January 31

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2005
I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. ~ Ken Wilber
2006
Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. 'Life' plus 'significance' = magic. ~ Grant Morrison
2007
Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. … if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precarious. ~ Ken Wilber
2008
At this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the "edge of history." There would be a real New Age. ~ Ken Wilber
2009
A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing — a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit. ~ Ken Wilber
2010
Anybody can they say they are being "spiritual" — and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern. Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature. ~ Ken Wilber
2011
Attunement could occur through any of the great religions, but would be tied exclusively to none of them. A person could be attuned to an "integral spirituality" while still be a practicing Christian, Buddhist, New-Age advocate, or Neopagan. This would be something added to one's religion, not subtracted from it. The only thing it would subtract (and there's no way around this) is the belief that one's own path is the only true path to salvation.~ Ken Wilber
2012
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane? ~ Ken Wilber
2013
Everything is literally entangled, it can all be communicated with and affected "at a distance" because there is no distance, only a simulation of apparent separation which our limited consciousness feeds us second by second at 11 bits. The "telepathy" which brings people together is no more or less supernatural or unlikely than the "telepathy" which brings two of your fingers together when you think about it. Patience, participation and constant close observation of what's going on, on the inside and on the outside will soon make you a fine sorcerer, if that's what you want to be.
~ Grant Morrison ~
2014
Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.
~ Augustine of Hippo ~
2015
To bear up under loss — to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief — to be victor over anger — to smile when tears are close — to resist evil men and base instincts — to hate hate and to love love — to go on when it would seem good to die — to seek ever after the glory and the dream — to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be — that is what any man can do, and so be great.
~ Zane Grey ~
2016
The cynic says "blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." I say "blessed is he who expecteth everything, for he can't always be disappointed.
~ Tallulah Bankhead ~
2017
We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding, we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and tortured fragments, lighting the way ahead — this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of each and every step, and grace the tender reward.
~ Ken Wilber ~
2018
We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd ... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?
~ Norman Mailer ~
2019
I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.
~ Norman Mailer ~
2020
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
~ Norman Mailer ~
2021
The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
~ Norman Mailer ~
2022
What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth — or in heaven — do I mean by "integral"? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: "comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness." Short definition, tall order.
~ Ken Wilber ~
2023
I certainly do have this feeling of affection for the absolute sense of intellectual freedom that exists as a live nerve, a live wire, right through the center of American life. … Every time I get totally discouraged with this country, I remind myself, "No, the fact is that finally we can really say what we think, and some extraordinary things have come out of that."
~ Norman Mailer ~
2024
It's a misperception of me that I am a wild man — I wish I still were. I'm 68 years old. The rage now is, oh, so deep it's almost comfortable. It has even approached the point where I can live with it philosophically. The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.
~ Norman Mailer ~
2025
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Guy Fawkes executed 1606.
DOB: Tallulah Bankhead · Philip Glass · Zane Grey · Norman Mailer · Grant Morrison · Suzanne Pleshette · Ken Wilber · Irving Langmuir

"Real life?" What's that? ~ Grant Morrison (date of birth)


There is intersubjectivity woven into the very fabric of the Kosmos at all levels. ~ Ken Wilber


The Realization of the Nondual traditions is uncompromising: There is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the degenerate — each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit precisely as they are. There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.~ Ken Wilber


Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
~ Tallulah Bankhead ~

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
~ Tallulah Bankhead ~

It is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life.
~ Ken Wilber ~

An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry — including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology — all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing.
~ Ken Wilber ~

With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.
~ Norman Mailer ~

Culture is worth a little risk.
~ Norman Mailer ~

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.
~ Norman Mailer ~

Historical, religious, and existential treatises suggest that for some persons at some times, it is rational not to avoid physical death at all costs. Indeed the spark of humanity can maximize its essence by choosing an alternative that preserves the greatest dignity and some tranquility of mind.
~ Norman Mailer ~

History proves abundantly that pure science, undertaken without regard to applications to human needs, is usually ultimately of direct benefit to mankind.
~ Irving Langmuir ~