Natural Philosophy

Philo- “loving” + Sophia “wisdom”

The Love of Wisdom

It’s natural to have a love of knowledge, to pursue wisdom.
It is this wisdom that will set us free.
Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s pain and suffering.
Set yourself free through natural (phi)losophy.

“If nature is your teacher, your soul will awaken.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Those who love wisdom must investigate many things”  ― Heraclitus

“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.”  -Mark Twain

“If you want to be free, be moral” – St Augustine

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

“I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”  -Blaise Pascal

“Esoteric more generally means simply a continuing knowledge of reality which is rejected. That it is esoteric not because it cannot be known but because we refuse to recognize it. Therefore it remains a profound secret.”
— Manly P. Hall

“What is history but a fable agreed upon?” -Napoleon Bonaparte

“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.”
-Confucius

“The acquisition of new knowledge by man is but the re-thinking or recollection of old knowledge.”  -Walter Russell

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.”
– Alan Watts

“Fish don’t swim, they are swum. Birds don’t fly, they are flown.”
-Viktor Schauberger

The Seven Alchemical Planets of the Week

“The Principles of Truth are Seven; he who knows these, understandingly, possesses the Magic Key before whose touch all the Doors of the Temple fly open.” –The Kybalion

“Much has been said of the loneliness of wisdom, and how much the Truth seeker becomes a pilgrim wandering from star to star. To the ignorant, the wise man is lonely because he abides in distant heights of the mind. But the wise man himself does not feel lonely. Wisdom brings him nearer to life; closer to the heart of the world than the foolish man can ever be. Bookishness may lead to loneliness, and scholarship may end in a battle of beliefs, but the wise man gazing off into space sees not an emptiness, but a space full of life, truth, and law.”  -Manly P. Hall

Tetrahedron – Fire

I feel I owe you an apology. We have a rule…we never free a mind once it reaches a certain age. It’s dangerous, and the mind has trouble letting go. -Morpheus

“This is the nature of the unenlightened mind: The sense organs, which are limited in scope and ability, randomly gather information. This partial information is arranged into judgements, which are based on previous judgements, which are usually based on someone else’s foolish ideas. These false concepts and ideas are then stored in a highly selective memory system. Distortion upon distortion: the mental energy flows constantly through contorted and inappropriate channels, and the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes. To eliminate the vexation of the mind, it doesn’t help to do something; this only reinforces the mind’s mechanics. Dissolving the mind is instead a matter of not-doing: Simply avoid becoming attached to what you see and think. Relinquish the notion that you are separated from the all-knowing mind of the universe. Then you can recover your original pure insight and see through all illusions. Knowing nothing, you will be aware of everything. Remember: because clarity and enlightenment are within your own nature, they are regained without moving an inch.” – Lao Tzu

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.  -Henry David Thoreau

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud. -Carl Gustav Jung

The Golden Ratio in Geometry (GIF)

If a scientific heresy is ignored or denounced by the general public, there is a chance it may be right. If a scientific heresy is emotionally supported by the general public, it is almost certainly wrong.  -Isaac Asimov, 1977

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. —Helen Keller

Heretics are the only remedy against the entropy of human thought. —Yevgeny Zamyatin

All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.  -Arthur Schopenhauer

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant. -Miguel de Unamuno

“People are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” – Bertrand Russell

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -Edmund Burke

Corruption is authority plus monopoly minus transparency.
– Unknown

“When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.  -Mark Twain

The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. -Gustave Le Bon

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.  -Mark Twain

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.  -Voltaire

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”
~ Kate Chopin

You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. – Navajo Proverb

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.  -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You cannot have an agency that defends your property, which also has the right to violate your property rights at will. That’s like hiring a bodyguard that you pay to beat you up randomly.”
~ Stefan Molyneux

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
~ Oscar Wilde

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.  -Carl Jung

“The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence.”  -Stanislav Grof

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance, the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must be infinite. -Karl Popper

“I think it would have been much better if Newton had contemplated how the apple got up there in the first place!” – Viktor Schauberger

Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation ‚ Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts
-Richard Feynman

One who is too insistent on his own views finds few to agree with him.  -Lao Tzu

If a law is unjust a man is not only right to disobey it he is obligated to do so. – Thomas Jefferson

“I am not young enough to know everything.” -Oscar Wilde

“I’m willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.” (Sam Goldwyn)

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

“Time you enjoy wasting is never a waste of time.” (Bertrand Russell)

