Gnostic Quotes
What’s the meaning of life? Aphorisms, maxims and quotations expressing the paradoxical essence of gnosticism.
Paradise
"Paradise is not a place, but a state of consciousness." - Sri Chimnoy
"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now… only much, much better." - Laurie Anderson
"Where the tree of knowledge stands, there is always Paradise' : thus speak the oldest and the youngest serpents." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and [...]
Paradox
"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." - Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof… and [...]
People
"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." - Anatole France
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups." - John Kenneth Galbraith
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." - Eric Hoffer
"People demand [...]
Persecution
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." - Thomas Paine
"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and [...]
Pictures
"People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree." - Pablo Picasso
Pigs
"In the animal kingdom, the rule is: eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom: define or be defined. Language separates men from other animals. It also reduces them to the level of animals - as in calling Jews 'vermin' or policemen 'pigs'." - Thomas Szasz, The Untamed Tongue, p. 55, pub. A.D.1990
[...]
Pleasure
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
"What we learn with pleasure we never forget." - Alfred Mercier
"For God's sake, if you sin, take pleasure in it, and do it for the pleasure…" - Gerald Gould
"God made all pleasures innocent." [...]
Poison
"Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison." - Georges Bataille, 1897-1962
"In all things there is a poison, and there is nothing without a poison. It depends only upon the dose whether a poison is poison or not." - Paracelsus, [...]
Police
"I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them." - Alfred Hitchcock
Possession
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their [...]
Power
"Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb." - Nadine Gordimer
Prayer
"Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays" - Soren Kierkegaard
"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers." - Oscar Wilde
"What men usually ask for when they pray to God is, that two and two may not make four." - Russian Proverb
Praying
"Why is it when we talk to God we're praying — but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?" - Lily Tomlin
"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." - Peter O'Toole, The Ruling Class
Primitive
"If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it." - Stanley Garn
"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams." - Mary Ellen Kelly
Prison
"It is possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of prison, one must first confess to living in a prison." - Wilhelm Reich
"The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" [...]
Prisoners
"The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over." - Henry Miller
"A person may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him a prisoner." - Edward F. Halifax
"We are, each of [...]
Prison Guard
"People become excited trying to know if the prison came from the guard or if the guard came from the prison; even though this agitation has had a primordial historical importance, today it risks provoking delayed astonishment, if only because of the disproportion between the consequences of the debate & its radical insignificance." - Georges [...]
Property
"It is wrong to say that God made rich and poor; He made only male and female; and He gave them the earth for their inheritance…. The earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race." - Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, pub.A.D. [...]
Proto…?
"God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed - that is the meaning of evolution." - Graham Greene
"I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry [...]
Puritans
"Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand." - Gunther Grass
"The Web is human imagination unleashed in all its perverse glory. Let the Puritans figure out how to jam their mealy corks (software filters into the dike, [...]
