Way Of A Superior Man Quotes

Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer his full, undivided presence. ~ David Deida

Nationalities are a facist way of thinking aimed at forcing people into a narrow and stupid sense of belonging. It makes some people feel superior to others and perpetuates hatred and war. ~ Alaa Al Aswany

By 1900, a small white minority radiating out from Europe would come to control most of world's land surface, imposing the imperatives of a commercial economy and international trade on Asia's mainly agrarian societies. Europeans backed by garrisons and gunboats could intervene in the affairs of any Asian country they wished to. They were free to transport millions of Asian labourers to far-off colonies (Indians to the Malay Peninsula, Chinese to Trinidad); exact the raw materials and commodities they needed for their industries from Asian economies; and flood local markets with their manufactured products. The peasant in his village and the market trader in his town were being forced to abandon a life defined by religion, family and tradition amid rumours of powerful white men with a strange god-on-a-cross who were reshaping the world- men who married moral aggressiveness with compact and coherent nation-states, the profit motive and superior weaponry, and made Asian societies seem lumberingly inept in every way, unable to match the power of Europe or unleash their own potential. ~ Pankaj Mishra

This is the difference between slavery and freedom. The slave must do what his superior orders him to do, but the free citizen-and this is what freedom means-is in a position to choose his own way of life. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The largest, and most provocative, sense in which a technological singularity might be an existential opportunity can only be grasped by stepping outside the human perspective altogether and adopting a more cosmological point of view. It is surely the height of anthropocentric thinking to suppose that the story of matter in this corner of the universe climaxes with human society and the myriad living brains embedded in it, marvelous as they are. Perhaps matter still has a long way to go on the scale of complexity. Perhaps there are forms of consciousness yet to arise that are, in some sense, superior to our own. Should we recoil from this prospect, or rejoice in it? Can we even make sense of such an idea? Whether or not the singularity is near, these are questions worth asking, not least because in attempting to answer them we shed new light on ourselves and our place in the order of things.

Murray Shanahan ~ Murray Shanahan

Respect, of course is a tricky term. I may respect your gardening by just letting you get on with it. Or, I may respect it by admiring it and regarding it as a superior way to garden. ~ Simon Blackburn

The doorway into the silent land is a wound. Silence lays bare this wound. We do not journey far along the spiritual path before we get some sense of the wound of the human condition, and this is precisely why not a few abandon a contemplative practice like meditation as soon as it begins to expose this wound; they move on instead to some spiritual entertainment that will maintain distraction. Perhaps this is why the weak and wounded, who know very well the vulnerability of the human condition, often have an aptitude for discovering silence and can sense the wholeness and healing that ground this wound.

There is something seductive about the contemplative path. "I am going to seduce her and lead her into the desert and speak to her heart" (Hosea 2:14), says Yahweh to Israel. It is tempting to think it is a superior path. More often, however, the seduction is to think we can use our practice of contemplation as a way to avoid facing our woundedness: if we can just go deeply enough into contemplation, we won't struggle any longer. It is common enough to find people taking a cosmetic view of contemplation, and then, after considerable time and dedication to contemplative practice, discover that they still have the same old warts and struggles they hoped contemplation would remove or hide. They think that somewhere they must have gone wrong.

Certainly there is deep conversion, healing, and unspeakable wholeness to be discovered along the contemplative path ~ Martin Laird

The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found honor in challenging; it was ineptitude - a gray spread of cotton that deemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. ~ Ayn Rand

A Master is not someone who merely revels in the benefits that he reaps from the power and control that he wields over his sub. A Master is not just an automaton who emotionally doles out orders and watches with amusement as his minions perform his bidding. A Master is not a person who only relishes the benefits that his superior status entitles him.

Certainly all of these characteristics could and often do exist within a Master. He may be demanding and at times selfish. He may genuinely enjoy and even be aroused by the power that he has over a sub. He may be able to expertly control his emotions, issuing his commands and enforcing his discipline with stone-faced determination.

But a true Master, a Master such as Matt, was so invested in his sub that he was actually in a way a slave himself. He was a slave to his love for me. He was a slave to his responsibility. He was a slave to the passion and the commitment. He was a slave to his overwhelming desire to protect his property at all costs. He was a slave to his slave. I knew without questions that he loved me so much he'd literally lay down his life for me. He owned me, and his ownership owned him ~ Jeff Erno

About her family she had taken a superior view. She considered them somewhat childlike since her power over them in the form of language had given her the privilege of viewing them in this way. And her distance from them, as the distance of all translators from their subjects, allowed her to see that so much of the raison d'etre of their lives was taken up negotiating their way around the small objects of foreignness laced in their way. Either they could not see the larger space of commonality or it was denied them. ~ Dionne Brand

