Independence Day of the American Nation, History, Celebrations, Curiosities, Quotes and Cultural Traditions. The United States of America is celebrating its 250th birthday on Saturday, July 4th, 2026.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
Mahatma Gandhi

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus

This Independence Day, remind us that we have the freedom to become more culturally competent and free for business, finance and social human sake.
Carl William Brown

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Benjamin Franklin

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw

Independence Day is annually celebrated on July 4 and is often known as “the Fourth of July”. It is the anniversary of the publication of the declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776. Patriotic displays and family events are organized throughout the United States. Independence Day is a patriotic public holiday celebrated by Americans worldwide. It is a day off for the general population, and schools and most businesses are closed.

Independence was claimed on July 4, 1776, from Britain, at which time our Democracy was born. We are the “land of the free and home of the brave”. Independence Day is a day of family celebrations with picnics and barbecues, showing a great deal of emphasis on the American tradition of political freedom. Activities associated with the day include watermelon or hotdog eating competitions and sporting events, such as baseball games, three-legged races, swimming activities and tug-of-war games. We are a diverse nation, made up of a variety of dynamic people.

Americans all over the world are gearing themselves up for huge Independence Day celebrations this week, which are now just a few hours away. This year marks the 243rd celebration of the American national holiday, and the day is typically honoured with parties and firework displays across the USA. Usually, a special event is also held at the White House to mark Independence Day, an occasion which is a huge celebration for many across the country.

Always held on July 4, Independence Day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the US in 1776. Since Christopher Columbus led a Spanish expedition to the “New World” in 1492, much of what is modern day America was under European rule. Most of North and South America was divided up between the Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Dutch governments. In 1606, King James I decided to establish permanent settlements in the Americas and formed the Colony of Virginia the following year.

At around the same time, the Dutch, Swedish, and French also established successful North American colonies – but these eventually came under the English crown. In 1732 the Province of Georgia was established and became the 13th colony ruled by the British Empire. In 1782 the British Parliament finally agreed to end all offensive operations in North America and the following year all parties signed the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the United States and formally end the war. The last British troops departed New York City on November 25, 1783, marking the end of British rule in the new United States.

In 1775, people in New England began fighting the British for their independence. On July 2, 1776, the Congress secretly voted for independence from Great Britain. Two days later, on July 4, 1776, the final wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved, and the document was published. The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence was on July 8, 1776. Delegates began to sign the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776. In 1870, Independence Day was made an unpaid holiday for federal employees. In 1941, it became a paid holiday for them.

The first description of how Independence Day would be celebrated was in a letter from John Adams to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776. He described “pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations” throughout the United States. However, the term “Independence Day” was not used until 1791. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both signers of the Declaration of Independence and presidents of the United States, died on July 4, 1826 – exactly 50 years after the adoption of the declaration. It is also important to note that Native Americans lived in the country and each tribe had its own nation and government prior to the European settlers.

How is Independence Day celebrated?

Many people display the American flag outside their homes or buildings. Many communities arrange fireworks that are often accompanied by patriotic music. The most impressive fireworks are shown on television. Some employees use one or more of their vacation days to create a long weekend so that they can escape the heat at their favorite beach or vacation spot. Independence Day is a patriotic holiday for celebrating the positive aspects of the United States. Many politicians appear at public events to show their support for the history, heritage and people of their country. Above all, people in the United States express and give thanks for the freedom and liberties fought by the first generation of many of today’s Americans. The Statue of Liberty is a national monument that is associated with Independence Day.

In 1938, July 4 became a national paid holiday and Independence Day is therefore a federal holiday. If July 4 is a Saturday, it is observed on Friday, July 3. If July 4 is a Sunday, it is observed on Monday, July 5. Government offices and schools are closed. Some businesses may be closed as well. In some years, many employees use a proportion of their vacation days to create a long weekend. This can cause congestion in some places, particularly towards popular holiday destinations. There are many public events, parades, shows and fireworks displays. This may cause local disruption to traffic. Public transit systems do not usually operate on their regular timetables.

