“All we have to do is to receive what we are given…We are given the naturalness to love someone, to be calm in crisis, to ignore self-defeating suggestions, to be pleasant, forgiving, tender, helpful, unworried, brave, energetic.”

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else.

All heartache is caused by wrong viewpoints.

The outer storm ceases the moment the inner storm ends, for they are the same storm.

Just as surely as distress must follow self-deceit, healing must follow self-honesty.

An obvious fact about negative feelings is often overlooked. They are caused by us, not by exterior happenings. An outside event presents the challenge, but we react to it. So we must attend to the way we take things, not to the things themselves.

Aloneness is a wise teacher. Kierkegaard remarked that one sign of spiritual maturity was the ability to be comfortable when alone.

Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives

Society is like a crowd in carnival costumes with everyone fearful that others will see through his disguise.

Don’t look for someone in whom to believe. Believe in yourself. The only authentic authority is your own original nature.

The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness.

We clearly realize that freedom’s inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.

If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites.

Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person.

The reason why most people are frustrated is because a lie cannot be turned into a truth.

There was no blueprint or how-to manual for fixing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession, all at the same time.

The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded.

It’s just very hard to teach a class of students about what has happened in the Global Financial Crisis.

Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently…recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that are not readily assuaged in the short run.

This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt. But it is a moment for hope.

Life isn’t like coursework, baby. It’s one damn essay crisis after another.

I’m not panicking, and I’m not scared, I’ve been through the Gulf War, the Asia crisis, and the Russian crisis.