from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes,
priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern
corporations.
Whatever
you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon,
there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are
always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are
right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires
some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories,
but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Nothing
worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate
context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend
or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Few
will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work
to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts
will be written the history of this generation.
The
world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest
willing to let them.
Twenty years from now
you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover....
Being
busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is
production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be
forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as
well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
Man is the
religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the
only animal that has the True Religion –- several of them. He is the
only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if
his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in
trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and
heaven....
The holy
passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money....
Wherefore
being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that government
of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the
earth....
Make it a
point to do something every day that you don't want to do.
This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty
without pain....
Time and tide
wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb,
and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and
water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide....
If I were
required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher
minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and
intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that
it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the
part of men to believe that a new idea can have value....
Love seems
the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man
or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married
a quarter of a century....
It is by the
goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either of them....
All schools,
all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to
conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they
conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they
reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can
profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.1908,
notebook...
There are
basically two types of people. People who accomplish things,
and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is
less crowded....
The
government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it
cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong,
and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey
orders, not originate them....
Peace by
persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be
able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and
history seems to show that that cannot be done....
It is by the
goodness of God that in our country we have these three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence to practice neither....
Love seems
the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man
or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married
a quarter of a century....
When I was a
boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly
stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I
was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years....
There was
never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an
impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a
comedy and a tragedy....
Plan for the
Improvement of English Spelling For example, in Year 1
that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k"
or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The
only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation,
which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so
that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might
well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j"
anomali wonse and for all....
In religion
and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost
every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from
authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but
have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions
about them were not worth a brass farthing. Autobiography, 1959...
There are
some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground
year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is
not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form
of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for
a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell
itself....
Travel has no
longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign
countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague
curiosity about one of those....
After all
these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the
beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside
it without her.Adam, in Adam's Diary...
The
perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to
proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our
capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people....
What work I
have done I have done because it has been play. If it had
been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is
the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea
in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The
work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all.
Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose
it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really...
Twenty years
from now you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover....
I notice that
you use plain, simple language, short words and brief
sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and
the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity
creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean
utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They
weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are
wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit,
once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get...
To get the
right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To
condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous
flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition
just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express
them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be
reduced to one glittering paragraph....
Love seems
the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man
or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married
a quarter of a century....
Always do
right--this will gratify some and astonish the rest. message
to Young People's Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn,
New York, February 16, 1901...
The holy
passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money....
"In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D.Ouspensky
Harcourt Brace & Company
http://www.promart.com/G.quotes.html
'As I have said before, man's chief delusion is his conviction that
he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want
to do,
and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But
actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything. This is the
first
thing that must be understood. Everything happens. All that
befalls a
man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him -all this
happens.
And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a
change
in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the
surrounding
clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the
wind.
"Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings,
convictions, opinions, and habits are the results of external
influences,
external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single
thought,
a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels - all this
happens.
Man cannot discover anything, invent anything. It all happens.
"To establish this fact for oneself, to understand it, to be convinced
of
its truth, means getting rid of a thousand illusions about man, about
his
being creative and consciously organizing his own life, and so on.
There is
nothing of this kind. Everything happens - popular movements, wars,
revolutions, changes in government, all this happens. And it happens in
exactly
the same way as everything happens in the life of the individual man.
Man is born, lives, dies, builds houses, writes books, not as he wants
to, but as it happens. Everything happens. Man does not love, hate,
desire - all this happens.
"But no one will ever believe you if you tell him he can do nothing.
This is
the most offensive and the most unpleasant thing you can tell people.
It is
particularly unpleasant and offensive because it is the truth, and
nobody
wants to hear the truth."
"In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D.Ouspensky, Harcourt Brace &
Company, p.21
"...it is
impossible to become free from one influence without becoming
subject to another. The whole thing, all work on oneself, consists in
choosing
the influence to which you wish to subject yourself, and actually
falling
under this influence. And for this it is necessary to know beforehand
which influence is the more profitable."
"In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D.Ouspensky, Harcourt Brace &
Company, p.25
"You do
not
realize your own situation. You are in prison. All you can wish for, if
you are a sensible man, is to escape. But how escape? It is necessary
to tunnel under a wall. One man can do nothing. But let us suppose
there are ten or twenty men - if they work in turn an if one covers
another they can complete the tunnel and escape.
"Furthermore, no one can escape from prison without the help of those who
have escaped before. Only they can say in what way escape is
possible, or can send tools, files, or whatever may be necessary. But one
prisoner
alone cannot find this people or get into touch with them. An
organization is necessary. Nothing can be achieved without an
organization."