There are many firework displays around the country, accompanied by parties and parades. Some choose to make the most of not being at work to spend it with their families and friends. Trump blimp ‘twin’ set to crash President’s Independence Day rally. Bristol in Rhode Island has the nation’s longest-running Independence Day celebrations, with festivities taking place since 1785. The festivities there start mid June and conclude with a 2.5 miles military parade on July 4, followed by a ball.

The White House stages a large fireworks celebration and Macy’s fireworks in New York are famously screened across the country. This year, Jennifer Hudson is set to perform at the Macy’s show to celebrate the Wizard of Oz turning 80. According to CNN, the National Retail Foundation estimated that Americans spend $5.32 billion on food for cookouts and picnics to celebrate July 4.

Somewhat controversially, Donald Trump has announced plans for an Independence Day rally dubbed “Salute to America”. The festivities include a military parade – featuring tanks and fighter jets – through the streets of Washington DC, fireworks and a free concert at which thousands are expected to attend. The president has also announced he will address the nation from the Lincoln Memorial on the city’s National Mall.

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Independence Day Quotes

Juneteenth or Freedom Day

Here are the major U.S. holidays. In some cases, businesses, government offices, and schools will be closed, and also the International Days list.

New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day
MLK Jr. Day
President’s Day
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Easter/Spring Break
Mother’s Day
Memorial Day
Father’s Day
4th of July
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
International Days List

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Independence Day Quotes, Aphorisms, Ideas and Thoughts by Famous Authors, Writers and Politicians on the American Independence Day holiday and celebrations.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
Mahatma Gandhi

Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Benjamin Franklin

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Abraham Lincoln

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
Abraham Lincoln

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.
Nelson Mandela

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
William Faulkner

The United States was born in revolution and nurtured by struggle. Throughout our history, the American people have befriended and supported all those who seek independence and a better way of life.
Robert Kennedy

Liberty is maintained by responsible freedom.
Roger W Hancock

Your freedom is brought to you courtesy of the outstanding Men and Women who serve and have served this country with honor, dedication, pride and sacrifice!
Nishan Panwar

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.
Marquis de Lafayette

This Independence Day, remind us that we have the freedom to become more culturally competent and free for business, finance and social human sake.
Carl William Brown

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus

In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to secure our independence and the liberties that remain the foundation of our nation today.
Doc Hastings

God give us peace without peace we are without freedom.
Ellen J. Barrier

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
Khalil Gibran

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
Louis Brandeis

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.
Simone Weil

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy

Independence doesn’t mean you decide the way you want.
Stephen Breyer

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
Samuel Adams

Let freedom never perish in your hands.
Joseph Addison

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
John F. Kennedy

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.
John F. Kennedy

Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.
Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Freedom lies in being bold.
Robert Frost

Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.
Bob Marley

Freedom is never given; it is won.
A. Philip Randolph

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson

Enjoy the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies!
Joseph Hopkinson

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Nelson Mandela

Independence means enjoying freedom and empowering others too to let them do so.
Vikrmn

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Independence Day

Juneteenth or Freedom Day

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Juneteenth or Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, annual holiday celebrated on June 19 in the United States to commemorate the ending of slavery.

History of America is incomplete without the Juneteenth because We Americans believe in respecting freedom and the notion of it.

Juneteenth marks the end of slavery and begining of a new era where men and women had the basic human rights and they could live life on their own terms.

Slavery was a curse to the society and now that it’s gone, let’s celebrate Juneteenth in a grand manner!

The essence of life is when it is enjoyed with a dash of freedom. Juneteenth will always be remembered as it freed hundreds and thousands of souls trapped in the net of slavery!

Without freedom life would be like a thirsty man on a sea. You can see water everywhere but drink nothing and eventually die deep within due to thirst (thirst of freedom). Wishing you Juneteenth remembrance.

The celebration of abolition of slavery is one of the biggest steps in the history of the nation and hence it needs to be celebrated with great joy! Happy Juneteenth!

Celebrate freedom like never before on this Juneteenth because at the end of the day nothing matters more than a happy mind.

Without much to speak, the Juneteenth is one of the most important days on the calendar. Happy homecoming to the feeling of freedom.

Can you imagine a life that was owed to others and you would be constantly used by others as their slaves? No, right ? Thanks to Juneteenth for happening!

You can rule people’s hearts but not their lives and this is what Juneteenth day reminds us always. Freedom is basic!

