The Aphorisms of Bill Chapko
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My "life's goal" and my pride - to be the being who has laughed most at the world.
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America's historic mission is to prove that the world can't get better.
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To accept everything, including my revolt.
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Cultures and civilizations must be judged by how much they let children be. All the rest is meerly making believe you live forever.
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Truth is what you see when you wake up.
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Suppose the body, in order to deepen itself, to enrich life, not merely succumbs to but seeks out illness. Would not modern medicine be a bad joke?
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The simple pleasures are best. They live near the most sublime thoughts.
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Consciousness is god's mystical experience.
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The gods go in and out of existence, like moonlight flickering on the waves.
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For every inspiring day there is an expiring day. The spirits go in and the spirits go out.
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Billboards put holes in the earth and sky.
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A philosopher should not create a world to distract us, but help us to see and live happily in the one world we all share. Hence I distrust thick books.
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The trees in the forest struggle with each other to reach and capture a share of the sun - so too with gods and the human spirit.
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It is easy to forget the best in oneself. An environment of man-made objects confuses and distracts.
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The best freedom is moving one's fingers.
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At a certain point, our life of entertainment, however good, bores us, and we turn towards our call.
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Only the poorest can be richest in heart. Only the richest can be poorest in heart.
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Excess hides.
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Am I challenging you to be awake or giving you more dream material?
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Aphorisms are animals to ride for a while.
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"It's probably like this." If the physicists can do it so can I.
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Word-thieves! They've robbed philosophy, intelligence, ...
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Society is a poor mother and father.
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American fleedom. The land of the flee.
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A society should not be a ceiling but a roof.
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I would only believe in a God about which nothing could be said. In the end it would be equivalent to a blessing, sometimes heartrending, on all of life and all the world.
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The Greeks must have decided on the four elements while sunbathing on the beach. Sand, wind, sun and sea - what more does the world need?
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The world is always perfect, but we will never know how it is perfect.
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Science is a dead-end. It only plays with objects. It doesn't play with subjects.
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The world presents meaning and then is absurd and then back again. It is nearly impossible to know which is which or when, no less why; but our happiness shines through.
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(French) My economics - I define wealth as time for one's spirit to roam. The only increase in wealth in the past 80 years has been the French 35 hour work-week law.
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When the gods abbandon a species, it's members are allowed to start believing in a God. Only to those few who become Godless will the gods return.
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Either the world is crazy or humans are crazy. It's saner to believe the latter.
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Science is not a search for truth but an attempt to coerce people to a certain behavior.
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Don't confuse sane with same.
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All eternity was made for this moment but this moment has no purpose at all.
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The subconscious works best when we are not conscious of it.
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The world is a constant flow from happiness to suffering to happiness to suffering. Within happiness is the light of suffering. Within suffering, that of happiness. Peace, the domain of saints, rocks and the dead, has neither. The dance continues forever.
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Imagine a world where you live forever. No babies. No little boys. No girls. Just huge populations of 500-1000 year olds driving around in artificial life-support machines.
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h A red ribbon of light wedged between darkening sea and sky greets me at the end of a day's work and pain. To be healed by beauty is the world's gift to us.
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There is no mirror image of me.
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"Don't worry, be happy" ? Hope and worry are intertwined. Don't hope, be happy.
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Dreams are a mixture of the human and the inhuman.
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r The word three descrbes not what is out there but only with reference to humans
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The gods work in mysterious ways - it's a mystery even to themselves.
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We have an unconscious psychic communication with humanity, near and far. The conscious verbal human communication is always an internal dialogue, posing as external.
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We modern intellectual consumers run away from the mysteries of life - birth, childhood, eating, (dreams,) sex, parenting, old age, death.
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The blind do not see black, they touch, hear, taste and smell.
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We create our own anxiety-release-joy cycles to substitute for the world's which we can't control.
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God bless America ? God is taking America for a ride.
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You have the freedom to choose the color of your slavery.
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Fake people and cultures need to be exposed, otherwise you get taken for a long ride.
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Dogmatism, positive thinking - dancing on one leg.
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No matter how you try you can't get out of this world.
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You can't make the world better, you can only make it look better - and fakeland has it's own special distress and pain.
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We swim in a sea of dreams, with frequent microsecond wakeups.
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Freedom ? No limits ? You may enter areas where you are free from previous limits. There may be an infinite variety of limits but there are always limits. "No limits" equals death.
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Knowledge is not an edifice but a wandering through higher views. (seeing on a ledge?)
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Modern commercial life - there are a thousand distractions in a thousand directions away from your center but only one frightening direction towards it.
