“It is the tragedy of our time that the average individual learns too late that the materialistic concept of life has failed utterly in every department of living.”

“Are you a God?” they asked the Buddha. “No,” he replied. “Are you an angel, then?” “No.” “A saint?” “No.” “Then what are you?” Replied the Buddha, “I am awake.”

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

“Dreaming is perception free from external sensory constraint, while perception is dreaming constrained by sensory input—hallucinations that happen to be true.”

“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”

“Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?”

“Some kind of dialog is now going on between individual human beings and the sum total of human knowledge and…nothing can stop it.”

“Ignorance is bliss but unfortunately we can no longer afford it.”

“..reality is illusion. But it never looks that way.”

“I am firmly convinced that nothing in this life happens by chance. Therefore, persons who enter our lives during the transitional phases of our existence are, in reality, mentors whose duty it is to assist us in the rearrangement of our code of values so that we may meet more effectively the challenges presented to us.”

“If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death- or shall I say, death implies life- you can conceive yourself.”

“

The corporation is a significant but invented institution—and the impact of its invention on our relationship to one another and the world around us was as significant as the invention of an abstract God. For while it might be said that the invention of monotheism purposefully disconnected us from the forces of nature, the invention of the corporation purposefully disconnected us from one another. And while religious institutions and mythologies may have dominated the social, political, and economic landscapes for the first thousand or so years of civilization, it’s corporations and their mythologies that direct human activity today.

Corporatism depends first on our disconnection. The less local, immediate, and interpersonal our experience of the world and each other, the more likely we are to adopt self- interested behaviors that erode community and relationships. This makes us more dependent on central authorities for the things we used to get from one another; we cannot create value without centralized currency, meaning without nationally known brands, or leaders without corporate support. This dependency, in turn, makes us more vulnerable to the pathetically overgeneralized and fear- based mythologies of corporatism. Once we accept these new mythologies as the way things really are, we come to believe that our manufactured disconnection is actually a condition of human nature. In short, we disconnect from the real, adapt to our artificial environment by becoming less than human, and finally mistake carefully constructed corporatist mythologies for the natural universe.

“The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”