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, annual holiday celebrated on June 19 in the United States to commemorate the ending of slavery. For more than a century, Juneteenth was observed mainly in Texas and parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. In recent decades, communities across the nation have adopted the holiday.

June 19 marks the day in 1865 when word reached African Americans in Texas that slavery in the United States had been abolished. More than two years earlier, on New Year’s Day, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Delivered during the American Civil War, this proclamation ordered the freeing of all slaves in states that were rebelling against Union forces. The proclamation had little effect in Texas, where there were few Union troops to enforce the order.

African American residents of Austin, Texas, celebrate the “freedom day” festival known as Juneteenth. The annual holiday, celebrated June 19th, commemorates the date in 1865 on which General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas to force renegade slave owners to release their slaves.

Before Granger’s arrival, slaves in the region did not know that they were legally free, even though the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had freed them more than two years previously. Today Juneteenth is celebrated throughout the country, but festivities are especially prominent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

News of the proclamation officially reached Texas on June 19, 1865, when a Union general backed by nearly 2,000 troops arrived in the city of Galveston. The general, Gordon Granger, publicly announced that slavery in the United States had ended.

Reactions among newly freed slaves ranged from shock and disbelief to jubilant celebration. That day has been known ever since as Juneteenth, a name probably derived from the slang combination of the words June and nineteenth.

Juneteenth celebrations began in Texas the following year. Within a few years they had spread to other states and became an annual tradition. Celebrations often opened with praying and religious ceremonies and included a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

A wide range of festivities entertained participants, from music and dancing to contests of physical strength and intellect. Food was central to the celebrations, and barbecued meats were especially popular.

In the late 19th century, African Americans in the largely segregated South began migrating north and west in search of a better life. Many of these blacks transplanted their Juneteenth celebrations with them. African Americans continued to migrate from the South to other parts of the country during the late 1930s and 1940s. By World War II (1939-1945), however, Juneteenth celebrations began to decline.

Historians cite several reasons for this. Many African Americans, removed by 70 years or more from the 1865 emancipation, were less inclined to carry forward the enthusiastic celebrations of earlier generations. In addition, some historians note that many African Americans wanted to distance themselves from vestiges of slavery.

Interest in Juneteenth celebrations further waned during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when the holiday was associated with past repression and segregation. In some southern cities, Juneteenth was the only day each year when all-white local governments would permit African Americans to use city parks and zoos. In 1980 Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas. Since then, observance of Juneteenth has spread to other parts of the United States.

Today, Juneteenth celebrates freedom for African Americans in addition to many other themes, including education, self-improvement, African American accomplishments throughout history, and tolerance and respect for all cultures. Festivities may include parades, picnics, tributes and speeches, music, gospel performances, exhibitions, baseball games, rodeos, and other activities.

Around 24 states and the District of Columbia are set to legally recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday this year, according to a Pew Research Center analysis which forecasts that more states will recognize it as a paid holiday next year. Since the holiday was signed into federal law, multiple states have had Juneteenth as a paid holiday for employees.

States With Juneteeth As Paid Holiday

According to The Pew Charitable Trusts:

New York, Maine, Louisiana, Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington, and Texas, which was  the first state to officially recognize the holiday in 1980.
Georgia, Ohio, Nebraska, Maryland, South Dakota, Colorado, Connecticut, and Delaware, Alabama recently recognized Juneteenth as a paid state holiday, according to News Observer.

You can also read some articles about other Festival and Holiday Days:

Martin Luther King Day   January 17, 2022

Saint Valentine’s Day  February 14, 2022

Presidents Day   February 21, 2022

Saint Patrick Day  March 17, 2022

April Fools Day  April 1, 2022

Good Friday April 15, 2022

International Worker Day  May 1, 2022

Memorial Day    May 30, 2022

Juneteenth Holiday  June 20, 2022 

Independence Day  July 4, 2022

Labor Day  September 5, 2022

Halloween or all hallows eve  October 31, 2022

Thanksgiving Day  November 24, 2022

Black Friday Day  November 25, 2022

Christmas Holidays   December 25, 2022

Chinese New Year  February 1, 2022

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Memorial Day, legal holiday observed annually on the last Monday in May in the United States, in honor of the nation’s armed services personnel killed in wartime.