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(40 or 75 yrs ?) Life is infinitely short.
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Existence is deep, essence is shallow.
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Neither by fighting nor analyzing nor yelling at, can you wake up from the dream.
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Juries - 12 yokuls, perhaps uncorrupted, but far from the truth.
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Buddists are atheists. I realized what God is like (this powerful knowing being hovering above me) and I became nauseous. Fear? Yes, I'm afraid this huge "being" will slip and fall on me. I cannot conceive of a knowing being outside of the organic.
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America is a cultural bubble.
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Not the thrill of "winning the lottery" but the happiness of riding your wild and noble spirit.
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"What is the meaning of life?" is equivalent to asking "what must I do to live forever."
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The wealth of a nation is the sum total of the free time and equalibrium of it's citizens.
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School contains "numb-ers".
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Every civilization will be judged by how well they leave their children alone and how much they enjoy them.
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The world has thousands of colors. Americans see only red, white and blue. The rest they analyze with spectrographs.
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In mountain forests walking is dancing. On pavement, marching.
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And the truth shall make you laugh forever.
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They spend half their life in school learning how to manipulate the world and the other half manipulating it. Leave the world alone !
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You don't live forever, but your life fills up eternity.
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TV's don't breathe.
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Religion is a place where groups practice lying.
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People don't want to know truth - they want to live forever.
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Primarily hopeful activity is a social courtesy and pleasure. It can be shared. But our deeper sight, our deeper movement is slow, unique, nonverbal, chaotic and unsharable. Woe to those who expect one to touch the other.
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Compare these two philosophies : 1) The best things in life are free. 2) The best things in life cost money.
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Science is a new kind of religion. It doesn't say it's a religion, it says it's truth. But that is the way with all past and present religions.
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What is our constant thought and drive - that we don't believe we're going to die.
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Your death makes possible an infinite amount of births.
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In the West our fundamental philosophy is - that of "continuous interference".
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The more the economy produces the more we need. We truly become weaker and weaker.
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"Imagine a small terrified animal cornered by it's beast of prey. That animal is the human race." "But our reasoning power will save us." "Ah, that IS the beast of prey."
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The call to reason is merely a fogging up of questionable fundamental assumptions.
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School: 12 years in a chair looking at a cultural commercial.
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Social fears are the hidden rulers.
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Consciousness is ALWAYS wrong; and as such it shines best in laughter.
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Science has nothing to do with truth. It's a model toy factory.
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I am cynical and distrustful about dreaming people, not about life.
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Truth is retrograde. The newborn sees best.
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We are driven by deep childhood promises. Adult promises are not deep, they're manipulative.
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The value of Christianity is that you can be cruel with a good conscience.
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Mahayana Buddhism is totally wrong. For the free one, the enlightened one, are needed enormous, unfree, dark masses.
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Distrust anyone whose "truth" coincides with making a living. (e.g. professionals and other types of salesmen)
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The English were the first to substitute the state for a mother.
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Mind-chatter? It's to keep yourself company.
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Science breeds objects.
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The value of ideas is to hide the rich working of the unconscious.
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The toys of science replace physical suffering with nervous mental and emotional suffering.
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Words lie.
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Everything dies. Not only people, cultures and civilizatons but even our science will someday die.
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Can we live cheerfully, exuberantly, passionately, without the lie of a bright hopeful future? Perhaps the world has never seen such cheerful exuberance.
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Americans justify their craziness by claiming most advanced nation status. It's not a justification, it's a warning.
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Conversation is an attempt to give solidity to your madness.
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"Taste freedom! Denationalize yourself!"
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Play the society game... society is dangerous...avoid its mediocrity trap...steal from it... pick its fruit at night...
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Society is a fad-factory.
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Put the wisdom back into philosophy!
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If you want power, breathe. If you want knowledge, look.
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Our age of reason denies a very unreasonable event - death. And thereby it denies us.
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Modern philosophy snuggles up to science.
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Every person has a unique color, never before seen, forever changing.
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Death enlivens.
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Scientists are control-happy.
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It never ceased to amaze him: that he was alive!
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Fate feels deeper than choice.
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The noble quest for truth has been whittled down to the ordering of tiny facts. Before, truth hinted at wisdom. Today our highest wisdom is to control.
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Color is an amazing phenomenon. I have never once believed it was inside my head. I soak it up like a sponge. I drink it like water.
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Child and parent, brother and sister, fight and forget, play and peeve, heal and hurt, help and hinder, hug and hate - heaven and hell - I'd do it again and again and again.
