"My father had a very simple, clear and quite definite view on the aim of human life. He told me many times in my youth that the fundamental striving of every man should be to create for himself an inner freedom towards life and to prepare for himself a happy old age. He considered that the indispensability and imperative necessity of this aim in life was so obvious that it ought to be understandable to everyone without any wiseacring. But a man could attain this aim only if, from childhood up to the age of eighteen, he had acquired data for the unwavering fulfilment of the following four commandments:First— To love one's parents. Second— To remain chaste.Third— To be outwardly courteous to all without distinction, whether they be rich or poor, friends or enemies, power possessors or slaves, and to whatever religion they may belong, but inwardly to remain free and never to put much trust in anyone or anything. Fourth—To love work for work's sake and not for its gain. My father, who loved me particularly as his first-born, had a great influence on me. My personal relationship to him was not as towards a father, but as towards an elder brother; and he, by his constant conversations with me and his extraordinary stories, greatly assisted the arising in me of poetic images and high ideals."

G. I. Gurdjieff Philosophy See all quotes by G. I. Gurdjieff →

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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.”

“It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.”

“Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says "I.”

“A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.”

“In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him.”

“Only help him who is not an idler.”

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