Happy Memorial Day! Thank you to all our service men and women past and present. You are not forgotten!

Without a sign his sword the brave man draws and asks no omen but his country’s cause.
Homer

The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.
Carrie Jones

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
Michel de Montaigne

Our own heart, and not other men’s opinions, forms our true honor.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
W.E.B. DuBois

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
Antonio Porchia

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Winston Churchill

We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.
Theodore Roosevelt

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.
Arthur Ashe

Think about the past and consider the sacrifices men and women in the military have made for us.
Gary G. Wetzel

We’d like to say thank you to all the veterans of the United States of America. Thank you for the cost you paid so we could live in freedom and safety. Thank you that we have the freedom to pursue happiness, we have freedom of speech, we have all the freedoms other people only dream of. And sorry that some of us take these freedoms for granted.

Memorial Day is about freedom given to us by the sacrifice of generations of soldiers. Wish a happy Memorial Day using some of these Memorial Day quotes. Send a message, or just say them personally.

While only one day of the year is dedicated solely to honoring our veterans, Americans must never forget the sacrifices that many of our fellow countrymen have made to defend our country and protect our freedoms.

This Memorial Day should remind us of the greatness that past generations of Americans achieved from Valley Forge to Vietnam, and it should inspire us with the determination to keep America great and free by keeping America safe and strong in our own time, a time of unique destiny and opportunity for our Nation.

Freedom does not come without a price. We may sometimes take for granted the many liberties we enjoy in America, but they have all been earned through the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many of the members of our armed forces.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Peace is the real and right memorial for those who have died in war.

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

As long as our nation is the home of the brave, it remains the land of the free. Happy Memorial Day!

Memorial Day, legal holiday observed annually on the last Monday in May in the United States, in honor of the nation’s armed services personnel killed in wartime. The holiday was originally called Decoration Day because it is a time for decorating graves with flowers and flags. Over time, the designation Memorial Day became far more common.

In the United States, local observances to honor the war dead became widespread following the American Civil War (1861-1865), which had taken more than 600,000 lives. These local observances inspired General John Alexander Logan, the leader of a Union veterans’ group called the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), to issue a general’s order in 1868 designating May 30 as a day for “strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” (By “the late rebellion,” Logan meant the Civil War, also known as the War of Rebellion.)

Accordingly, on May 30, 1868, several thousand people gathered to observe Decoration Day at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The memorial ceremonies were presided over by Washington officials such as General Ulysses Grant and included a tribute by General James A. Garfield. Following the speeches, thousands of war veterans, orphans, and other participants helped decorate the more than 20,000 graves of Civil War dead in the cemetery.

A number of towns in the United States claim to have originated the custom of decorating graves in memorial of the Civil War dead, including Columbus, Mississippi; Macon, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; and Carbondale, Illinois. However, in 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation that declared Waterloo, New York, the birthplace of Memorial Day. Townspeople there had begun decorating graves of soldiers, flying flags at half-mast, and organizing parades of veterans 100 years earlier, in May 1866. Waterloo has continued this tradition every year.

In 1873 New York became the first state to declare a holiday on May 30. By the end of the 1800s, states throughout the nation had declared Memorial Day a holiday.

After World War I (1914-1918), Memorial Day observances were changed to honor the dead in all American wars, starting with the American Revolution. The U.S. Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday in 1971, and changed the date of observance from May 30 to the last Monday in May to give workers a three-day weekend.

Memorial Day is marked by parades, speeches, and the decoration of graves. Traditionally, the president or vice president places a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, and small flags are placed on all the graves. Ceremonies also are held at Gettysburg National Military Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and at Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland. Many people choose to visit family graves on Memorial Day.

Many Southern states continue to honor the Confederate dead on a separate day. Confederate Memorial Day is observed on the fourth Monday in April in Alabama, the last Monday in April in Mississippi, April 26 in Georgia, May 10 in North Carolina and South Carolina, the last Monday in May in Virginia, and June 3 in Louisiana. Texas observes Confederate Heroes Day on January 19, the birthday of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Tennessee observes Confederate Decoration Day on June 3, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy (see Confederate States of America).

The Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of summer activities, such as picnics and trips to the beach. A well-known automobile race, the Indianapolis 500, is held in Indiana every year on Memorial Day weekend.

