External Guidance Quotes

other people maay be there to help us, teach us, guide us aolng our path, But the lesson to be learned is always ours

There are three kinds of minds: first those that attain insight and understanding of things by their own means, then those that recognize what is right when others explain it to them, and finally those that are capable of neither one nor the other.

Everywhere you look, there's someone doing your thinking for you and telling you what to think and when to think of it.

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself. From within, I couldn't decide what to do. Unable to see, I heard my name being called. Then I walked outside.

Sometimes, I know it's not me that makes this music. Like, when the Based God comes, he speaks to me. It's not me, even though I'm there playing the music live, myself.

The best fruits are plucked for each by some hand that is not his own.

Again, I maintain that no organization can lead man to spirituality.

I'm fascinated that people drawn to cults want to know what to do. And people want to know what to think. And people want to know how to feel. Not just what to feel but how to feel.

In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, to marriage and family relations, to business, to politics, and to virtually everything else that is important in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding.

Life hands us a lot of hard choices, and other people can help us more than we might realize. We often think we should make important decisions using just our own internal resources. What are the pros and cons? What does my gut tell me? But often we have friends and family who know us in ways we don't know ourselves.

I'm impressed with Ed Sheeran. I think he has a terrific point of view and a great mentality but I sense there is someone in the background saying to him, 'We need more love songs, Ed.'

If we'd had a Svengali manager and done what we would have been told, maybe we would have had a bigger, more hugely successful career.

An artist is he who has his center within himself. He who lacks this must choose a particular leader and mediator outside of himself, not forever, however, but only at first. For man cannot exist without a living center, and if he does not have it within himself, he may seek it only in a human being. Only a human being and his center can stimulate and awaken that of another.

I never felt a feeling that I knew or could know to be unlike the feelings of other people. I never consciously thought, except after patterns that the world or my fellows set for me.

Only a fool manages himself.

If you're looking for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else?

The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.

I'm not that tough; I'm not that smart. I need life telling me who I am, showing me my mind constantly. I wouldn't see it in a cave.

I have neither eye to see, nor tongue to speak here, but as the House is pleased to direct me.

The first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it CEASE TO DO EVIL: LEARN TO DO WELL; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it.

I don't know, if somebody doesn't tell me how would I know?

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

It is sometimes a point of as much cleverness to know to make good use of advice from others as to be able give good advice to oneself.

At first it was my brother's songwriting and I was just doing what everyone told me.

I can depend less and less on my own power and sense of direction...It is so strange to advance backwards and get where you are going in a totally unexpected way