"In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D.Ouspensky, Harcourt Brace &
Company, p.30
Ouspensky asked G. once: "Why, if ancient knowledge has been
preserved and if, speaking in general, there exists a knowledge distinct
from our science and philosophy or even surpassing it, it is so
carefully
concealed, why is it not made common property? Why are the men who
posess this knowledge unwilling to let it pass into the general
circulation
of life for the sake of a better and more successful struggle against
deceit,
evil and ignorance?."
<>
G. replied:"There are two answers to that... In the first place, this
knowl-
edge is not concealed; and in the second place, it cannot, from its very
nature, become common property. We will consider the second of these
statements first. I will prove to you afterwards that knowledge
" (he em-
phasized the word) "is far more accessible to those capable of
assimilating
it than is usually supposed; and that the whole trouble is that people
either do not want it or cannot receive it.
"But first of all another thing must be understood, namely, that knowl-
edge cannot belong to all, cannot even belong to many. Such is the law.
You do not understand this because you do not understand that knowl-
edge, like everything else in the world, is material . It is
material, and this
means that it possesses all the characteristics of materiality. One of
the
first characteristics of materiality is that matter is always limited,
that is
to say, the quantity of matter in a given place and under given condi-
tions is limited. Even the sand in the desert and the water in the sea
is a definite and unchangeable quantity. So that, if knowledge is
material,
then it means that there is a definite amount of knowledge at its dis-
posal. But we know, even from an ordinary observation of life, that the
matter of knowledge possesses entirely different qualities
according to
whether it is taken in small or large quantities. Taken in a large
quantity
in a given place, that is by one man, let us say, or by a small group of
men, it produces very good results; taken in a small quantity (that is,
by
every one of a large number of people), it gives no results at all; or
it may
give even negative results, contrary to those expected. Thus if a
certain
definite quanitity of knowledge is distributed among millions of people,
each individual will receive very little, and this small amount of
knowl-
edge will change nothing either in his life or in his understanding of
things. And however large the number of people who receive this small
amount of knowledge, it will change nothing in their lives, except, per-
haps to make them still more difficult.
"But if, on the contrary, large quantities of knowledge are
concentrated
in a small number of people, then this knowedge will give very great
results. From this point of view it is far more advantageous that knowl-
edge should be preserved among a small number of people and not dis-
persed among the masses.
"If we take a certain quantity of gold and decide to gild a number of
objects with it, we must know, or calculate, exactly what number of
objects can be gilded with this quantity of gold. If we try to gild a
greater
number, they will be covered with gold unevenly, in patches, and will
look much worse than if they had no gold at all; in fact we shall lose
our gold.
"The distribution of knowledge is based upon exactly the same prin-
ciple . If knowledge is given to all, nobody will get any. If it is
preserved
among a few, each will receive not only enough to keep, but to increase,
what he receives.
"At the first glance this theory seems very unjust, since the position
of
those who are, so to speak, denied knowledge in order that others may
receive a greater share appears to be very sad and undeservedly harder
than
it ought to be. Actually, however, this is not so at all; and in the
distribu-
tion of knowledge there is not the slightest injustice.
"The fact is that the enormous majority of people do not want any
knowledge whatever; they refuse their share of it and do not even take
the ration allotted to them, in the general distribution, for the
purpose
of life. This is particularly evident in times of mass madness such as
wars,
revolutions, and so on, when men suddently seem to lose even the small
amount of common sense they had and turn into complete automatons,
giving themselves over to wholesale destruction in vast numbers, in
other
words, even loosing the instinct of self-preservation. Owing to this,
enor-
mous quantities of knowledge remain, so to speak, unclaimed and can be
distributed among those who realize its value.
"There is nothing unjust in this, because those who receive knowledge
take nothing that belongs to others, deprive others of nothing; they
take
only what others have rejected as useless and what would in any case be
lost if they did not take it.
"The collecting of knowledge by some depends upon the rejection of
knowledge by others.
"There are periods in the life of humanity, which generally coincide
with the beginning or the fall of cultures and civilizations, when the
masses irretrievably loose their reason and begin to destroy everything
that
has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture. Such periods
of mass madness, often coinciding with geological cataclysms, climatic
changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character, release a very
great quantity of the matter of knowledge. This, in turn, necessitates
the work of collecting this matter of knowledge which would otherwise
be lost. Thus the work of collecting scattered matter of knowledge fre-
quently coincides with the beginning of the destruction and fall of
cultures and civilizations.
"This aspect of the question is clear. The crowd neither wants nor
seeks
knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to
strenghten its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The
slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear. It is even
diffi-
cult to imagine all the horror of this slavery. We do not understand what
people are losing. But in order to understand the cause of this slavery
it
is enough to see how people live, what constitutes the aim of their
existence, the object of their desires, passions, and aspirations, of
what
they think, of what they talk, what they serve and what they worship.