The weather is usually warm and sunny on the last Monday in May. Schools and offices are closed. Families and friends get together for picnics and baseball games. Beaches open for the summer season. Stores hold big sales. There are concerts and evening fireworks in parks.

That is the fun side of the American national holiday Memorial Day. But Americans celebrate the holiday in very different ways. There is another, serious side which has more to do with how it all began: with giving thanks to soldiers who died in wars. Some towns organise parades in which war veterans, boy and girl scouts, and school bands in uniforms march to the inspiring sounds of trumpets, flutes, and drums.

Patriotic citizens, especially, and those involved with the military, visit national cemeteries, where each soldier’s grave. As we said before the tradition of Memorial Day began shortly after the American Civil War (1861-1865). That bloody conflict ended in victory for the Northern, ‘Union’ states against eleven Southern, ‘Confederate’ states which had tried to break away from the USA and form a separate country. A major result was that slavery, the basis for the agricultural economy of the Southern states, was abolished. In 1865, former American slaves in South Carolina created a ceremony to honour Union soldiers who had died in the war.

Starting in 1868, Memorial Day was observed annually on May 30th in many parts of the US. After the First World War, Americans began to honour their countrymen who had died in all wars. In 1971, it was decided that Memorial Day should be celebrated nationwide on the last Monday in May, whatever the date, creating a three-day Memorial Day Weekend. Today many people say that change made it possible for people to have a mini-vacation. They think the government should restore the single-day holiday on May 30th. In that way, citizens wouldn’t only amuse themselves and forget the soldiers who died to defend freedoms that are central to the American way of life.

The vast majority of Americans agree that Memorial Day should be a time to give thanks to all men and women who died in military service. Yet many citizens, especially pacifists, now criticise what they see as the blind patriotism of some people on Memorial Day. They think that Memorial Day parades and ceremonies should not be used as propaganda for US participation in controversial wars across the world, such as in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

For almost 70 years, no Memorial Day parade was held in Washington DC. It is interesting that the tradition of the parade in the US capital was revived in 2005, during the presidency of the unpopular, self-declared “war president”, George W Bush.

They say that summer in the United States begins at the end of May with Memorial Day Weekend. The whole country takes a holiday on Monday and enjoys a long weekend. But what exactly is Memorial Day? It is in honour of all the veterans who died serving their country and, in the current political climate, some people find the military nature of the holiday offensive. Edwin Rutledge served in the US Navy from 1958 to 1961, but today he is a pacifist and lives in Germany, where he runs” the Munich American Peace Committee.

In his own opinion there are certain societies in the States that are susceptible to the military aspect. For example, the Indians are very conscious – it’s strange, they’ve been treated not very well in the States – but they’re very proud to have served in the service. Other people have a little bit of difficulty with the idea of war, so they don’t particularly like to think that way. There are certain populations in the US, for example the Oriental population, mainly the Japanese population, that has trouble celebrating Memorial Day, after some of the problems that they faced being put into camps during the Second World War.

Here are the major U.S. holidays. In some cases, businesses, government offices, and schools will be closed, and also the International Days list.

New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day
MLK Jr. Day
President’s Day
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Easter/Spring Break
Mother’s Day
Memorial Day
Father’s Day
4th of July
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
International Days List

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Osho quotes and aphorisms, famous phrases and great words of wisdom from the great Indian nonconformist thinker, philosopher, mystic and spiritual master.

OSHO – never born, never died. He only visited this planet Earth between December 11, 1931, and January 19, 1990.
Osho Epitaph

Never speak of me in the past tense”. My presence here will be many times greater without the burden of my tortured body.
Osho

A borrowed truth is the greatest lie in the world. Truth can only be true when it is based on your own experience, utterly your own experience.
Osho

A certain darkness is needed to see the stars.
Osho

A child needs immense privacy, as much as possible, a maximum of privacy, so that he can develop his individuality. (Here are a few more good parenting tips)
Osho

A comfortable, convenient life is not a real life – the more comfortable, the less alive. The most comfortable life is in the grave.
Osho

A serious person can never be innocent, and one who is innocent can never be serious.
Osho

A woman is one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world; not to be compared with anything else. The woman is the masterpiece of god.
Osho

