Quotations

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Rewilding Mind & Heart
#1

Here ye may post quotations for contemplation…

#2

I’ll go first. ;D

Advice from David Foster Wallace (2005):

"There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

#3

There’s another name for that.
Parenting

#4

I like this quote, which Derrick Jensen quoted in Endgame:

  "It is possible to get out of a trap.  However, in order to break out of a prison, one must first confess to being in a prison... The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?
  The most ridiculous as well as the most tragic thing is this:  The exit is clearly visible to all trapped in the prison.  Yet nobody seems to see it.  Moreso, whoever moves toward the exit, or whoever points to it is declared crazy or a criminal or a sinner to burn in hell.  
  It turns out the trouble is not with the trap or even with finding the exit.  The trouble is with the trapped ones.  As soon as they get close to the exit they start screaming and run away from it.  As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill him.
 Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep."

I also like lots of Frederick Douglass’ quotes, like:

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue until they are resisted.”

And,

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

#5

I also like this quote - I can’t remember who said it first (probably read it in a DJ book):

“Happy, contented people wouldn’t constantly want to transcend themselves, to go beyond their own geography, to go beyond who they are.”

#6

This is one of my alltime favourites:

The fish will find their way home. And so will the wolves and bears and spotted owls and sharks and tuna and Port Orford cedars. So will the great apes and the tigers. So will the shad and the seabass. So will the bison and prarie dogs. And so will we.
#7

how we get what we need is how we are controlled and it is also how we control others, unless this fact is faced and owned, all else is self-deception.

redwolfreturns

#8

[quote=“heyvictor, post:3, topic:1296”]There’s another name for that.
Parenting[/quote]

I can think of others:
Friendship
Partnership
Community
Mentoring

#9

Here are few that I would like to share:

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.
Dodie Smith

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.
Randolph Bourne

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
Isaac Asimov

I feel like I’m stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it’s always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.
David Knopfler

I think a lot of contemplation happens in bathtubs. It does for me. Nothing like a hot bath to ease the tension and think about what’s going to happen next.
Sarah McLachlan

If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.
John Dos Passos

If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.
Sri Chinmoy

If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
Fran Lebowitz

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.
Lionel Trilling

It may be added, to prevent misunderstanding, that when I speak of contemplated objects in this last phrase as objects of contemplation, the act of contemplation itself is of course an enjoyment.
Samuel Alexander

#10

As the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. -Vine Deloria, Jr.

#11

I’ve never been able to learn what I want about animals from books or nature specials on television. I have to walk in their territories, see the world as they might see it. Walk along the edges of the stories they know.
- Charles de Lint