Consciousness creates form. It is not the other way around. All personalities are not physical. It is only because you are so busily concerned with daily matters that you do not realize that there is a portion of you who knows that its own powers are far superior to those shown by the ordinary self. ~ Jane Roberts

If he stayed at home and carried on with his normal life he would be a thousand times superior to these people and could get any of them out of his way just with a kick. ~ Franz Kafka

Although other animals cannot reason nor speak the way humans do, this does not give us the right to do with them as we like. Even though our supposed possession of a soul and superior intelligence are used to create an arbitrary dividing line over rights, the fact remains that all animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, and in suffering they are our equals. ~ Nathaniel Altman

It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all others by themselves; but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge our thoughts towards greater perfections of it, in superior ranks of spirits. ~ John Locke

Spontaneous prayer, sincerely expressed, may be a very important way to speak to the Lord. However, the prayers that we have received from the Church are important ways of teaching us how to pray in theologically correct ways and may even be superior if our spontaneous prayers express untrue notions of God or our relationship to him. ~ Mitch Pacwa

But no one believes in that way what he reads in a novel ... Oh yes they do. If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic, they need to think of us as sweet and funny, and convince themselves that they sympathize with the way we are and even love us. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Ix who?"
"Ix Caut. Your name in this life meant 'Little Snake.'" Bill watched her face change. "It was a term of endearment in the Mayan culture. Sort of."
"The same way getting your head impaled on a stick was an honor?"
Bill rolled his stone eyes. "Stop being so ethnocentric.That means thinking your own culture is superior to other cultures."
"I know what it means," she said, working the band into her dirty hair. "But I'm not being superior. I just don't think having my head stuck on one of these racks would be so great." There was a faint thrumming in the air,like faraway drumbeats.
"That's exactly the sort of thing Ix Caut would say! You always were a little bit backward!"
"What do you mean?"
"See,you-Ix Caut-were born during the Wayeb',which are these five odd days at the end of Mayan year that everyone gets real superstitious about because they don't fit into the calendar. Kind of like leap-year days.It's not exactly lucky to be born during the Wayeb'. So no one was shocked when you grew up to be an old maid. ~ Lauren Kate

There's an appeal to the American sense of exceptionalism, that we're morally superior, as way to not be self-critical. I think that's a bit dangerous. ~ Al Franken

Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but superior - yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Our culture tends "to regard the mere energy of impulse as being in every mental and moral way equivalent and even superior to defined intention." Instead we should consider "an idea that once was salient in western culture: the idea of "making a life", by which was meant conceiving human existence, one's own or another's, as if it were a work of art upon which one might pass judgment ... This desire to fashion, to shape, a self and a life has all but gone from a contemporary culture whose emphasis, paradoxically enough, is so much on self. ~ Lionel Trilling

Dads didn't care about lightning, because lightning was on the cover of all their favorite albums. Sometimes it was painted on their trucks as well. You could tell that if their kids were killed by lightning, they would be sad, but they would also feel superior about it for the rest of their lives, because it was without question the most hard-as way for a child to die. "My son Randy . . ." they would say, their voices trailing, "taken from us by pure electricity in the year Nineteen Hundred and Ninety . . . ~ Patricia Lockwood

We are all just complicated arrangements of atoms and subatomic particles. We don't live...but our atoms do move about in such a way as to give us identity and consciousness. We don't die; our atoms just rearrange themselves. There is no God. There can be no God; it's ridiculous to think in terms of a superior being. An inferior being, maybe, because we, we who don't even exist, we arrange our lives with more order and harmony than God ever arranged the earth. We measure; we plot; we create wonderful new things. We are the architects of our own existence. What a lunatic concept to bow down before a God who slaughters millions of innocent children, slowly and agonizingly starves them to death, beats them, tortures them, rejects them. What folly to even think that we should not insult such a God, damn him, think him out of existence. It is the duty of all human beings to think God out of existence. Then we have a future. Because then - and only then - do we take full responsibility for who we are. ~ Rolf De Heer

[B]eyond hiding our need and neurotically pursuing self-esteem, there is a third way our neurotic anxiety about death interferes with love. And this is the darkest manifestation of all, as it makes us violent.

Because our worldview is the source of our significance and self-esteem, we want to defend it from the criticisms of out-group members. Those who are different from us implicitly or explicitly call into question the things we hold most dear, the cultural values that ground and shape the contours of our identity and self-esteem in the face of death. In this, out-group members become a source of anxiety, an existential threat. To cope with the anxiety, we rush to defend our worldview and become dogmatic, fundamentalist, and ideological in regard to our values, culture, and way of life. We embrace our worldview as unique and exceptional, as superior to other worldviews, which we deem inferior, mistaken, and even dangerous. This mindset begins the process in which out-group members are denigrated and eventually demonized, sowing the seeds of violence. The point to note here is how this violence is fueled by an underlying neurotic fear that the cultural projects that we've invested in and sacrificed for are not actually immortal, eternal, timeless, or immune to death. ~ Richard Beck

But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected. ~ Marcel Proust

Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?"
Bryce: "No."
Huxley: "Seabags Brown does."
Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..."
Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?"
Bryce: "Not much."
Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too."
Bryce: "I don't..."
Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?"
Bryce: "A little."
Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship."
Bryce: "This is most puzzling."
Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?"
Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer."
Huxley: "In the original Greek?"
Bryce: "No"
Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek."
Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?"
Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass. ~ Leon Uris

We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We "think different" (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer's famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions - our schools and our workplaces - tells a very different story. ~ Susan Cain

For this equality belongs to the post-Renaissance world of ideology-of political magic and the alchemical science" of politics. Envy is the basis of its broad appeal. And rampant envy, the besetting virus of modern society, is the most predictable result of insistence upon its realization. Furthermore, hue and cry over equality of opportunity and equal rights leads, a fortiori, to a final demand for equality of condition. Under its pressure self respect gives way in the large majority of men who have not reached the level of their expectation, who have no support from an inclusive identity, and who hunger for "revenge" on those who occupy a higher station and will (they expect) continue to enjoy that advantage. The end result is visible in the spiritual proletarians of the "lonely crowd." Bertrand de Jouvenel has described the process which produces such non-persons in his memorable study, On Power. They are the natural pawns of an impersonal and omnicompetent Leviathan. And to insure their docility such a state is certain to recruit a large "new class" of men, persons superior in "ability" and authority, both to their ostensible "masters" among the people and to such anachronisms as stand in their progressive way. Such is the evidence of the recent past and particularly of American history. Arrant individualism, fracturing and then destroying the hope of amity and confederation, the communal bond and the ancient vision of the good society as an extrapolation from family, is ~ M.E. Bradford

Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reason that gave us the means to despoil the planet and threaten our species with weapons of mass destruction? In this way of thinking, it's character and conscience, not cold-hearted calculation, that will save us. Besides, a human being is not a brain on a stick. My fellow psychologists have shown that we're led by our bodies and our emotions and use our puny powers of reason merely to rationalize our gut feelings after the fact ~ Steven Pinker

When the war (WWI) finally ended it was necessary for both sides to maintain, indeed even to inflate, the myth of sacrifice so that the whole affair would not be seen for what it was: a meaningless waste of millions of lives. Logically, if the flower of youth had been cut down in Flanders, the survivors were not the flower: the dead were superior to the traumatized living. In this way, the virtual destruction of a generation further increased the distance between the old and the young, between the official and the unofficial. ~ Robert Hughes

Reason, Observation and Experience - the Holy Trinity of Science - have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

I do what I do because it is the right thing to do. I am a warrior, and it is the way of the warrior to fight superior odds. ~ Paul Watson

Prefer spacious interactions with fewer people. And it means that, when you converse, you are more interested in sharing ideas than in talking about people and what they're doing. In a conversation with someone sharing gossip, the introvert's eyes glaze over and his brow furrows as he tries to comprehend how this conversation could interest anyone. This is not because the introvert is morally superior - he just doesn't get it. As we've discussed, introverts are energized and excited by ideas. Simply talking about people, what they do and who they know, is noise for the introvert. He'll be looking between the lines for some meaning, and this can be hard work! Before long, he'll be looking for a way out of the conversation. But when an introvert is hanging out ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

I didn't like the way I looked, the way I dressed and moved, what I achieved and what I felt I was worth. But there was so much energy in me, such belief that one day I'd be handsome and clever and superior and admired, such anticipation when I met new people and new situations. Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill? Sometimes I see the same eagerness and belief in the faces of children and teenagers and the sight brings back the same sadness I feel in remembering myself. ~ Bernhard Schlink

Fail your way forward. Recognize that Ready, fire, aim is superior to ready, aim, aim, aim. Straightforward trial and error produces better results than endless vacillating. If you're afraid to make decisions and act on them in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty, get a job. Failure's lessons are essential to success. ~ Steve Pavlina

The question that wins the world is not, how can we get our "morally superior" way enforced in the world? The question that wins the world, and the question that must define the individual and collective life of kingdom-of-God citizens is, how do we take up the cross for the world? How do we best communicate to others their unsurpassable worth before God? How do we serve and wash the feet of the oppressed and despised? ~ Gregory A. Boyd

