Gnostic Quotes
What’s the meaning of life? Aphorisms, maxims and quotations expressing the paradoxical essence of gnosticism.
Observation
"Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it "creative observation." Creative viewing." - William S. Burroughs
Ocean
"Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates." - H. L. Mencken, 1880-1956
"Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills." - Ambrose Bierce [...]
Octopii
"What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?" - P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores
"The [...]
One Half
"Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?" - Marquis De Sade
"Millions of innocent [...]
Opinions
"Any clod can have the facts; having opinions is an art." - Charles McCabe
"Opinions that are well rooted should grow and change like a healthy tree." - Irving Batcheller
"Imagine a vine that grows at one end and decays at the other. The end that grows is heresy, the end that [...]
Opposite
"The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." - Niels Bohr
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - Santayana, Essays
Opposition
"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to [...]
Ordinary
"I can't believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary." - Lou Holtz
"Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary." - Amedee Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art
Original Sin
"The practical superiority of the great Christian religions was that they didn't coat the pill. They didn't try to astonish anyone, they didn't seek out the voter, they didn't feel need to please, they didn't beat around the bush. They grabbed hold of man in the cradle and broke the bad news to him right [...]
Over & Over
"It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It is the same damn thing over and over." - Edna St. Vincent Millay
"To do the same thing over and over is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do." - Herakleitos, saying 89, [...]
Ox
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." - Exodus 20:17 - a.k.a. the "Tenth Commandment"
"One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression." - William Blake, [...]
