Gnostic Quotes
What’s the meaning of life? Aphorisms, maxims and quotations expressing the paradoxical essence of gnosticism.
Madhouse
"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building [...]
Madman
"A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key." - Paul Valery
"There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." - Salvador Dali
Madness
"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world." - R. D. Lang
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" - Ursula LeGuin
"It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy." - Nora Ephron
"All of us are [...]
Magic
"Some mon just deal wit’ information. An, some mon, him deal wit’ the concept of truth. An’ den some mon deal wit’ magic. Information flow aroun’ ya, an’ truth flow right at ya. But magic, it flow t’rough ya" - Nernelly the Bush Doctor
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. [...]
Man
"Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them." - Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864
"Man is a substance clad in shadows." - John Sterling
"Men are the dreams of a shadow." - Pindar
Map
“The map is not the territory” - Alfred Korzbyski
Mark
"Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality." - Theodor W. Adorno
"…the ability to see both sides of a question [is] one of the marks of a mature mind." - Joe Lee Davis
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting [...]
Martyrs
"The more you mow us down, the more quickly we grow; the blood of Christians is seed." - Tertullian, Apologeticus, saying 197, pub. 197 A.D.
"It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest." - Oscar Wilde
Martyrs II
"The people who have really made history are the martyrs." - Aleister Crowley
"No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exacerbates it." - E. M. Cioran
"Those [...]
Mathematics
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” - Albert Einstein
McKenna, Terence
"The mushroom states its own position very clearly. It says, "I require the nervous system of a mammal. Do you have one handy?" - Terrence McKenna, Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness
"I asked it once, "What are you doing on Earth?" It said, "Listen, if you're a mushroom, you live cheap; besides, I'm telling [...]
Memes
"One of the most important new ideas of our times is that of 'memes,' - the vision of ideas as autonomous entities, leaping from brain to brain in much the same way that viruses leap from body to body, spreading and replicating and 'infecting' the population of 'hosts.'" - Douglas R. Hofstadter
"… [...]
Messages
"All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks; the art of life is to get the message." - Malcolm Muggeridge
"… if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job." - Carl [...]
Million
"We don't know one-millionth of one percent about anything." - Thomas Edison
"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." - Susan Ertz
Mind
"The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven." - John Milton
"The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh." - Lord Byron, [...]
Mind & Body
"Our body is composed of what we eat; our mind, of what we hear, read, say, and write. This is why every society, every social institution - religion, law, medicine - controls not only what we can and cannot take into our bodies, but also what we can and cannot take into our minds. [...]
Misunderstood
"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood." - H. L. Mencken
"Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath." - Jonathan Swift
Mob
"Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"The mob that would die for a belief seldom hesitates to inflict death upon any opposing heretical group." - Ellen Glasgow, 1874-1945, American writer, I Believe
"The mob has many heads but no brains." [...]
Monkeys
"Taken in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it." - Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections, p. 243, pub. A.D. 1953
"He who undertakes to guide men must never lose sight [...]
Monks
“I loathe monks. For me, turning away from the world, from chance, from the truth of bodies, is shameful. No greater sin exists.” - Georges Bataille
Monomania
"The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his [...]
Monsters
"I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial." - Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867
"Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices." - Oscar Wilde [...]
Morality
"Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality." - Henry David Thoreau, Letter to Mr. B. March 7, 1848
"No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine." - A.J. Ayer, Essay On Humanism
"Moral indignation is in most cases [...]
Most
"The most merciful thing in the world… is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H. P. Lovecraft
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." - Albert Einstein
Most II
"Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established." - Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, The Essence Of Christianity 1841
"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race [...]
Mysticism
"What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically." - Elie Wiesel
"Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits [...]
Mythology
"The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology." - Mark Twain, Mark Twain and the Bible
"All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent." - Tennessee Williams
"One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything [...]
