Quotes by Neel Burton

“According to the Buddha, the failure to recognize the illusion of the self is the source of all ignorance and unhappiness. It is only by renouncing the self, that is, by dropping his ego defences a...”

“My basic political principle: If something, whether right- or left-wing, is driven by love and solidarity, it is right; if it is driven by hate and fear it is wrong. Simple as that.”

“The marriage ceremony is sexist beyond parody. The bride appears in a fussy white dress that symbolizes her virtue and virginity, and everyone keeps on remarking on how thin and beautiful she looks...”

“The disease of the soul is both more common and more deadly than the disease of the body. Just as medicine is the art devoted to healing the body, so philosophy is the art devoted to healing the so...”

“Wonder begets culture, which begets yet more wonder, and the end of wonder is wisdom, which is the state of perpetual wonder.”

“Our life is just as long or short as our remembering: as rich as our imagining, as vibrant as our feeling, and as profound as our thinking.”

“True humility derives from a proper perspective of our human condition: one among billions on a small planet among billions, like a fungus on a tiny fragment of cheese. Of course, it is nearly impo...”

“Love, like madness, can only fill the models that society makes available.”

“Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the minds ability to discern and decid...”

“Love is like chickenpox. It's much worse when it comes late.”

“Of all funny things, truth is the funniest.”

“Depression: the healthy suspicion that modern life has no meaning and that modern society is absurd and alienating.”

“Loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of objective meaning from the universe.”

“Solitude, the joy of being alone, stems from, as well as promotes, a state of maturity and inner richness.”

“Resentment is a powerful and corrosive force, both on the slippery left and the slippery right, and the history of humankind can largely be read as a history of resentment. Aside from a profound ph...”

“The three most powerful seasonings are hunger, variety, and gratitude.”

“If you say it very softly, with a smile, you can get away with saying almost anything, even the truth.”

“There are essentially three types of people: those who love life more than they fear it, those who fear life more than they love it, and those who have no clue what I'm talking about.”

“When we stop noticing small things, we are no longer truly alive.”

“One needs to be either more brave or more good, because if courage is lacking goodness can substitute, while cowardice is the deficiency of both.”