Facebook would never put it this way, but algorithms are meant to erode free will, to relieve humans of the burden of choosing, to nudge them in the right direction. Algorithms fuel a sense of omnipotence, the condescending belief that our behavior can be altered, without our even being aware of the hand guiding us, in a superior direction. That's always been a danger of the engineering mindset, as it moves beyond its roots in building inanimate stuff and beings to design a more perfect social world. We are the screws and rivets in their grand design ~ Franklin Foer

Think of the hero's journey as perceived by Joseph Campbell. The mythical hero, usually an unlikely male, undertakes a physical journey to an unknown land. One the way, he is faced with a series of challenges that he can meet only through his superior physical strength and cunning. If he succeeds in getting through all the barriers, he wins the prize, which he can then take home for the benefit of his people.

Although this model has some application to the experience of women, it is not adequate to describe what a woman must do in order to live beyond the stultifying expectations of the culture in which she's raised. If she has small children, she can't take a trip or move to a new place, and very rarely is she called upon to beat down her opponent with force. Instead, her journey is an inner one where the demons are her demons of the self. Her task as the heroine is to return from her inner journey and share her knowledge, wisdom, and energy with the people around her. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt

I learned an important lesson - that the value of the stock is not the same as the underlying value of the company. The stock goes up and down according to the whims and wiles of Wall Street. The value of the company depends on elements that contribute to the creation of real value - things like providing superior products at fair prices. You need to be learning and innovating, giving your people interesting, motivating work and compensating them fairly, creating value for your community, and doing it all in a way that yields a good profit. That's not what much of Wall Street values, but it's what creates long-term value for investors. ~ Jim Koch

Transcendental generosity is generally misunderstood in the study of the Buddhist scriptures as meaning being kind to someone who is lower than you. Someone has this pain and suffering and you are in a superior position and can save them - which is a very simple-minded way of looking down on someone. But in the case of the bodhisattva, generosity is not so callous. It is something very strong and powerful; it is communication.

Communication must transcend irritation, otherwise it will be like trying to make a comfortable bed in a briar patch. The penetrating qualities of external color, energy, and light will come toward us, penetrating our attempts to communicate like a thorn pricking our skin. We will wish to subdue this intense irritation and our communication will be blocked.

Communication must be radiation and receiving and exchange. Whenever irritation is involved, then we are not able to see properly and fully and clearly the spacious quality of that which is coming toward us, that which is presenting itself as communication. The external world is immediately rejected by our irritation which says, "no, no, this irritates me, go away." Such an attitude is the complete opposite of transcendental generosity.

So the bodhisattva must experience the complete communication of generosity, transcending irritation and self-defensiveness. Otherwise, when thorns threaten to prick us, we feel that we are being attacked, that we must defe ~ Chogyam Trungpa

My nose, thank god, had conked out by then. Noses are merciful that way. They will report that something smells awful. If the owner of a nose stays around anyway, the nose concludes that the smell isn't so bad after all. It shuts itself off, deferring to superior wisdom. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Hey, I have an idea," Lex said. "Give me a sec."
He kept trying. "Idea as in 'good idea,' or idea as in 'let's take the Ferris wheel, everyone, I'm sure it'll be a carefree ride of thrills and delights and whimsy' - "
"Does this help?"
Driggs opened his eyes and, in the space of a yoctosecond, popped right into a solid body. Lex half expected to hear a wacky boing sound effect.
She grabbed his arm to keep him that way, while he kept on staring at her bare chest. "So," he said, swallowing, "good idea, then."
"Thank you."
He pulled her close and gave her a kiss. "And thank you for sparing me your devil corset."
She held it up and waved it in his face. "It's a standard bra, Driggs. From, like, Target."
"Satan employs many disguises."
"Like you're from the Land of Superior Underwear. Let's see what sort of designer boxers you've chosen to grace my presence with today." She unzipped his pants and looked. "Dude. Penguins?"
"Um, penguins are officially recognized as the most adorable bird on the planet," he said, a hint of anxiety creeping into his voice. "What's wrong with penguins?"
"Nothing - "
"And igloos. See their little igloos?"
"Yes - "
"The Santa hats are a bit much, I'll give you that, but they were a Christmas present, okay? And if I'd known that I was going to die while wearing them and be forever doomed to their Arctic quirkiness - and of hypothermia, too, how's that for irony - "
"Driggs," she i ~ Gina Damico

We assert that integrity (the condition of being whole and complete) is a necessary condition for workability, and that the resultant level of workability determines the available opportunity for performance. Hence, the way we treat integrity in our model provides an unambiguous and actionable access to superior performance (however one wishes to define performance). ~ Werner Erhard