Neil Young Quotes

Our world has sprouted a weird concept of security and a warped sense of morality. Weapons are sheltered like treasures and children are exposed to incineration

Security theater is the idea of putting on a big show of security in order to make people feel safe. That's why the TSA screens everything and takes your stuff away.

Beverly Hills didn't save me from anything. It exposed me to a whole new world of problems I didn't know existed.

Luxurious food and drinks, in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy.

We take our vitamins, we go to exercise class, we put on our seat belts. And then something blindsides us and gives the lie to our carefully constructed facade of safety.

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

My fundamental axiom of speculative philosophy is that materialism and spiritualism are opposite poles of the same absurdity-the absurdity of imagining that we know anything about either spirit or matter.

Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.

Do not worry! Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety. The heart which clings to goods receives with them the choking burden of worry. Worry collects treasures, and treasures produce more worries. We desire to secure our lives with earthly goods; we want our worrying to make us worry-free, but the truth is the opposite. The chains which bind us to earthly goods, the clutches which hold the goods tight, are themselves worries.

The term "incorporeal" is properly applied only to the void, which cannot act or be acted on. Since the soul can act and be acted upon, it is corporeal.

Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.

safety and love are both illusions!

I remind you that there are churches so completely out of the hands of God that if the Holy Spirit withdrew from them, they wouldn't find it out for many months

My favorite term for a new kind of performance is "security theater." In this genre, we watch as ritualized inspections and patdowns create the illusion of security. It's a form that has become common since 9/11, and even the government agencies that participate in this activity acknowledge,off the record, that it is indeed a species of theater.

Avoid the philosophy and excuse that yesterday's luxuries have become today's necessities. They aren't necessities unless we ourselves make them such. . . . It is essential for us to live within our means.

Average feels safe but it's not. It's invisible.

The mental game of business is understanding this Paradox: the better you think you are doing, the greater should be your cause for concern: the more self-satisfied you are with your accomplishments, your past achievements, your 'right moves', the less you should be.

I am the East. I have philosophies, I have religions, who would exchange them for airplanes?

We are materialists and atheists, and we glory in the fact.

Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness.

Lukewarm people feel secure because they attend church, made a profession of faith at age twelve, were baptized, come from a Christian family, vote Republican, or live in America. Just as the prophets in the Old Testament warned Israel that they were not safe just because they lived in the land of Israel, so we are not safe just because we wear the label 'Christian' or because some people persist in calling us a 'Christian nation.

Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.

Science...has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must have included any role for God.

Are you under the power of gold?

The greatest deterrent to giving is the illusion that this earth is our home.