Some of My Favorite Quotes on Possibility, Potential, and Perspective

“When we are born, we are a mass of potentials, possibilities waiting to be developed. We are not born into an environment that is completely neutral about our potentials, though, nor into one that will try to develop all our potentials. … As soon as we are born, the culture, primarily through the agency of the parents, begins to pick and choose among our potentials. … Becoming 'normal,' becoming a full-fledged member of your culture, involves a selective shaping, a development of approved ('natural,' 'godly,' 'polite,' 'civil') potentials, an inhibition of disapproved ('evil,' 'criminal,' 'delinquent,' 'disrespectful') ones."
- Charles Tart

“I feel that you probably have the chance to change your whole life like a thousand times a day….But the way we live we’re so shut down that our sensors don’t (pick up) the stuff anymore. Because we’re scared or we’re not sensitive enough to realize, or we’re not flexible enough to say yes or no, we just don’t see it.”
- Franka Potente

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
- Attributed to Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas

“People’s kind of being thus demands that any attempt to get at that being constantly has the character of doing violence. Whether to the claims of the everyday interpretation or to its complacency and its tranquilized obviousness.”
- Martin Heidegger

"It’s daunting how many possibilities there are in life for everyone of us. But rather than face that I might be a failure or success – I think both of them are terrifying – people find diversions.”
- Tim Allen

“Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.”
- Buddhist proverb

Individuals & Heroes

"I asked myself 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So ... I took it upon myself to get to know 'my' myth and I regarded this as the task of tasks ... I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me."

- C.J. Jung

Charles Tart makes the point that a hypnotist, in a matter of minutes, can program you to do things. How much more powerfully can society program you during the course of your life?

The purported purpose of life until now has been to be a good Christian, a good citizen, a good employee. That is, purpose has been given to the individual by social institutions.

The genuine individual distances himself from these institutions to do the hard work of defining herself with a degree of autonomy from them. The hero comes back from this shape-shifting exercise and transforms these institutions. It's hard work - and nobody's got to do it.