“The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.”

It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Knowledge is an addiction, as drink; knowledge does not bring understanding. Knowledge can be taught, but not wisdom; there must be freedom from knowledge for the coming of wisdom.

Transformation can only take place immediately; the revolution is now, not tomorrow.

Meditation is not a withdrawal from life. Meditation is a process of understanding oneself.

If you come across fear, stare it in its eyes. Face it and you will notice that fear fades away.

Despair exists only when there is hope.

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.

Do not pursue what should be, but understand what is.

Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom to all.

Look what is happening in the world – we are being conditioned by society, by the culture we live in, and that culture is the product of man. There is nothing holy, or divine, or eternal about culture.

When one has an image about oneself one is surely insane, one lives in a world of illusion.

There is hope in people, not in society, not in systems, but in you and me.

To be free comes not from changing or fixing this world, but from seeing this world as it is and opening the heart in the midst of it.

When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.

Intuition is the whisper of the soul.

If we want to change existing conditions, we must first transform ourselves, which means that we must become aware of our own actions, thoughts and feelings in everyday life.

For as long as I care to remember, religion, like the striptease, has always been a display of the power of suggestion. Like the Virgin Birth, it has all too often supported an immaculate deception.

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.

Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many of his colleagues to this condition.

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.

You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging