Quote

Two things can get people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if they want to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge, people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain.

P.D. Ouspensky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

P.D. Ouspensky
Things
Ordinary
People
Conditions
Effort
Knowledge
Two
Without
Efforts
Something
Gain
Make
Gains

More quotes by P.D. Ouspensky

Image
Seek the Path, do not seek attainment, Seek for the Path within yourself. Do not expect to hear the truth from others, nor to see it, or read it in books. Look for the truth in yourself, not without yourself.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
There is something in us that keeps us where we find ourselves. I think this is the most awful thing of all.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
If a man gives way to all his desires, or panders to them, there will be no inner struggle in him, no 'friction,' no fire. But if, for the sake of attaining a definite aim, he struggles with desires that hinder him, he will then create a fire which will gradually transform his inner world into a single whole.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
Ideas by themselves cannot produce change of being your effort must go in the right direction, and one must correspond to the other.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
Can one alter one´s chief feature? asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
The problem of Eternity, of which the face of the Sphinx speaks, takes us into the realm of the impossible. Even the problem of Time is simple in comparison with the problem of Eternity.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
It is by overcoming obstacles that man develops those qualities he needs.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
One cannot keep all old views and opinions and acquire new ones.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
People live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know they are asleep.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
Learn to see it in thyself and thou wilt understand the infinite essence, hidden in all illusory forms. Understand that the world which thou knowest is only one of the aspects of the infinite world, and things and phenomena are merely hierolgyphics of deeper ideas.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
Most people can accept the truth only in the form of a lie.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
Psychology is sometimes called a new science. This is quite wrong. Psychology is, perhaps, the oldest science, and, unfortunately, in its most essential features a forgotten science.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
Love is the eternally burning fire in which humanity & all the world are being purified.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself.
P.D. Ouspensky
Image
A symbol may serve to transfer our intuitions and to suggest new ones only so long as its meaning is not defined.
P.D. Ouspensky