My Med Today

“For any given problem, if there's a simple solution it will already have been applied. So, perhaps, the solution isn't as simple as you think.”
― Stuart Aken

“Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.”
― Epictetus

“The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance”
― Anna Funder

“It seems to me that good philosophy will always have a place in the investigation of any matter of deep human importance, because of its commitment to clarity, to carefully drawn distinctions, to calm argument rather than prejudice and dogmatic assertion"
"Philosophical Interventions" (Reviews 1986-2011�)”
― Martha C. Nussbaum

“When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance, he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for you will say upon every occasion, "It seemed so to him."
....”
― Epictetus

“I can blend words easily with my pen, and show concepts from deep within. Yet not everyone gets the message I send. So why do I even let these words begin? Maybe they will soak in one day at the right time. When the readers on a new path to find. So for now I'll continue to drop ink and not worry about what other people think.”
― Stanley Victor Paskavich

“Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'.”
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

“We belittle what we cannot bear. We make figments out of fundamentals, all in the name of preserving our own peculiar fancies. The best way to secure one's own deception is to accuse others of deceit.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises."
-William Shakespeare

"No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent."
-William Ellery Channing, 1838

“One of chief pieces of advice I give to aspiring rationalists is "Don't try to be clever." And, "Listen to those quiet, nagging doubts." If you don't know, you don't know what you don't know, you don't know how much you don't know, and you don't know how much you needed to know.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky

“It is strange the way trauma deadens curiosity. To suffer cruelty in excess is to be delivered from care. The human heart sets aside its questions when the future is too capricious. This is the irony of tribulation.

To know the world will never be so bad.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior

“Particularity leads to peculiarity and then to pathological behavior. The three Ps. It is very insidious. You would eventually end up in a box. If you try to control your environment, it will control you. And everyone else around you will always have to be making adjustments to your maddening idiosyncracies...You are beginning to enslave yourself with your fussiness.”
― Susan Trott

“Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.”
― Andre Gide, The Immoralist

“[Men] prefer the foolish belief and the passions of the earth [to the enlightenment of their souls]. They believe the absurd and shrink from the truth."

"No, they do not. They are afraid, that is all. And they must remain on earth until they come to the way of leaving it."

"And how do they leave? How is the ascent made? Must one learn virtue?"

Here she laughs. "You have read too much, and learned too little. Virtue is a road, not a destination. Man cannot be virtuous. Understanding is the goal. When that is achieved, the soul can take wing.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

"Staying positive is one of the hardest fights, though I'm happy I'm in it."
-Daniel, @blindedpoet

"A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug."
-Patricia Neal

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes. ~William James

"I realized that some of my behaviors are not because of my melancholy personality or my madness; they are because of my negative outlook on life."
-ChristianDM, On Living with His Madness.

“We’re built of contradictions, all of us. It’s those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and I’ll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradictions to balance him will soon veer off.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“What about the virtue of letting others be themselves? Is this not the greatest virtue of all?”
― Joshua Emmet, Celestial Kings and Queens

"Words can be dead. Words can be alive. If you take a Good Word and practice it, it becomes alive in you. The Good Word becomes part of you, you become part of the Good Word."
-ChristianDM, On Living with His Madness.

"It's for you to know, so that you may live."
-Thor, ChristianDM's imaginary friend.

“Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one”
― Ludwig Wittgentsein

“One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas, everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was it surprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy?”
― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow