G. I. Gurdjieff Quotes

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• Try to understand what I am saying: everything is dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  People, Trying, Different

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• Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Doe, Awakening

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• A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Lying, Men, Order

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• A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Death, Prayer, Numbers

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• Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Spiritual, Mean, Men

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• The crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Leader, Trying, Slavery

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• The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness, and 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and 'will' cannot evolve involuntarily.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Insightful, Evolution Of Man

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• Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Struggle, Order, Long

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• If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt. It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Life, Kindness, Helping Others

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• If you meditate and the Devil comes, make the Devil meditate.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  People, Devil, People Skills

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• Let us take some event in the life of humanity. For instance, war. There is a war going on at the present moment. What does it signify? It signifies that several millions of sleeping people are trying to destroy several millions of other sleeping people. They would not do this, of course, if they were to wake up. Everything that takes place is owing to this sleep.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  War, Sleep, People

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• One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Evil, Doe

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• If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Law, Circles

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• Never think of results, just do!

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Thinking, Results

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• Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Struggle, Opportunity, Remember You

  Aphorisms inscribed in a special script above the walls of the Study House at the Prieuré, www.gurdjieff.org.

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• Real love is a cosmic force which goes through us. If we crystallize it, it becomes the greatest power in the world.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Real, Love Is, World

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• What you need to know is very little, but to know that little takes very very much.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Littles, Needs, Knows

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• Man has no individual 'I'. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small 'I's, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, 'I'. And each time his 'I' is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Thinking, Names

  "In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching". Book by Pyotr Ouspensky, 1949.

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• Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Struggle, Progress, Machines

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• That which is easy is bad for your inner life.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Easy, Inner Life

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• I will tell you one thing that will make you rich for life. There are two struggles: an Inner-world struggle and an Outer-world struggle...you must make an intentional contact between these two worlds; then you can crystallize data for the Third World, the World of the Soul.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Struggle, Data, Two

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• Ancient art has a specific inner content. At one time, art possessed the same purpose that books do in our day, namely: to preserve and transmit knowledge. In olden days, people did not write books, they incorporated their knowledge into works of art. We would find a great many ideas in the works of ancient art passed down to us, if only we knew how to read them.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Art, Book, Writing

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• Two things in life are infinite; the stupidity of man and the mercy of God.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Mercy Of God, Things In Life

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• The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Untold Stories, Stories, Evolution

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• 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.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Views, Mind

  G. I. Gurdjieff (1991). “Meetings with Remarkable Men”, p.30, Penguin

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