Quote

I think we're inevitably going to be depressed when we focus the major part of our energy and attention on something that doesn't give us meaning, only material things.

Sam Keen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Keen
Age: 54
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Give
Material
Giving
Materials
Going
Meaning
Something
Focus
Things
Attention
Depressed
Think
Energy
Inevitably
Thinking
Doesn
Majors
Part
Major

More quotes by Sam Keen

Image
Freud articulated the standard opinion when he asked with supposed seriousness, 'What does a woman want?'... Today the question that is the yeast in the social dough is, 'What do men want?
Sam Keen
Image
To really love a person completely is to come to a point where your stories are intertwined.
Sam Keen
Image
The major impediment to experiencing the sacred depths of ordinary moments is the speed and distraction of contemporary life that moves to the imperatives of the global economic order.In addition, we increasingly live in a virtual world in which our reality is filtered through media and information technology.
Sam Keen
Image
Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change the direction of his life.
Sam Keen
Image
Being pretty successful, I can, of course, afford some luxuries. But I realize again and again how we have to disillusion ourselves of the idea that these things are going to give us real satisfaction.
Sam Keen
Image
What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.
Sam Keen
Image
The 'still, small voice' of God never calls on me to be like another man. It appeals to me to rise to my full stature and fulfill the promise that sleeps within my being.
Sam Keen
Image
The spiritual mind is always metaphorical. Spiritual thinking is poetic thinking. It's always trying to put a very diaphanous experience into words, realizing all the while that words are inadequate.
Sam Keen
Image
Down to earth advice about the path that leads away from the kingdom of the hollow men.
Sam Keen
Image
I think it's increasingly hard to have deep self-knowledge without entering the darkness in some way.
Sam Keen
Image
Human beings are what I think of as biomythic animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order.
Sam Keen
Image
The abyss beyond our beliefs is something we have to pass through in order to see the world anew, to see it in terms not dictated so much by our culture, our parents, or our religious convictions.
Sam Keen
Image
There has always been a part of me that saw wilderness and risk-taking as the path to freedom.
Sam Keen
Image
Without reverence we [people] will gradually descend into ecocide. In the degree that the imperatives of the market - the temple of the Mall - govern our lives, we are in escalating danger of destroying the commonwealth of all sentient beings - bugs and bees and buntings - on which we depend for a luxurious life on planet earth.
Sam Keen
Image
The more we chase away the false mysteries - those things we think we know about ourselves and others - the more mysterious our existence becomes.
Sam Keen
Image
When you genuinely lose your illusions, you begin to marvel at things, because you don't have the answers any more.
Sam Keen
Image
A man must go on a quest / to discover the sacred fire / in the sanctuary of his own belly / to ignite the flame in his heart / to fuel the blaze in the hearth / to rekindle his ardor for the earth
Sam Keen
Image
The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair.
Sam Keen
Image
It's interesting that the worse things get, the more we believe the next technological fix is going to get us out of it. But it's like being in quicksand: the more you struggle the deeper you sink.
Sam Keen
Image
I've spent my life cultivating knowledge of myself. But the more I know myself, the more utterly mysterious I become.
Sam Keen