The Buddhist Sutra of Mindfulness speaks about the meditation on the corpse: meditate on the decomposition of the body, how the body bloats and turns violet, how it is eaten by worms until only bits of blood and flesh still cling to the bones, meditate up to the point where only white bones remain, which in turn are slowly worn away and turn into dust. Meditate like that, knowing that your own body will undergo the same process. Meditate on the corpse until you are calm and at peace, until your mind and heart are light and tranquil and a smile appears on your face. Thus, by overcoming revulsion and fear, life will be seen as infinitely precious, every second of it worth living.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
"The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche."
~Carl Jung
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, Brave, Hated and Scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs NOTHING to be a Patriot."
~Mark Twain
"In a world of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary."
~Orwell
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths,
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~Yeats
"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
~George Bernard Shaw
"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime."
~Romain Rolland
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
~einstein
Someone was here before me and they took the possibility away
And without any control or freedom the elements were laid down in this way
And so my mind is slowly devoured by the ideas to which it subscribes
And in the end I'm left with nothing except the memory of
believing my own lies
And where are you now, my most unfortunate lie?
The light shows my face in the mirror and my hand as it reaches to touch
The evidence of pain and delusion and a mind which was never clear enough
I saw the sun rise in an ancient desert where this moment was first foretold
And the black water was thick as blood and my hands they were full of gold
And where are you now, the most lethal, all consuming lie I ever told?
Where are you now, my unfortunate, irreversible lie?
~swans