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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

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P.D. Ouspensky
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More quotes by P.D. Ouspensky

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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
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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
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Desire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want.
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Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem.
P.D. Ouspensky
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There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Possibly the most interesting first impression of my life came from the world of dreams.
P.D. Ouspensky
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People live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know they are asleep.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Most people can accept the truth only in the form of a lie.
P.D. Ouspensky
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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
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Our ancestors were very rich and eminent people, and they left us an enormous inheritance, which we have completely forgotten, especially since the time when we began to consider ourselves the descendants of a monkey.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Art is the communication of ecstasy.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art.
P.D. Ouspensky
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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
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One cannot keep all old views and opinions and acquire new ones.
P.D. Ouspensky
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A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.
P.D. Ouspensky
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Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation says I. And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs to the Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole.
P.D. Ouspensky
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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
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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
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The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious.
P.D. Ouspensky
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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