Transcendence Quotes - Page 4

• To feel that you are the Buddha of all times and places and that in some way the salvation of anyone, including yourself, depends upon you, I think there's a lot of ego involved in such a view, not much self-transcendence.

  Frederick Lenz

  Thinking, Compassion, Self

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• As always, the illusion of self-transcendence is far more facile and available than self-transcendence itself: in the vast majority of cases what human consciousness opens up to is merely a more encompassing form of finitude (another captivating illusion or delusion).

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Self, Majority

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• To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within one's reach.

  Sissela Bok

  Self, Growth, Realizing

  Sissela Bok (2011). “Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation”, p.40, Vintage

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• I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

  Pierre Bourdieu

  Art, Struggle, Understanding

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• Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

  Angel, Self, Forever

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• What gives life its value if not its constant cry for self-transcendence?

  Sri Chinmoy

  Self, Giving, Cry

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• And so man, as existing transcendence abounding in and surpassing toward possibilities, is a creature of distance. Only through the primordial distances he establishes toward all being in his transcendence does a true nearness to things flourish in him.

  Martin Heidegger

  Distance, Men, Doe

  Martin Heidegger (1969). “The essence of reasons”, Northwestern Univ Pr

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• Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.

  Tom Robbins

  Mean, Evil, Survival

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• People will find transformation and transcendence in a McDonald's hash brown if it's all they've got.

  Patton Oswalt

  Mcdonalds, People, Transformation

  Patton Oswalt (2011). “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: A Book by Patton Oswalt”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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• Individual self-transcendence collectively inspires humanity at large.

  Sri Chinmoy

  Self, Inspire, Humanity

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• I feel like when we talk about post-apocalyptic themes that's what we're really talking about. We're always returning to this sense of being alone in a strange new place where all is bleak and all is lost. And it is this sense of isolation that permeates the whole album. I wanted to go into the balance between fear and transcendence.

  Colin Stetson

  Talking, Balance, Albums

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• The most transformative experiences people have - bliss, devotion, self transcendence - are currently anchored to the worst parts of culture and to ways of thinking that merely amplify superstition, self-deception, and conflict.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Self, People

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• I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act. It is an act that can be met with hostility, exclusion, and violence. It can also lead to love, understanding, transcendence, and community. I hope that my being real with you will help empower you to step into who you are and encourage you to share yourself with those around you.

  Janet Mock

  Real, Believe, Empowering

  Janet Mock (2014). “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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• I really do think that art can save you in some sense. It's the last meaning, unless you're religious-and I'm not religious. It's the only secular vehicle for transcendence we have. It's an immediate self-validating experience. It lifts you beyond your mortal clay.

  Sam Savage

  Religious, Art, Thinking

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• Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Fashion, Art, Mean

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• Math . . . music .. . starry nights . . . These are secular ways of achieving transcendence, of feeling lifted into a grand perspective. It's a sense of being awed by existence that almost obliterates the self. Religious people think of it as an essentially religious experience but it's not. It's an essentially human experience.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Religious, Atheist, Math

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• The transcendental promises a vacation from history.

  Mason Cooley

  Vacation, History, Promise

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• Religion is a practical discipline and it's one that we have always done, ever since humanity appeared on the scene when Homo sapiens became Homo sapiens. Sapiens became a human being, our minds very naturally segue into transcendence.

  Karen Armstrong

  Discipline, Humanity, Mind

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

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• An awkward consequence of heightening experience when one is inexperienced, of self-transcendence when one has not much world to lose, is that afterward one cannot be sure that one was somewhere or had newly experienced anything. If you aren't much in the world, how do you know you are "out of this world"?

  Paul Goodman

  Self, Awkward, World

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.166, New York Review of Books

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• There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original impulse that can only be described as sacred. Something in the person (dare we call it a soul?) wants to be free, and it seeks its freedom any way it can. ... There is a drive for transcendence that is implicit in even the most sensual of desires.

  Mark Epstein

  Spiritual, Addiction, Soul

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• Monotheism at Sinai, primitive Christianity, messianic socialism: these are the three supreme moments in which Western culture is presented with what Ibsen termed "the claims of the ideal." These are the three stages, profoundly interrelated, through which Western consciousness is forced to experience the blackmail of transcendence.

  George Steiner

  Western Culture, Three, Consciousness

  "In Bluebeard's Castle". Book by George Steiner, 1971.

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• Disassociating, mindfulness, transcendence-whatever the label-it's a sort of loophole in our contract with reality, a form of self-rescue.

  Diane Ackerman

  Reality, Self, Mindfulness

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• In the Pythagorean system, thinking about numbers, or doing mathematics, was an inherently masculine task. Mathematics was associated with the gods, and with transcendence from the material world; women, by their nature, were supposedly rooted in this latter, baser realm.

  Margaret Wertheim

  Thinking, Numbers, Tasks

  "Numbers Are Male, Said Pythagoras, and the Idea Persists". www.nytimes.com. October 3, 2006.

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• To achieve contact with reality is not to transport oneself elsewhere, it is not transcendence but thorough immersion in one's surroundings. A reality which is neither purely physical nor metaphysical, but both at once.

  Antoni Tapies

  Reality, Achieve, Metaphysical

  "Antoni Tapies". UNESCO Courier, June 1994.

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• Heroes are important not only because they symbolize what we believe to be important, but because they also convey universal truths about personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one's role in society, and the relation between the two.

  Alan Hirsch

  Believe, Hero, Discovery

  Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch (2011). “The Faith of Leap (Shapevine): Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage”, p.106, Baker Books

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