"As mathematical and absolute certainty is seldom to be attained in human affairs, reason and public utility require that judges and all mankind in forming their opinions of the truth of facts should be regulated by the superior number of the probabilities on the one side or the other whether the amount of these probabilities be expressed in words and arguments or by figures and numbers."

"Any man facing a major decision acts, consciously or otherwise, upon the training and beliefs of a lifetime. This is no less true of a military commander than of a surgeon who, while operating, suddenly encounters an unsuspected complication. In both instances, the men must act immediately, with little time for reflection, and if they are successful in dealing with the unexpected it is upon the basis of past experience and training."

"Piet Hein, A Psychological Tip"

"Somewhere deep down we know that in the final analysis we do decide things and that even our decisions to let someone else decide are really our decisions, however pusillanimous."

"The practical intellect knows for the sake of action. From the very start its object is not Being to be grasped, but human activity to be guided and human tasks to be achieved. It is immersed in creativity. To mould intellectually that which will be brought into being, to judge about ends and means, and to direct or even command our powers of execution—these are its very life."

"It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves."

"The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin."

"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."

"The worst of what is called good society is not only that it offers us the companionship of people who are unable to win either our praise or our affection, but that it does not allow us to be that which we naturally are; it compels us, for the sake of harmony, to shrivel up, or even alter our shape altogether. Intellectual conversation, whether grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This demands an act of severe self-denial; we have to forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to become like other people. No doubt their company may be set down against our loss in this respect; but the more a man is worth, the more he will find that what he gains does not cover what he loses, and that the balance is on the debit side of the account; for the people with whom he deals are generally bankrupt—that is to say, there is nothing to be got from their society which can compensate either for its boredom, annoyance and disagreeableness, or for the self-denial which it renders necessary."

"My own opinion is that youthfulness of feeling is retained, as is youthfulness of appearance, by constant use of the intellect."

"Psychology, speaking for emotion and instinct, has reduced intellect to impotence over life. Metaphysics has subordinated it to will. Bergson and his followers have charged it with falsehood and issued a general warning against its misrepresentations; while with pragmatists and instrumentalists it has sunk so low that it is dressed in livery and sent to live in the servant's quarters. It is against this last indignity in particular that I wish to speak a word of protest, to the end that the intellect may be accorded full rights within the community of human activities and interests."

"The inherent contradiction between condemning the intellect as invalid and incapable of reaching truth, and using that same intellect to make the condemnation, seems, strangely, not to occur to those who hold this derogatory view of the intellect."

"The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet."

"Intellect needs to be understood not as some kind of claim against the other human excellences for which a fatally high price has to be paid, but rather as a complement to them without which they cannot be fully consummated."

"Intellectual life has a certain spontaneous character and inner determination. It has also a peculiar poise of its own, which I believe is established by a balance between two basic qualities in the intellectual’s attitude toward ideas—qualities that may be designated as playfulness and piety."

""What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should be answered. "It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims!"

"If someone asks us which of these is more perfect, intellect or sense, the intelligible or the sensible, we shall promise to answer promptly, if he will first give us an answer to the following question. You know, my inquiring friend, that there is some power in you which has a notion of each of these things—a notion, I say, of intellect itself and of sense, of the intelligible and the sensible. This is evident, for the same power which compares these to each other must at that time in a certain manner see both. Tell me, then, whether a power of this kind belongs to intellect or sense? ... Sense, as you yourself have shown, can perceive neither itself nor intellect and the objects of intellect; whereas intellect knows both. ... Therefore, intellect is not only more perfect than sense but is also, after perfection itself, in the highest degree perfect."

"The intellect is prompted by nature to comprehend the whole breadth of being.… Under the concept of truth it knows all, and under the concept of the good it desires all."

"Thou living ray of intellectual fire."

"Character is higher than intellect.… A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think."

"Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty."

"He, therefore, who fixes a limit of any kind to his intellectual attainments dwarfs himself, and cramps the growth of that mind given to us by the Creator, and capable of indefinite expansion."

"Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence."

"Rabbi Barash emphasized that in the Talmud, the Golem was considered a dumb klutz because he was literal-minded, could not speak and had no “sechel,” or intellect. “If in school,” he said, “you didn’t use your brains, the teacher would say, ‘Stop behaving like a golem.’”"

