Explore Quotes on Levels

St. John of the Cross points out that the divine music can best be heard in solitude and silence. The sonorous music is not a physical sound that vibrates the eardrum but something transcending the senses. Physical solitude and silence remove the distracting noises that prevent us from hearing on deeper levels.

The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.

While the high-level climate talks pursue their stately progress towards some ill-defined destination, down in the trenches there is an undercurrent of suppressed panic in the conversations. The tipping points seem to be racing towards us a lot faster than people thought.

We have at most ten years - not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions... We are near a tipping point, a point of no return, beyond which the built in momentum and feedbacks will carry us to levels of climate change with staggering consequences for humanity and all of the residents of this planet.

The last time Earth was 1°C warmer than today, sea levels were 20 feet higher.

The biggest challenge is how to get people to wake up and realize this is a one-shot deal. If we fail, we are witting participants in the biggest experiment humans have ever done: moving CO2 levels to twice their value in the past 670.000 years and hoping it turns out okay for generations to come.

Some 3 million years ago, when the earth was a little more than 3°C warmer than preindustrial levels (about 2.2°C warmer than today), Antarctica had far less ice and sea levels were a stunning 25 meters higher than today. If we stay on our current emissions path, the planet will almost certainly be that warm by the century's end.

If our government won't spend the money to protect New Orleans sufficiently today, what are the chances we will spend the money to protect dozens of coastal cities post-2050, once everyone knows that sea levels will keep rising and intense hurricanes will occur relentlessly?

If Americans in 2100 came to see 12 meters sea-level rise as inevitable by 2200, who can even begin to fathom how the nation would respond?

Any one who wants to live in peace and freedom will be to live by toil, demonstration of high levels of discipline and tolerance for one another.

It is very important for I think those of us who desperately want peace, who see war as, at some level, a break-down, a manifestation of human weakness, to understand that sometimes it’s also necessary – and you know, to – to be able to balance two ideas at the same time; that we are constantly striving for peace, we are doubling up on our diplomacy, we are going to actively engage, we are going to try to see the world through other people’s eyes and not just our own.

I'm less interested in slasher, and go more for roles that can affect you on a personal level. I'm interested in human empathy in the movies I see, and in the ones I am a part of.

Given the low level of competence among politicians, every American should become a libertarian. The government that governs least is certainly the best choice when fools, opportunists and grafters run it. When power is for sale, then the government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better.

France must not be the only country to have a high level of welfare protection and few obligations incumbent on those who receive benefits.

Francois Hollande is an intelligent man. I do not have a problem with him. The only thing is, he has never held office at the state level. Honestly, can you imagine Francois Hollande as president of France? Imagine it!

When people pay to see you live, they connect with you on a much deeper level than people who just buy your records.

Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feel motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.

The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.

The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information - we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.

For the Persian poet Rumi, each human life is analogous to a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it moves along, it is slowly filling with the water around it. That's a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge. When the water in the bowl finally reaches the same level as the water outside, there is no longer any need for the container, and it drops away as the inner water merges with the outside water. We call this the moment of death. That analogy returns to me over and over as a metaphor for ourselves.

So what it boils down to, in my humble opinion, is that we need to support the arts in schools, and at every other level in the education of children.