Quotes About Reflection

I encourage all of us, whatever our beliefs, to question the basic narratives of our world, to connect past developments with present concerns, and not to be afraid of controversial issues.

what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences.

How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed and no new story has yet emerged to replace them?

Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables us to turn our head this way and that, and begin to notice possibilities that our ancestors could not imagine, or didn't want us to imagine.

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time. Today

Pero el enigma real de la vida no es qué ocurre cuando nos morimos, sino qué ocurre antes. Si queremos comprender la muerte, necesitamos comprender la vida.

Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously.

We can already see this process at work in geriatric hospital wards. Due to an uncompromising humanist belief in the sanctity of human life, we keep people alive till they reach such a pitiful state that we are forced to ask, 'What exactly is so sacred here?

discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, re-evaluate and criticise.

Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid.

Those arguing that the world of 2016 is as hungry, sick and violent as it was in 1916 perpetuate this age-old defeatist view. They imply that all the huge efforts humans have made during the twentieth century have achieved nothing, and that medical research, economic reforms and peace initiatives have all been in vain. If so, what is the point of investing our time and resources in further medical research, novel economic reforms or new peace initiatives?

People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions.

What, exactly, happens to a Communist after he or she dies?

The system may push us in that direction, because it usually rewards us for the decisions we make rather than for our doubts. Yet a life of resolute decisions and quick fixes may be poorer and shallower than one of doubts and contradictions.

Estudiamos historia no para conocer el futuro, sino para ampliar nuestros horizontes, para comprender que nuestra situación actual no es natural ni inevitable y que, en consecuencia, tenemos ante nosotros muchas más posibilidades de las que imaginamos.

Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously. And among all forms of humility, perhaps the most important is to have humility before

Yet what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences.

At the entrance of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, pilgrims were greeted by the inscription: 'Know thyself!' The implication was that the average person is ignorant of his true self, and is therefore likely to be ignorant of true happiness. Freud would probably concur.*

happiness consists in seeing one's life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. There is an important cognitive and ethical component

Como bomberos en un mundo sin fuego, en el siglo XXI la humanidad necesita plantearse una pregunta sin precedentes: ¿qué vamos a hacer con nosotros?

A consistência é o parque de diversões das mentes entorpecidas.

A wise old man was asked what he learned about the meaning of life. "Well," he answered, "I have learned that I am here on earth in order to help other people. What I still haven't figured out is why the other people are here.

If mosquitoes buzzed in our ears and disturbed our sleep, we knew how to kill the mosquitoes; but if a thought buzzed in our mind and kept us awake at night, most of us did not know how to kill the thought.

Perhaps if more people were aware of the First Wave and Second Wave extinctions, they'd be less nonchalant about the Third Wave they are part of.