Edo, ergo ego sum=--I eat, therefore I am.
Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.
Alter ego=--Another or second self.
Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli=--I am a barbarian here, for no one understands what I say.
H?c ego mecum / Compressis agito labris; ubi quid datur oti, / Illudo chartis=--These things I revolve by myself with compressed lips, When I have any leisure, I amuse myself with my writings.
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
Everyday experience familiarizes us with the facts which are grouped under the name of heredity. Every one of us bears upon him obvious marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter relationships. More particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain, way, which we call "character," is often to be traced through a long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say that this "character"--this moral and intellectual essence of a man--does veritably pass over from one fleshy tabernacle to another, ana does really transmigrate from generation to generation. In the new-born infant the character of the stock lies latent, and the Ego is little more than a bundle of potentialities. But, very early, these become actualities; from childhood to age they manifest themselves in dulness or brightness, weakness or strength, viciousness or uprightness; and with each feature modified by confluence with another character, if by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies.
Freedom is a mystical truth \x97 Its expressed best in The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter when the Grand Inquisitor confronted the returned Christ. The freedom that Christ gave the world was the freedom of being an individual, in a collectivity, of basing ones life on love, as distinct from power, of seeking the good of others rather than nourishing ones own ego. That was liberation. And the Chief Inquisitor, who speaks for every dictator, every millionaire, every ideologue that's ever been, says we can't have it. Go away. Stay away.
Novi ego hoc s?culum, moribus quibus siet=--I know this age, what its character is.
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.
Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
At this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the "edge of history." There would be a real New Age.
Non ego omnino lucrum omne esse utile homini existimo=--I do not at all reckon that every kind of gain is serviceable to a man.
Attachment is the root cause of all misery. Possessiveness is nourishment for the ego.
I am served first, for my name is lion. ( Ego primum tollo, nominor quoniam leo .) [C. 15 BC—AD 45 I, Prologus, 7. ]
Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico=--As long as I have my senses, there is nothing I would prefer to an agreeable friend.
Non ego avarum / Cum te veto fieri, vappam jubeo ac nebulonem=--When I say, Be not a miser, I do not bid you become a worthless prodigal.
Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous — that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ';Ego'."
Non ego ventos? venor suffragia plebis=--I do not hunt after the suffrages of the fickle multitude.
What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.
Toga virilis=--The manly robe. [Greek: to gar trephon me, tout' ego krino theon]--What maintains me in life, that I regard as God. (?) [Greek: to gar perissa prassein ouk echei noun oudena]--Doing more than one is able for argues a want of intelligence. (?)
Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.
Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis / Offendar maculis=--But where many beauties shine in a poem, I will not be offended at a few blots.
Ad populum phaleras, ego te intus et in cute novi=--To the vulgar herd with your trappings; for me, I know you both inside and out.
Non ego mordaci distrinxi carmine quenquam; / Nec meus ullius crimina versus habet=--I have not wounded any one with stinging satire, nor does my poetry contain a charge against any man.
As long as the “I” is there, love cannot be. All that we call love is only desire, longing, passion and attachment; as long as ego is there, all these bind one.
One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the perogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.
Non ego illam mihi dotem esse puto, qu? dos dicitur, / Sed pudicitiam, et pudorem, et sedatam cupidinem=--I do not deem that a dowry which is called a dowry, but chastity, modesty, and subdued desire.
Nam ego illum periisse duco, cui quidem periit pudor=--I regard that man as lost who has lost his sense of shame.
_Singularis sum ego donec transeam._ Jesus Christ before his death was almost the only martyr.
Bonum ego quam beatum me esse nimio dici mavolo=--I would much rather be called good than well off.
Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Melib?e, putavi, / Stultus ego, huic nostr? similem=--The city, Melib?us, which they call Rome, I foolishly imagined to be like this town of ours.
If your “love” has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets.
All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.= _Sh._ [Greek: all' ou Zeus andressi noemata panta teleuta]--Zeus, however, does not give effect to all the schemes of man. _Hom._ [Greek: Allos ego]--Alter ego.
Magnum hoc ego duco / Quod placui tibi qui turpi secernis honestum=--I account it a great honour that I have pleased a man like you, who know so well to discriminate between the base and the honourable.
Jer. ii. 35. _Et dixisti: Absque peccato et innocens ego sum: et propterea avertatur furor tuus a me._
Consider how many times you have gossiped about the person you love the most to gain the support of others for your point of view. How many times have you hooked other people’s attention, and spread poison about your loved one in order to make your opinion right? Your opinion is nothing but your point of view. It is not necessarily true. Your opinion comes from your beliefs, your own ego, and your own dream. We create all this poison and spread it to others just so we can feel right about our own point of view.
