Deepak Chopra Quotes

Isn't it a remarkable coincidence almost everyone has the same religion as their parents ? And it always just happens to be the right religion. Religions run in families. If we'd been brought up in ancient Greece we would all be worshiping Zeus and Apollo. If we had been born Vikings we would be worshiping Wotan and Thor. How does this come about ? Through childhood indoctrination.

A mind virus is different in that there is no form to it; these are ideas placed in our heads when we are little. We get programmed by well-meaning people like our parents and their parents, our culture, religions and schools. We get conditioned to believe in our limitations and what's not possible.

People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.

What we know and believe is just a program; it is nothing but words, opinions, and ideas we learn from others and from our own life experience.

Soon I will honor my parents by dying as they died. and if all they believed about death was true, soon I will join them in whatever comes next.

What people believe impacts on what they do. And it's not as if religion is universally bad. Of course it's responsible for many peoples doing good actions.

Our identity is fictional, written by parents, relatives, education, society.

All tastes are expressions of belief.

You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.

Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.

I think what happens in the world, and I think it's part human nature and part programming, is we become an emulation of what we see. We become clones of each other.

A belief system is nothing more than a thought you've thought over and over again.

We found out that you can't pass on acquired things like bigotry, prejudice, greed. That's all learned in your culture or your sub-culture

I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.

Hoodwink is a product of his environment. He grew up in Belfast, he was part of the UDA and he fought for what he believed in - or was brainwashed into believing - because of the people that surrounded him.

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.

Culture is your operating system.

What people believe prevails over the truth.

Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume. So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged.

The white man is not inherently evil, but America's racist society influences him to act evilly. The society has produced and nourishes a psychology which brings out the lowest, most base part of human beings.

Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.

We are all victims of culture.

What we make of people, and what we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves, depends on what we know of the world, what we believe to be possible, what memories we have, and whether our loyalties are to the past, the present or the future.