"Your sense of volition, or the lack of it, is an illusion. Everything you’ve done needed doing and was set in motion long ago. Let go of your self-pity. Your feelings in these events matter no more than a leaf’s desire to steer the wind!"

Lawrence M. Schoen Psychology See all quotes by Lawrence M. Schoen →

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More by Lawrence M. Schoen

“Was all of the universe a fixed game, if one only knew where and how to look?”

“We’ve met, and it wasn’t the highlight of my being dead.”

“In all the rest of my life’s wanderings, I never met another person who spoke words to rival the beauty of mathematics.”

“As a historian, he understood that what in hindsight were taken to be grand events really consisted of a myriad of tiny, seemingly inconsequential choices. Often as not, great moments hung on coincidences and random luck.”

“There will be paperwork, no government action can occur without it, but that can come later.”

“Prophecy is first and foremost a self-serving gift.”

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Entertainment1941–1996

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"The dictator Powers of Europe are striding on from strength to strength and from stroke to stroke, and the parliamentary democracies are retreating abashed and confused. ... Austria has been laid in t…"

— Winston Churchill

Politics1940–2010

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"It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class. It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this co…"

— Barack Obama

Politics1961

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"According to the Buddhist tradition, the spiritual path is the process of cutting through our confusion, of uncovering the awakened state of mind. When the awakened state of mind is crowded in by ego …"

— Chögyam Trungpa

Education1939–1987

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