If I could give one piece of advice about how to live life it would be to keep an open mind, to watch, listen and think carefully, to never stop learning, and to have the courage to form and give your opinions firmly but humbly.
Have you ever wondered why you believe what you believe? It’s a liberating exercise. We each have a unique set of life experiences. When we are born, where and into what kind of society, to whom, with what privileges and challenges and what individual life experiences we have—all of this forms our world view. Mine is different than yours. There are some things we share but many that we don’t and some we can never share.
Do you have eyes but cannot see? Ears but cannot hear? Clearly our eyes and ears are limited. We live in a small part of a wide spectrum. There was a time when most people thought the earth was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, that the earth was at the center of the universe, that our solar system was the extent of the universe. We now know none of that is true. There are surely things we still do not know and things we believe that are not true.
Our convincing feeling is that there should be no limit to how fast you can travel. You just go faster and faster and faster. Our convincing feelings are based on our experiences because of the size that we are, literally, the speed at which we move, the fact that we evolved on a planet under a particular star. So our eyes, for instance, are peak in their perception at yellow, which is the wave bend that the sun peaks at. And so it’s not an accident that our perceptions and our physical environment are connected. And so we’re limited, also, by that. That makes our intuitions excellent for ordinary things, for ordinary life. And that’s how we evolve. That’s how our brains evolved and our perceptions evolved, was to respond to things like the Sun and the Earth and these scales. And if we were quantum particles, we would think quantum mechanics was totally intuitive. And it’s not intuitive for anybody else that we would think that things fluctuating in and out of existence or not being certain or whether they’re particles or waves or — these kinds of strange things that come out of quantum theory would seem absolutely natural. Janna Levin
We simply cannot know everything. As difficult as it is we must accept that our most cherished thoughts could be wrong.
Reality, human existence, is infinitely baffling. One gets one explanation – the Christian, the psychological, the scientific … but always it gets burnt off like summer mist and a new landscape-explanation appears. The one valid reality or principle for us lies in eleutheria – freedom. Accept that man has the possibility of a limited freedom, and if this is so, he must be responsible for his actions. To be free (which means rejecting all the gods and political creeds and the rest) leaves one no choice but to act according to reason: that is, humanely to all humans. John Fowles
I don’t mind living in a world in which people have different beliefs. Diversity helps to prevent stagnation and smugness; and a teacher should acquaint his students with diversity and prize careful criticism far above agreement. His noblest duty is to lead others to think for themselves… Man seems to play a very insignificant part in the universe, and my part is surely negligible. The question confronting me is not, except perhaps in idle moments, what part might be more amusing, but what I wish to make of my part. And what I want to do and would advise others to do is to make the most of it: put into it all you have got, and live and, if possible, die with some measure of nobility. Walter Kaufmann
Today, more than ever, we need to revisit how we want to live our lives, how best to live our lives, and how to live with each other.
I didn’t ask to come into existence, nor will I have a choice at the end of this life. I plant trees I will never witness maturing, I write poems few will ever read. I do these things because my life demands it, the form I have been given a luck of the draw. So I will live to the best of my ability, with humility in my heart, and mercy for the other beings I encounter.
Yup, yup, how lucky we are to have you.
You and your quotes hit the nail on the head.
Thanx