P.D. Ouspensky Quotes

When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.

— P.D. Ouspensky

There is something in us that keeps us where we find ourselves. I think this is the most awful thing of all.

— P.D. Ouspensky

Desire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“A man can be given only what he can use; and he can use only that for which he has sacrificed something”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is a machine which, in right circumstances, and with right treatment, can know that he is a machine, and having fully realized this, he may find the ways to cease to be a machine.
First of all, what man must know is that he is not one; he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable "I" or Ego. He is always different. One moment he is one, another moment he is another, the third moment he is a third, and so on, almost without end.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“I mean that you always know what results will come from one or another of your actions; but in a strange way you want to do one thing and get the result that could only come from another”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Besides, all evil is relative. Something that is evil at one level of evolution can be good at an earlier stage because it provides the essential stimulus for development. But you want to judge everything by your own standards. You have reached a comparatively high level and so you see what you fight against as evil. Just think of the others, those who are at an earlier stage of development. Do not bar them from the path toward progress and evolution.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Man is a machine which reacts blindly to external forces and, this being so, he has no will, and very little control of himself, if any at all. What we have to study, therefore, is not psychology-for that applies only to a developed man-but mechanics. Man is not only a machine but a machine which works very much below the standard it would be capable of maintaining if it were working properly.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“If one does not develop, one goes down. In life, in ordinary conditions everything goes down, or one capacity may develop at the expense of another.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

Psychology is sometimes called a new science. This is quite wrong. Psychology is, perhaps, the oldest science, and, unfortunately, in its most essential features a forgotten science.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Everything 'happens'. People can 'do' nothing. From the time we are born to the time we die things happen, happen, happen, and we think we are doing. This is our normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to do something comes only through the work, and first only in oneself, not externally.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Q. Surely it is easier to be objective about other people than about oneself?
A. No, it is more difficult. If you become objective to yourself you can see other people objectively, but not before, because before that it will all be coloured by your own views, attitudes, tastes, by what you like and what you dislike. To be objective you must be free from it all. You can become objective to yourself in the state of self-consciousness: this is the first experience of coming into contact with the real object.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings-that is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think about many things mechanically, but you will get nothing from it.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Q. But it seems to me there are circumstances that simply induce one to have negative emotions!
A. This is one of the worst illusions we have. We think that negative emotions are produced by circumstances, whereas all negative emotions are in us, inside us. This is a very important point. We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else's action or some circumstance should produce a negative emotion in me. It is only my weakness. No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way we do not struggle with them.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“I have become so accustomed to think "scientifically" that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

I already knew then as an undoubted fact that beyond the thin film of false reality there existed another reality from which, for some reason, something separated us. The "miraculous" was a penetration into this unknown reality.

— P.D. Ouspensky

At one moment when I say 'I', one part of me is speaking,and at another moment when I say 'I', it is quite another 'I' speaking.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Would it be correct to say that when learning anything like driving a car, intellectual function tells moving function what to do and that,when proficient, moving function works by itself.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“There is no question of faith or belief in all this. Quite the opposite,this system teaches people to believe in absolutely nothing. You must verify everything that you see, hear and feel. Only in that way can you come to something.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Divide in yourself the mechanical from the conscious, see how little there is of the conscious, how seldom it works, and how strong is the mechanical - mechanical attitudes, mechanical intentions, mechanical thoughts, mechanical desires.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Seek the path, do not seek attainment, seek for the path within yourself. Do not expect to hear the truth from others, nor to see it, nor to read it in books. Look for the truth within yourself, not without yourself.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Think about death. You do not know how much time remains to you. And remember that if you do not become different, everything will be repeated again, all foolish blunders, all silly mistakes, all loss of time and opportunity - everything will be repeated with the exception of the chance you had this time, because chance never comes in the same form.You will have to look for your chance next time. And in order to do this, you will have to remember many things, and how will you remember then if you do not remember anything now?”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Ideas by themselves cannot produce change of being; your effort must go in the right direction, and one must correspond to the other.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“It is by overcoming obstacles that man develops those qualities he needs.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

Learn to see it in thyself and thou wilt understand the infinite essence, hidden in all illusory forms. Understand that the world which thou knowest is only one of the aspects of the infinite world, and things and phenomena are merely hierolgyphics of deeper ideas.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Man is confronted with two obvious facts: The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“The most difficult thing is to know what we do know, and what we do not know.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Two things can get people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if they want to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge , people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation says "I." And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs to the Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“One cannot keep all the old views and opinions and acquire new ones.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Most people can accept the truth only in the form of a lie.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“I felt that on a basis of a "search for the miraculous" it would be possible to unite together a very large number of people who were no longer able to swallow the customary forms of lying and living in lying.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Possibly the most interesting first impression of my life came from the world of dreams.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Art is the communication of ecstasy.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

If a man gives way to all his desires, or panders to them, there will be no inner struggle in him, no 'friction,' no fire. But if, for the sake of attaining a definite aim, he struggles with desires that hinder him, he will then create a fire which will gradually transform his inner world into a single whole.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself.”

— P.D. Ouspensky

The problem of Eternity, of which the face of the Sphinx speaks, takes us into the realm of the impossible. Even the problem of Time is simple in comparison with the problem of Eternity.

— P.D. Ouspensky

“Love is the eternally burning fire in which humanity & all the world are being purified.”

— P.D. Ouspensky