"We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality."

"If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching."

"Awareness is the greatest agent for change."

"By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations, places, and conditions. In other words, what happens or doesn't happen is not that important anymore. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form."

"With the awareness comes transformation and freedom... I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness... When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree... The truth is you are not somebody who is aware of the tree, the thought, feeling or experience. You are the awareness or consciousness in and by which those things appear. As you go about your life, can you be aware of yourself as the awareness in which the entire content of your life unfolds?"

"Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being. At that point, they started to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source and to each other. Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking."

"Consciousness takes on the disguise of forms until they reach such complexity that it completely loses itself in them. In present-day humans, consciousness is completely identified with its disguise. It only knows itself as form and therefore lives in fear of the annihilation of its physical or psychological form. This is the egoic mind, and this is where considerable dysfunction sets in. Ch. 5"

"When you become conscious of Being, what is really happening is that Being becomes conscious of itself. When Being becomes conscious of itself - that's presence. Since Being, consciousness, and life are synonymous, we could say that presence means consciousness becoming conscious of itself, or life attaining self-consciousness. But don't get attached to the words, and don't make an effort to understand this. There is nothing that you need to understand before you can become present. Ch. 5"

"Let's not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness."

"I realized that while women may seem like regular individuals, mothers are nothing short of divine embodiment. They transcend the ordinary, not only navigating life's challenges but also contending with the forces of nature in relentless devotion to their children."

"Change requires awareness to propel a transformation of attitude."

"Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use."

"Not so much, so much be lost, just To see the hue, grace, glory gone Off the face of my beloved As I’d wake and be conscious."

"The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one."

"Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God; it is a sincere seeking for a good thing; and it is a concentration on the thing sought, with faith that it is obtainable."

"Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs."

"I often say to my students, when they first come and they begin to feel the infiniteness, the joy and the deep peace, and they feel very happy, I say to them, Don’t just joy ride. Be quiet. Be one with this. Know that this is beyond belief. This is direct experience. But because this is taking place in you, a storm is coming. And this storm is the storm of ego! The storm of ego is going to come to crush what you have discovered, to bring fear in you, to make you feel that you are making a mistake, to bring in states of confusion. And some of you may give in to that and run away, and feel, ‘No, I must not do this anymore!’ But I want to encourage you. This exercise, this ‘meditation’, you may call it, comes from the very core of your Self. It comes from the God-place in you. And this tendency to run comes from the negativity, the toxicity that we have picked up in life. That is going to come up as though it wants to ruin your Garden of Eden inside your heart. I am telling you ahead of time that all beings who awakened to their true nature experienced these types of resistance, this type of aggression from the mind."

"This peculiar type of mental state is sometimes called a "Mystical Experience" or "Rapture," "Ecstasy," or "Bliss." Some who undergo it call it "wonderful," but a better word would be "wonderless," because I suspect that such a state of mind may result from turning so many [inner] Critics off that one cannot find any flaws in it. ...such experiences can be dangerous — for some victims find them so compelling that they devote the rest of their lives to trying to get themselves back to that state again."

"The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another."

"What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself."

"Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom."

"The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not — which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams."

"The objection I have repeatedly made privately against those who ordinarily proclaim Christianity in Christendom is that they, themselves surrounded and safeguarded by all too many illusions, do not have the courage to make people aware. They are eager to win adherents, but they want to win them – because this strengthens their cause – and therefore are not scrupulously careful about whether they in truth become adherents or not. This in turn means that in a deeper sense they have no cause; they related themselves selfishly to the cause they do have. Therefore they do not actually risk going out among the people or abandoning illusions in order to make a genuine idea-impression, because they have a dim nothing that it is truly a dangerous matter to make people aware."

"If you want to be well off and yet easily manage to become something, then forget God, never let yourself really become aware, never let it become really clear to you that it is he who has created you from nothing; proceed on the presupposition that a human being does not have time to waste on keeping in mind the one to whom he infinitely and unconditionally owes everything. ... Forget it and be noisy along with the crowd, laugh or cry, be busy from morning until night, be loved and respected and esteemed as a friend, as a public official, as a king, as a pallbearer. Above all be an earnest person by having forgotten the one and only earnestness, to relate yourself to God, to become nothing."