If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer. -Confucius

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”
― Arthur O’Shaughnessy

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
― Bob Marley

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.”
― Plato

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
― Victor Hugo

Harmonize life in accordance with the frequencies of nature
and there will be more joy, happiness and beauty
in our everyday experiences. -Edgar Cayce

“One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.” – Albert Einstein

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.  -Max Planck

Science advances one funeral at a time.  -Max Planck

All history is bunk. -Henry Ford

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”  -Arnold J. Toynbee

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“A person hears only what they understand.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Nine requisites for contented living:
Health enough to make work a pleasure.
Wealth enough to support your needs.
Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.
Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real the things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.” ~ Goethe”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people – Carl Jung

“Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history” -Michel Foucault

“History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”
-Ambrose Bierce

There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.  -George Orwell

“Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
-Ambrose Bierce

“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.  -Epictetus

Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.  -Robert Frost

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our mind.  – Bob Marley

The Icosahedron – Water

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
~ Bruce Lee

Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive, because your words become your behaviors.
Keep your behaviors positive, because your behaviors become your habits.
Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.
-Ghandi

You can control your genes by influencing your beliefs and personal attitudes. How I see the world and my perception controls not just internal biology and genetic behaviour but it controls how I create a world around me, your mind’s perception of the world changes the biology and chemistry of your body which changes the cells in your body.  -Bruce Lipton

The Cosmic Egg

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -Aristotle

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness. – Alejandro Jodorowski

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.
-Rupert Sheldrake

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

“The best kind of comedy to me is when you make people laugh at things they’ve never laughed at, and also take a light into the darkened corners of people’s minds, exposing them to the light.”
– Bill Hicks

“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. Mark Twain

People do not seem to understand that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.  -Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover   -Mark Twain

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. – Carl Jung

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
~ Plato

We do not know: we can only guess.  -Karl Popper

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings. -Leonardo da Vinci

This is an endemic human characteristic‚ to be credulous, to believe what others tell us, to prefer what feels good to what’s true.” Carl Sagan

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the Truth. -Marcus Aurelius

“Truth is Treason in the empire of lies.” -Ron Paul

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. -Arthur C. Clarke

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.  -Friedrich Nietzsche

“Make no mistake about it – enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” – Adyashanti

“When we talk about compassion, we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative to wake a person up.”  -Chögyam Trungpa

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it – even if I have said it – unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
– The Buddha

“Belief is the death of intelligence” – Robert Anton Wilson

“Love starts when we push aside our ego and make room for someone else.”
Rudolf Steiner

“If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher.”
― Rudolf Steiner

“Would you like to save the world from the degradation and destruction it seems destined for? Then step away from shallow mass movements and quietly go to work on your own self-awareness. If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.”
~ Lao Tzu

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour. -William Blake

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty. – Galileo Galilei

“The world around him is constantly betraying the world within him” – Manly P. Hall.

“It is essential to release Humanity from the false fixations of Yesterday, which now seem to bind mankind to a rationale of action leading only to extinction”~ R.Buckminster Fuller

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.
John Lennon

“Mother Nature has shaken many civilizations from her back.”
Manly P. Hall

…“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ~Carl Jung

“Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” -Lao Tzu

“Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of its existing modes of knowledge.” – Alfred North Whitehead

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”
~ Bram Stoker, Dracula

“An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.”
— Max Planck

“THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental.”–The Kybalion

“The science of the future is based upon God – The Creator. God of Light – God of Mind.”  -Walter Russell

“The unfolding of man to higher levels because of the balanced giving by the few is resisted by the downward drag of unbalanced taking by the many.” – Walter Russell

“Nothing in nature is by chance… Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge. ”
~ Baruch de Spinoza

“Man is the measure of all things. As I see things so they are for me. As you see things so they are for you.” -Protagoras

“The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.” -D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

“Listen within yourself and look into the infinitude of Space and Time. There can be heard the songs of the Constellations, the voices of the Numbers, and the harmonies of the Spheres. “ – Hermes Trismegistus

Myths come and go, and so do scientific theories. It may not seem to matter very much which particular formula or fairy story is used to explain the universe, but in reality it is crucial, because the way we understand the world and our origins largely determines our attitude towards life and how we experience it. – John Michell

“The good, of course, is always beautiful, and the beautiful never lacks proportion.”
–Plato

“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”
–Galilei, Galileo

Dodecahedronacci

If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe” attributed to Nikola Tesla

“God built the universe on numbers.” – Pythagoras

“Man’s status in the natural world is determined by the quality of his thinking” – Manly Palmer Hall