...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our family, the Hominidae. -- Richard Leakey
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation. -- Dr. Albert Hoffman
FOOLED you! Absorb EGO SHATTERING impulse rays, polyester poltroon!!
Yevtushenko has... an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty feet. -- John Cheever
Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
Oh, that sound of male ego. You travel halfway across the galaxy and it's still the same song. -- Eve McHuron, "Mudd's Women", stardate 1330.1
Clique Maintenance: The need of one generation to see the generation following it as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: "Kids today do nothing. They're so apathetic. We used to go out and protest. All they do is shop and complain." -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
I believe, in spite of all, in truth's victory. I believe in the momentous value, hereafter inviolable, of those few truly fraternal men in all the countries of the world, who, in the oscillation of national egoisms let loose, stand up and stand out, steadfast as the glorious statues of Right and Duty.
A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem.
Suffering turns us into egotists, for it absorbs us completely: it is later, in the form of memory, that it teaches us compassion.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.
The love season is the carnival of egoism, and it brings the touchstone to our natures.
The universe is that great egoist that decoys us by the grossest bird-calls.
Le moy est haissable=--Egotism is hateful.
Mastery passes often for egotism.
Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of ourselves.
"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!" deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.
The life of an egoist is a tissue of inconsistencies, of actions that, from his own point of view, are absurd and foolish.
He who overcomes his egoism rids himself of the most stubborn obstacle that blocks the way to all true greatness and all true happiness.
La ruse est le talent des egoistes, et ne peut tromper que les sots que prennent la turbulence pour l'esprit, la gravite pour la prudence, effronterie pour le talent, l'orgueil pour la dignite.=--Cunning is the accomplishment of the selfish, and can only impose upon silly people, who take bluster for sense, gravity for prudence, effrontery for talent, and pride for dignity.
"Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be true. _Je pense, donc je suis_, I know that for a fact; all the rest, all these worlds, God and even Satan--all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical development of my ego which alone has existed for ever: but I make haste to stop, for I believe you will be jumping up to beat me directly."
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
What good there is in Montaigne can only have been acquired with difficulty. What is evil in him, I mean apart from his morality, could have been corrected in a moment, if any one had told him he was too prolix and too egoistical.
Nature knows how to convert evil to good; Nature utilises misers, fanatics, showmen, egotists to accomplish her ends; but we must not think better of the foible for that.
The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. It is a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions.
I enjoy decoration. By accumulating this mass of detail you throw light on things in a longer sense: in the long run it all adds up. It creates a texture — how shall I put it — a background, a period, which makes everything you write that much more convincing. Of course, all artists are terrible egoists. Unconsciously you are largely writing about yourself. I could never write anything factual; I only have confidence in myself when I am another character. All the characters in my books are myself, but they are a kind of disguise.
Violent combativeness for particular sects, as Evangelical, Roman Catholic, High Church, Broad Church, or the like, is merely a form of party egoism, and a defiance of Christ, not a confession of Him.
Foppery is the egotism of clothes.--_Victor Hugo._
Proximus sum egomet mihi=--I am my own nearest of kin.
"You can't make a program without broken egos."
Spirit-power begins in directing animal power to other than egoistic ends.
Die Meisterhaft gilt oft fur Egoismus=--Mastery passes often for egoism.
There is nothing like the cold dead hand of the past to take down our tumid egotism, and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.
Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?
His (Adam Smith’s) was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation…. But the “children of darkness” were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the “ideology” of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power…. Marxism was the social creed and the social cry of those classes who knew by their miseries that the creed of the liberal optimists was s snare and a delusion…. Liberalism and Marxism share a common illusion of the “children of light.” Neither understands property as a form of power which can be used in either its individual or its social form as an instrument of particular interest against the general interest. Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property…. The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature…. It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism…. The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory. [ The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness , 1944.]
Serve the great; stick at no humiliation; grudge no office thou canst render; be the limb of their body, the breath of their mouth; compromise thy egotism.
All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in ones own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken.
Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism.
