Quotes on Mean

Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.

Having the courage to live within one's means is respectability.

Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them: only small mean souls are otherwise.

From religion comes a man's purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.

What the church should be telling the worker is that the first demand religion makes on him is that he should be a good workman. If he is a carpenter he should be a competent carpenter. Church by all means on Sundays-but what is the use of church if at the very center of life a man defrauds his neighbor and insults God by poor craftsmanship.

During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer.

The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.

Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat - including men - from reluctant citizens.

So it is clear that the search for what is just is a search for the mean; for the law is the mean.

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

Ideally, peace means the absence of violence. It is an ethical value.

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America.

That which in mean men we entitle patience is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.

The materialistic pattern of life is that where money predominates over everything. The non-materialistic life is that where money is just a means - happiness predominates, joy predominates; your own individuality predominates. You know who you are and where you are going, and you are not distracted. Then suddenly you will see your life has a meditative quality to it.

It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and therefore to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees - everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now and we will have no wars.

It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.

Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation._x000D_ _x000D_ Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.