George Gurdjieff Quotes

...The cassock is to hide a fool.
He is deep down, because you are high up.
If the priest goes to the right, then the teacher must without fail turn to the left.
If a man is a coward, it proves he has will.
A man is satisfied not by the quantity of food, but by the absence of greed.
Truth is that from which conscience can be at peace. In the dark a louse is worse than a tiger.
Once you can shoulder it, it's the lightest thing in the world. A representation of Hell—a stylish shoe.
He is stupid who is 'clever'.
Happy is he who sees not his unhappiness.
The teacher is the enlightener, who then is the ass?
If you are first, your wife is second; if your wife is first, you had better be zero: only then will your hens be safe.
If you wish to be rich, make friends with the police.
If you wish to be famous, make friends with the reporters.
If you wish to be full, make friends with your mother-in-law.
If you wish to have peace, make friends with your neighbour.
If you wish to sleep, make friends with your wife.
If you wish to lose your faith, make friends with the priest.

I saw my father for the last time in 1916... The texts of the various legends and songs he had written or dictated...perhaps, by some miracle...may still be preserved among the things I left... The individuality and intellectuality of my father can, in my opinion, be very well pictured in the mind's eye of the reader if I quote here a few of his many favourite 'subjective sayings', which he often used in conversation... when he himself used these sayings in conversation, it always seemed... that they could not have been more apt or better put, but that if anyone else made use of them, they seemed to be entirely beside the point or improbable nonsense. Some of these subjective sayings of his were as follows:

My father had a very simple, clear and quite definite view on the aim of human life. He told me many times in my youth that the fundamental striving of every man should be to create for himself an inner freedom towards life and to prepare for himself a happy old age. He considered that the indispensability and imperative necessity of this aim in life was so obvious that it ought to be understandable to everyone without any wiseacring. But a man could attain this aim only if, from childhood up to the age of eighteen, he had acquired data for the unwavering fulfilment of the following four commandments:
First— To love one's parents. Second— To remain chaste.
Third— To be outwardly courteous to all without distinction, whether they be rich or poor, friends or enemies, power possessors or slaves, and to whatever religion they may belong, but inwardly to remain free and never to put much trust in anyone or anything. Fourth—To love work for work's sake and not for its gain. My father, who loved me particularly as his first-born, had a great influence on me. My personal relationship to him was not as towards a father, but as towards an elder brother; and he, by his constant conversations with me and his extraordinary stories, greatly assisted the arising in me of poetic images and high ideals.

Faith cannot be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding. Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced.

From my point of view, he can be called a remarkable man who stands out from those around him by the resourcefulness of his mind, and who knows how to be restrained in the manifestations which proceed from his nature, at the same time conducting himself justly and tolerantly towards the weaknesses of others.

The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ … of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them.

Every one of those unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence, and also that tendency to hate others which flows from it.

Hope of consciousness is strength Hope of feelings is slavery Hope of body is disease.

Love of consciousness evokes the same in response Love of feeling evokes the opposite Love of body depends only on type and polarity.

Faith of consciousness is freedom Faith of feeling is weakness Faith of body is stupidity.

I find it necessary on the first page of this book, quite ready for publication, to give the following advice:

ACCORDING TO the numerous deductions and conclusions made by me during experimental elucidations concerning the productivity of the perception by contemporary people of new impressions from what is heard and read, and also according to the thought of one of the sayings of popular wisdom I have just remembered, handed down to our days from very ancient times, which declares: “Any prayer may be heard by the Higher Powers and a corresponding answer obtained only if it is uttered thrice:

You must understand that ordinary efforts do not count; only superefforts count.

Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.

A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.