Gnostic Quotes
What’s the meaning of life? Aphorisms, maxims and quotations expressing the paradoxical essence of gnosticism.
Ranters & Free Spirits
"Every creature in the first estate of Creation was God, and every creature Is God, every creature that has life and breath being an efflux from God, and shall return to God again, being swallowed up in God as a drop in the ocean…" - attributed to the Ranters, an 18th century English heretical [...]
Reality
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." - John Lennon
"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality." - Jules de Gaultier
"Reality is something you rise above." - Liza Minnelli
"The stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful [...]
Reality as Prison
"Reality…becomes a prison to those who can't get out of it." - Joyce Cary, 1888-1957
"Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will…" - Cesare Pavese, 1908-1950, Italian Poet
"You would never get out of prison if you were to tell of life as you know it to be, starting [...]
Rebellion
"Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being." - Albert Camus
"Disobedience is in our DNA." - Charlton Heston
Reciprocity
"Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?" - Friedrich Nietzsche
"On the sixth day God created man. On the seventh day, man returned the favor." - Anonymous
"If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment." - Voltaire [...]
Recycling
"… the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World… the Serpent that announces, 'The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning'…" - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 412
"EDIBLE, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as worm to a toad, a [...]
Regret
"While I have been fumbling over books And thinking about God and the Devil and all, Other young men have been battling with the days And others have been kissing the beautiful women." - Aldous Huxley
Religion
"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." - Gilbert K. Chesterton
"One man's religion is another man's belly laugh." - Robert Heinlein
"True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god." - Mark Twain
"I have my own God, and I think my God finds [...]
Religious Animals
"There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith." - William E.H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Nationalism in Europe, pub. 1871
"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True [...]
Repetition
"Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe." - Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
"…better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions." - D. H. Lawrence
Research
"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind." - Marston Bates
"If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research." - Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"By seeking and blundering we learn." - Goethe
Resurrection
"To be cured [of our societal neuroses], we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another - it is a private affair which is best done collectively. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separate and self-hypnotized, [...]
Revolution
"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it." - Abbie Hoffman
"If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge [...]
Ride
"The world is like a ride in an amusement park and when you choose to go on it you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and around and around and it has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud. [...]
Ripeness
"We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Worship, pub. A.D
"There is much truth in the parable of the tree of knowledge and its fruit, though I want to make an addition to it to make it fit into my picture of Adam: [...]
Risk
"Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays." - Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap." - Cynthia Heimel [...]
Robots
"Recent history is the record of a vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind." - Allen Ginsberg
"You can only begin to de-robotize yourself to the extent that you know how totally you’re automated. The more you understand your robothood, the freer you are from it. I sometimes ask [...]
Rodents
"How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self." - Millicent Fenwick
"To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence hollering, 'What's it for?'" - Robert Fulghum
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a [...]
Rules
"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." - Katharine Hepburn
"Furthermore, I acknowledge no fixed rules for the interpretation of the Word of God." - Martin Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, pub. A.D. 1525