Kant, it is well known, criticizes Aristotle severely for having drawn up his categories without a principle, and claims to have disclosed the only possible method by which an exhaustive classification might be obtained. What he criticized in Aristotle is brought against his own procedure by the later German thinkers, particularly Fichte and Hegel. And in point of fact it cannot be denied that Kant has allowed too much completeness to the ordinary logical distribution of propositions; he has given no proof that in these forms are contained all species of synthesis, and in consequence he has failed to show that in the categories, or pure conceptions, are contained all the modes of a priori synthesis. Further, his principle has so far the unity he claimed for it, the unity of a single function, but the specific forms in which such unity manifests itself are not themselves accounted for by this principle. Kant himself hints more than once at the possibility of a completely rational system of the categories, at an evolution from one single movement of thought, and in his _Remarks on the Table of the Categories_ gave a pregnant hint as to the method to be employed. From any complete realization of this suggestion Kant, however, was precluded by one portion of his theory. The categories, although the necessary conditions under which alone an object of experience can be thrown, are merely forms of the mind's own activity; they apply only to sensuous and consequently subjective material. Outside of and beyond them lies the thing-in-itself, which to Kant represented the ultimately real. This subjectivism was a distinct hiatus in the Kantian system, and against it principally Fichte and Hegel directed criticism. It was manifest that at the root of the whole system of categories there lay the synthetizing unity of self-consciousness, and it was upon this unity that Fichte fixed as giving the possibility of a more complete and rigorous deduction of the pure notions of the understanding. Without the act of the Ego, whereby it is self-conscious, there could be no knowledge, and this primitive act or function must be, he saw, the _position_ or affirmation of itself by the Ego. The first principle then must be that the Ego posits itself as the Ego, that Ego = Ego, a principle which is unconditioned both in form and matter, and therefore capable of standing absolutely first, of being the _prius_ in a system. Metaphysically regarded this act of self-position yields the categories of Reality. But, so far as matter is concerned, there cannot be affirmation without negation, _omnis determinatio est negatio_. The determination of the Ego presupposes or involves the Non-Ego. The form of the proposition in which this second act takes to itself expression, the Ego is not = Not-Ego, is unconditioned, not derivable from the first. It is the absolute antithesis to the primitive thesis. The category of Negation is the result of this second act. From these two propositions, involving absolutely opposed and mutually destructive elements, there results a third which reconciles both in a higher synthesis. The notion in this third is determination or limitation; the Ego and Non-Ego limit, and are opposed to one another. From these three positions Fichte proceeds to evolve the categories by a series of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Entry: CATEGORY
CARPENTER, WILLIAM BENJAMIN (1813-1885), English physiologist and naturalist, was born at Exeter on the 29th of October 1813. He was the eldest son of Dr Lant Carpenter. He attended medical classes at University College, London, and then went to Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1839. The subject of his graduation thesis, "The Physiological Inferences to be Deduced from the Structure of the Nervous System of Invertebrated Animals," indicates a line of research which had fruition in his _Principles of General and Comparative Physiology_. His work in comparative neurology was recognized in 1844 by his election to the Royal Society, which awarded him a Royal medal in 1861; and his appointment as Fullerian professor of physiology in the Royal Institution in 1845 enabled him to exhibit his powers as a teacher and lecturer, his gift of ready speech and luminous interpretation placing him in the front rank of exponents, at a time when the popularization of science was in its infancy. His manifold labours as investigator, author, editor, demonstrator and lecturer knew no cessation through life; but in assessing the value of his work, prominence should be given to his researches in marine zoology, notably in the lower organisms, as Foraminifera and Crinoids. These researches gave an impetus to deep-sea exploration, an outcome of which was in 1868 the "Lightning," and later the more famous "Challenger," expedition. He took a keen and laborious interest in the evidence adduced by Canadian geologists as to the organic nature of the so-called _Eozoon Canadense_, discovered in the Laurentian strata, and at the time of his death had nearly finished a monograph on the subject, defending the now discredited theory of its animal origin. He was an adept in the use of the microscope, and his popular treatise on _The Microscope and its Revelations_ (1856) has stimulated a host of observers to the use of the "added sense" with which it has endowed man. In 1856 Carpenter became registrar of the university of London, and held the office for twenty-three years; on his resignation in 1879 he was made a C.B. in recognition of his services to education generally. Biologist as he was, Carpenter nevertheless made reservations as to the extension of the doctrine of evolution to man's intellectual and spiritual nature. In his _Principles of Mental Physiology_ he asserted both the freedom of the will and the existence of the "Ego," and one of his last public engagements was the reading of a paper in support of miracles. He died in London, from injuries occasioned by the accidental upsetting of a spirit-lamp, on the 19th of November 1885. Entry: CARPENTER