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Usually, the worst stress comes of our own making. How much of this is entertainment? How much of our suffering is a drive downward to search out our depths? White clouds drifting across a blue sky save me.
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c A little boy's heart is greater than all their philanthropy and charity.
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The Mediterranean sea has a clarity which refreshes.
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Every thought is a withdrawal.
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Capitalism is a nervous disease and Communism is a bad dream but luckily great socio-politico-economic systems have little relation to lucid happiness.
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A baby sees. For us there is a flitting back and forth between a sight and our concept of it.
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There is a well within each of us which we rarely draw upon. Its depth is our center and its surface is the world.
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Learning is the opposite of seeing. What you learn about something prevents you from seeing it.
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Advertising raises our standards of living. It stimulates us to want more than we need.
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Our children don't learn from us and we don't learn from them. They give us something else: play, spontaneity, assertiveness, expression, clear-sightedness. From our infants: the ability to look, simplicity, purity. We give them our overcomings, our freedom, our happiness. These can neither be written down nor tested. They are the fruits of the interplay of child and parent.
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Tell me your thought as best and briefly as you can, for I have much to see and little time.
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Our desire says, "A computer is logic incarnate."
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Our most important knowledge we don't learn, we seek it out. Learning, being a form of coercion, is best done in school.
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Children don't learn to walk.
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Flashes and flushes of my own importance.
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There are times when demands on my energy come in volleys and I need the skills of a juggler. When my strength is highest this juggling has a grace and ease and I feel a god within me.
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h The silence of falling snow.
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A mystic experience is possible, but only while you are alive.
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Eternal reocurance of me? This is only possible if I am the world.
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Democracy? Mass culture ? The masses are certainly a reality, but that doesn't mean they are in conact with reality.
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Ambition is running away from oneself.
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How do you deal with someone who believes in eternal life?
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Look at someone who never laughs. Is this serious person deep ? No very superficial. Laughter deepens life.
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Strength is having an invisible body. (awake, seeing, out there, no chatter no pain, lttle pulling emotion)
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Aphorisms are meant to tickle the subconscious.
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You can not take the same photograph twice.
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Nazis - idiots who pushed a button.
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Man is the chattering animal.
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I define wealth as time for one's spirit to roam. But the only spirit they believe is that "eternal spirit", one's soul. Well I define soul as a dead spirit. It needs no time to roam.
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But it is not a fact - in the solid way you imagine - it is just words.
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Inspire yourself - breathe in.
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With balence you can dance, without it you fall down or tie yourself to a post.
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A thousand voices speak in us out of the past - "do what I say and you will live forever".
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The only thing real about them is the "plastic".
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r The values of Fakelandia. ??? "Whatever you do, don't fake it." "No, keep faking till you believe you're real."
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People on anti-depressants are depressed.
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You're free to do anything you want? You're free to do one thing, all the rest you have to leave behind.
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Nobody ever wins. Nobody ever loses.
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As a son rebels from his father, a man rebels from his species.
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What they mean by intelligence : efficient concept manipulation.
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Thought is a great enduring cloud that hides the world.
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College - breeding-ground for rigid minds and bodies.
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Joy without fear? That's just a memory of joy.
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Aphorisms - philosophical guerilla warfare. Attack and hide. (philosophical terrorism?)
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Philosophers? Lovers of wisdom? Higher men? No, a gabbers union.
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Fate is your body.
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If there is eternal reoccurance then there is just one "most-overman".
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To Nietzsche - your overman is in the end true but laughable - my overman laughs.
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Camus' vision of tragedy is the only true home we have. Every happy-ending morality movie saps our vital energies. It doesn't reflect our fate, our possibilty for power and joy. Which is, glorious life - incredibly absurd and terrorizing end.
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There is no road to truth - truth is always immediately near (available).
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Figure out the essence of American life? Replace the commonly used word, 'active' with 'nervous'.
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There is only one success - conception. There is only one failure - death.
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The depth of American culture can be found in the spirit and wisdom of Ronald McDonald.
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Natural healing? No, leave-it-alone healing.
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Eskimos have 14 different words for types and shades of snow. Us moderns should have 14 different words for types and shades of lies, and this lack is probably the biggest lie.
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Americans don't have a home - they have an efficient launchpad for the active life.
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"Identity crisis resolved - I am what I pretend to be."
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Greece was fruitful because it's afterlife was so gloomy. A terrifying zero afterlife ? The most fruitful yet ?
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Satori ? You can't wake up if you don't sleep.
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Was Jesus humble?
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posted by Bill Chapko | 8:37 AM
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