Consider what the cultured humanity of our time spends money on; even
leaving the war out, what commands the highest price; where the biggest
crowds are. If we think for a moment about these questions it becomes
clear that humanity, as it is now, with the interests it lives by,
cannot
expect to have anything different from what it has. But, as I have
already
said, it cannnot be otherwise. Imagine that for the whole of mankind
half
a pound of knowledge is allotted a year. If this knowledge is
distributed
amomg everyone, each will receive so little that he will reamain the
fool
he was. But, thanks to the fact that very few wnat to have this knowl-
edge, those who take it are able to get, let us say, a grain each, and
aquire the possibility of becoming more intelligent. All cannot become
intelligent even if they wish. And if they did become intelligent it
would
not help matters. There exists a general equilibrium which cannot be
upset.
"That is one aspect. The other, as I have already said, consists in the
fact that no one is concealing anything; there is no mystery whatever.
But
the aquisition or transmission of true knowledge demands great labor
and great effort both of him who receives and of him who gives. And
those who possess this knowledge are doing everything they can to trans-
mit and communicate it to the greatest possible number of people, to
facilitate people's approach to it and enable them to prepare
themselves
to receive the truth. But knowledge cannot be given by force to anyone
and, as I already said, an unprejudiced survey of the average man's
life, of what fills his day and of the things he is interested in, will
at once
show whether it is possible to accuse men who possess knowledge of con-
cealing it, of not wishing to give it to people, or of not wishing to
teach
people what they know themselves.
"He who wants knowledge must himself make the initial efforts to find
the source of knowledge and to approach it, taking advantage of the help
and indications whch are given to all, but which people, as a rule, do
not want to see or recognize. Knowledge cannot come to people without
effort on their own part. They understand this very well in connection
with ordinary knowledge, but in the case of great knowledge ,
when they
admit the possibility of its existence, they find it possible to expect
some-
thing different. Everyone knows very well that if, for instance, a man
wants to learn Chinese, it will take several years of intense work;
every-
one knows that five years are needed to grasp the principles of
medicine,
and perhaps twice as many years for the study of painting or music. And
yet there are theories which affirm that knowledge can come to people
without any effort on their part, that they can aquire it even in
sleep.
The very existence of such theories constitutes an additional
explanation
of why knowledge cannot come to people. At the same time it is essen-
tial to understand that man's independent efforts to attain
anything in
this direction can also give no results. 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 ."
"In
Search of the Miraculous" by P.D.Ouspensky, Harcourt Brace &
Company, p.36-40
http://www.promart.com/G.quotes.html
Examine what is said, not who speaks. (Arabian proverb)
A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause;
speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry without
object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends.
(Arabian proverb)
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. (Chinese proverb)
What you can not avoid, welcome. (Chinese proverb)
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.
(Chinese proverb)
A deaf husband and a blind wife are always a happy couple. (Danish
proverb)
Speech is silvern, silence is golden; speech is human, silence is
divine. (German proverb)
A great war leaves the country with three armies- an army of
cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. (German proverb)
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know
they shall never sit in. (Greek proverb)
Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest
violence. (Hebrew proverb)
He that would the daughter win, Must with the mother first begin.
(English proverb)
Use soft words and hard arguments. (English proverb)
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. (American proverb)
No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back. (Turkish
proverb)
The world would not make a racehorse of a donkey (Irish proverb)
It is better to exist unknown to the law. (Irish proverb)
If you want to be criticized, marry. (Irish proverb)
God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers. (Jewish
proverb)
When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his
father, both cry. (Jewish proverb)
Doubt is the key to knowledge. (Persian proverb)
The man who speaks the truth is always at ease. (Persian proverb)
What the fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning.
(Spanish proverb)
Young people tell what they are doing, old people what they have done
and fools what they wish to do. (French proverb)
Love is the dawn of marriage, and marriage is the sunset of love.
(French proverb)
Don't marry for money, you can borrow it cheaper. (Scottish proverb)
One kind word can warm three winter months. (Japanese proverb)
The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are
going down. (Italian proverb)
The great are they who attempt the difficult things, which lesser men
avoid. (Indian proverb)
A thing long expected takes the form of the
unexpected when at last it comes....
Mona Lisa Price Abbott
Let us so live that when we
come
to die even the undertaker will be sorry.....
She
had a pretty gift for quotation,
which is a serviceable substitute for
wit.
W. Somerset
Maugham
Credits:
Favorite movers and shapers of my life...
Maudrey Brazell McMahon Price Adkinson Wainwright (What a Mom)
William Franklin Price Sr. ( What a Dad!)
William Franklin Price Jr. (Brother)
Audrey Levene McMahon Price Smith (Sister)
Mrs Kirby (first grade teacher)
Michael Mahoney (First true love)
Alcetti (European Dance Review Producer)
Glenn Abbott (First and only Husband)
Larry Coltharp (computer guru buddy)
"The
director is simply the audience. . . . His job is to
preside over accidents."- Orson Welles
A cloudy day is
no match
