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Two things can get people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if they want to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge, people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain.

— P. D. Ouspensky The Fourth Way (1958)

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Knowledge

More quotes by P. D. Ouspensky

Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones.

Tertium Organum (1922)

Knowledge must start from some foundation, something must be recognized as known; otherwise we shall be obliged always to define one unknown by means of another.

Tertium Organum (1912)

In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

Tertium Organum (1922)

People who think they can control their negative emotions and manifest them when they want to, simply deceive themselves.

The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950)

Existing criminology is insufficient to isolate barbarism.

A New Model of the Universe (1932)

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You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.

Julian Assange

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Bertrand Russell

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: P. D. Ouspensky (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.