In order to be capable of tbinking, we need to learn it first. What is learning? Man learns when he disposes every thing he does so that it answers to whatever essentials are addressed to him atany given moment. We learn to think by giving our mind to what there is to^tfimKabout. What is essential in a friend, for example, is%iwljat we call “friendly.” In the same sense we now call “thought-pro voking” what in itself is to be thought about. Everything thought-provoking gives us to think. But it always gives that gift just so far as the thought-provoking matter al ready is intrinsically what must be thought about. From now on, we will call “most thought-provoking” what re mains to be thought about always, because it is at the beginning, before all else. What is most thought-provoking? How does it show itself in our thought-provoking time.
(Heidegger)
One thing ought to be clear : the conscious will is a
power which is developed by means of exercise, of work.
Our aim is definitely to cultivate the will, not to break it.
The will can be broken almost instantaneously, the deve-
lopment of the will is a slow process unfolding itself by
means of continuous activity carried out in relation to
the environment. It is easy enough to destroy ; the
devastation of a building can be accomplished in a few
seconds by a bomb or an earthquake. How difficult.
instead is the construction of a building ! It requires
accurate knowledge of the laws of equilibrium, of tension,,
even art is necessary in order to achieve a harmonious
construction. (Montessori)
Not that I accept human testimony …
(John 5:34)
from within or from behind a light shines through us upon things , and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
(Emerson)
People will not understand the bare and simple
truth – the truth of their everyday, ever-present and eternal
experience. That is the truth of the Self/Atman. Is there any one not aware
of the Self/Atman? Yet, they do not even like to hear of it, whereas they are
eager to know what lies beyond – heaven and hell and reincarnation.
Because they love mystery and not the plain truth, religions pamper
them – only to bring them round to the Self/Atman in the end. Moreover,
much as you may wander you must return ultimately to the Self/Atman;
so why not abide in the Self/Atman here and now? (Sri Ramana Maharshi)
I have constantly insisted on the fact that the movement of deconstruction was first of all affirmative – not positive, but affirmative. Deconstruction, let’s say it one more time, is not demolition or destruction. Deconstruction – I don’t know if it is something, but if it is something, it is also a thinking of Being, of metaphysics, thus a discussion that has it out with [“s’explique avec”] the authority of Being or of essence, of the thinking of what is, and such a discussion or explanation cannot be simply a negative destruction. All the more so in that, among all the things in the history of metaphysics that deconstruction argues against [“s’explique avec”], there is the dialectic, there is the “opposition” of the negative to the positive. To say that deconstruction is negative is simply to reinscribe it in an intrametaphysical process. The point is not to remove oneself from this process but to give it the possibility of being thought. (Derrida)