“Your time has come,” the emperor assented. “So tell us truthfully before you go, what sort of paradise do you expect to discover when you have passed through the veil?” The Rana raised his mutilated face and looked the emperor in the eye. “In Paradise, the words worship and argument mean the same thing”, he declared. “The Almighty is not a tyrant. In the House of God all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion.”
Quotes
This page contains the resources that I have found useful in my personal and professional life. Admittedly, it is an eclectic list. It contains everything from quotes and books that I like to podcasts, videos, and slideshows.
If you don’t want to scroll through the entire list, you can click on one of the links below and filter the resources by specific category.
I will update this list as I discover new resources. If you have a resource you think I should add, please email me.
Man vergilt einem Lehrer schlecht, wenn man immer nur der Schüler bleibt. Und warum wollt ihr nicht an meinem Kranze rupfen?
Ihr verehrt mich; aber wie, wenn eure Verehrung eines Tages umfällt? Hütet euch, dass euch nicht eine Bildsäule erschlage!
Ihr sagt, ihr glaubt an Zarathustra? Aber was liegt an Zarathustra! Ihr seid meine Gläubigen: aber was liegt an allen Gläubigen!
Ihr hattet euch noch nicht gesucht: da fandet ihr mich. So thun alle Gläubigen; darum ist es so wenig mit allem Glauben.
Nun heisse ich euch, mich verlieren und euch finden; und erst, wenn ihr mich Alle verleugnet habt, will ich euch wiederkehren.
Wahrlich, mit andern Augen, meine Brüder, werde ich mir dann meine Verlorenen suchen; mit einer anderen Liebe werde ich euch dann lieben.
Perhaps, in other words: If you meet the Buddha, kill him. (逢佛殺佛)
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra)
A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.
K.C. Chesterton (?)
Ti sbagli, Heinrich, anche se può sembrare facile crederlo, io e te non siamo affatto uguali. Tu hai combattuto la guerra di un altro, hai obbedito agli ordini, hai svolto una parte nel suo piano. Hai servito tutta la vita, per un fine di cui non ti è nemmeno concesso vedere il compimento: questa è la tua sconfitta. (p. 622)
Q --- by Luther Blissett
(Einaudi, 1999)
In the Indian tradition, by and large, people have tried to emphasize continuity and underplay the change or novelty except in some fields of arts. […] On the contrary, what happens in the west is that because novelty is valued very much, so, every new thing is claimed as novel, So, what the historians do there is to tell us that it is not really so new and they find the seeds of it or the sources of it in the past. In the Indian context therefore we should try to find out where the difference is occurring or where the change is occurring.
Using expressions like “it seems unlikely” or “I am not convinced” without specifying the reason for their use is a bane of historical research writing. Unfortunately this practice, which can mislead a reader into thinking that a counter-argument has been made when in fact no argument has been made, is not rare in Indology. The ultimate import of expressions of the specified kind is usually “I, the researcher, am not willing to change my view, even if your argument is sound” or “I, the researcher, am not going to be so adventurous as to differ from the majority or mainstream view, even when the erroneous nature of that view has been exposed”.
A religion without mystics is a philosophy.”
I cannot enroll the Pope among my supporters, but this quote offers a further interesting insight on a point I raised here.
“Text” can be taken (heuristically) to designate any configuration of signs that is coherently interpretable by some community of users.
Da allora siempre me he empeñado a respetar a tutti gli uomini […] porque en ellos se refleja la imagen misma de Dios. Con lo cual si no se socorre a quien sufre, a quien patisce la injusticia, a quien se muere de hambre, a quien es más debil, […] no se commete solo un pecado de omissione, sino que lo mucho más grave de blasfemia.
La rivoluzione della luna (Andrea Camilleri)
(Palermo: Sellerio, 2013)