Compulsion Quotes - Page 3

• Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Mean, Feelings, Trying

  "How Doing Nothing Can Help You Truly Live" by Sharon Salzberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 24, 2010.

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• The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Facts, Threat

  Lysander Spooner (1972). “Let's Abolish Government”, Ayer Company Pub

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• My compulsion is to create things.

  Julian Schnabel

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• Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present.

  Walter Benjamin

  Past, Views, Abortion

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings, Edmund Jephcott (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.60, Harvard University Press

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• As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings and fits of emotion begin to lose their power to dictate our behavior. We see clearly that choices are possible; we can say yes or we can say no. It is profoundly liberating.

  Eknath Easwaran

  Meditation, Choices, Emotion

  Eknath Easwaran (2008). “Passage Meditation: Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart Into Daily Life”, p.21, Nilgiri Press

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• We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villians by compulsion.

  William Shakespeare

  Stars, Moon, Guilt

  William Shakespeare (2008). “King Lear: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.23, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.

  Betty Friedan

  Sex, America, Promise

  "Feminist icon Betty Friedan dies aged 85" by Jamie Doward, www.theguardian.com. February 4, 2006.

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• To become enlightened is not just to slip into some disconnected euphoria, an oceanic feeling of mystic oneness apart from ordinary reality. It is not even to come up with a solution, a sort of formula to control reality. Rather, it is an experience of release from all compulsions and sufferings, combined with a precise awareness of any relevent subject of knowledge. Having attained enlightenment one knows everything that matters, and the precise nature of all that is.

  Robert Thurman

  Knowledge, Reality, Oneness

  FaceBook post by Robert Thurman from Oct 17, 2014

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• Learning in the true sense of the word is possible only in that state of attention, in which there is no outer or inner compulsion. Right thinking can come about only when the mind is not
  enslaved by tradition and memory.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Memories, Thinking, Mind

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1967). “Life Ahead”

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• Kindness is more powerful than compulsion.

  Charles R. Schwab

  Leadership, Powerful, Kindness

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• The antidote to hatred in the heart, the source of violence, is tolerance. Tolerance is an important virtue of bodhisattvas [enlightened heroes and heroines] - it enables you to refrain from reacting angrily to the harm inflicted on you by others. You could call this practice "inner disarmament," in that a well-developed tolerance makes you free from the compulsion to counterattack. For the same reason, we also call tolerance the "best armor," since it protects you from being conquered by hatred itself.

  Dalai Lama

  Hero, Heart, Practice

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wise, Prayer, Essence

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

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• A writer has to have some kind of compulsive drive to do his work. If you don't have it, you'd better find another kind of work, because it's the only compulsion that will drive you through the psychological nightmares of writing.

  John McPhee

  Writing, Nightmare, Kind

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• There's a statement in the Quran: There should be "absolutely no compulsion in religion."

  Hamza Yusuf

  Quran, Should, Statements

  "Muslim leaders: 'We will not allow the extremists to define us'". Interview with Daniel Burke, edition.cnn.com. June 15, 2016.

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• The essence of a free life is being able to choose the style of living you prefer free from exclusion and without the compulsion of conformity or law.

  Eleanor Holmes Norton

  Law, Essence, Style

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• In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  And Love, Purpose, Employed

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• You are not your past, not your habits, not your compulsions. When you get to know who you are, anything becomes possible.

  Geneen Roth

  Monday, Morning, Past

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• Love and delight are better teachers than compulsion.

  Albrecht Durer

  Teacher, Delight

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• Whoever is just willingly and without compulsion will not lack happiness; he will never be utterly destroyed.

  Aeschylus

  Destroyed

  Aeschylus (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)”, p.247, Delphi Classics

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• The Element is about discovering your self, and you can't do this if you're trapped in a compulsion to conform. You can't be yourself in a swarm.

  Ken Robinson

  Being Yourself, Elements, Discovering

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• Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Peace, War, Government

  Ludwig Von Mises (1990). “Economic freedom and interventionism: an anthology of articles and essays”

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• Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights.

  George Will

  Passion, Speech, Censorship

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• Compulsion in the literal Sense is maliciously misrepresented, by supposing it authorizes Violences committed against the Truth. The Answer to this; by which it is prov'd, that the literal Sense does in reality authorize the stirring up Persecutions against the Cause of Truth, and that an erroneous Conscience has the same Rights as an enlighten'd Conscience.

  Pierre Bayle

  Reality, Rights, Atheism

  Pierre Bayle, John Kilcullen, Chandran Kukathas (2005). “A philosophical commentary on these words of the Gospel, Luke 14.23: "Compel them to come in, that My house may be full"”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• We ne'er can be Made happy by compulsion.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Happiness, Made

  'The Three Graves' (1798) pt. 4, st. 12

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• You know, many writers really don't like to write. I think this the chief complaint of so many. They hate to write; they do it under the compulsion that makes any artist the victim he is, but they loathe the process of sitting down trying to turn thoughts into reasonable sentences.

  Harper Lee

  Hate, Writing, Artist

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