Accept the fact that we are strangers; that we don´t know who you are, that you don´t know who I am. I myself don´t know who I am, so how can you know?
Osho

Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training, education, your culture.
Osho

All beliefs suffocate and all beliefs help you not to be really alive. They deaden your being.
Osho

All your knowledge is dust. Knowing is your purity, knowledge is dust.
Osho

Anger transformed becomes compassion. Sex transformed becomes prayer. Greed transformed becomes sharing.
Osho

Anywhere everywhere! Anything anyhow! just dance!
Osho

Be a drunkard, drunk with life, with the wine of existence. Don’t remain sober. The sober person remains dead.
Osho

Be aware – deep down you are really attached to your negative emotions. They are your ego.
Osho

Be like an alone peak high in the sky. Why should you hanker to belong? You are not a thing! Things belong!
Osho

Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost.
Osho

Be. Don’t try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.
Osho

Bravery does not mean being fearless. It means to be full of fear but still not being dominated by it.
Osho

By ‘Love’ people mean a certain kind of monopoly understanding a simple fact: that the moment you possess a living being you have killed him.
Osho

Celebration is my attitude, unconditional to what life brings.
Osho

Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all.
Osho

Die each moment so that you are renewed each moment.
Osho

Discover yourself, otherwise you have to depend on other people’s opinions who don’t know themselves.
Osho

Doing brings ego. Ego is the shadow of action. And there is only one thing that is not-doing, and that is awareness, watchfulness.
Osho

Don´t be unnecessarily burdened by the past. Go on closing the chapters that you have read; there is no need to go back again and again.
Osho

Don’t analyze, celebrate it.
Osho

Don’t be angry at life. It is not life that is frustrating you, it is you who are not listening to life.
Osho

Don’t be bothered by perfection. Replace the word ‘Perfection’ by ‘Totality. Totality will give you a different dimension.
Osho

Don’t be serious about seriousness. Laugh about it, be a little foolish. Don’t condemn foolishness; it has its own beauties.
Osho

Don’t expect, and there will be no frustration. Frustration is just a shadow which follows expectation.
Osho

Don’t go on with borrowed knowledge. Otherwise you will forget that you are ignorant, and you will remain ignorant.
Osho

Don’t pay much attention to fear, because that is dangerous. If you pay much attention to fear you are feeding it, and it will grow.
Osho

Don’t postpone anything beautiful for tomorrow. Live intensely, live totally, here and now.
Osho

Drop comparing and life is really beautiful. Drop comparing and you can enjoy life to the full.
Osho

Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.
Osho

Drop the idea that attachment and love are one thing. They are enemies. It is attachment that destroys all love.
Osho

Dropping the mask and bringing out your original face is the whole alchemy of meditation.
Osho

Easy is right. Begin right and you are easy. . . . Easy is right means natural is right, effortlessness is right, egolessness is right.
Osho

Eyes which have lost their tears have lost their most beautiful, their most glorious treasure.
Osho

Fools are more healthy then the so-called wise. Thy live in the moment and they know that they are fools, so they are not worried about what others think about them.
Osho

Forget about getting, simply give; and I guarantee you, you will get much.
Osho

Freedom is a ladder: one side of the ladder reaches hell, the other side touches heaven. It is the same ladder; the choice is yours.
Osho

Freedom is our most precious treasure. Don’t lose it for anything.
Osho

Friendship is a relationship, friendliness is a state of your being. You are simply friendly; to whom, that is not the point.
Osho

Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.
Osho

Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.
Osho

Giving love is the real beautiful experience, because then you are an emperor. Getting love is a very small experience. It is the experience of beggar.
Osho

Go easy on yourself, for the outcome of all affairs is determined by God’s decree.
Osho

God cannot be an object. It is deepest depth of your own being. How can you see it.
Osho

God is a person; godliness is a quality. You cannot become God, but you can be godly.
Osho

Happiness is an art that one has to learn. It has nothing to do with your doing or not doing.
Osho

Happiness is not conditional; nothing is needed to be happy. Only to be alive is needed – and that you are, you already are.
Osho

Hell is our creation, and we create hell by trying to do the impossible. Heaven is our nature, it is our spontaneity. It is where we always are.
Osho

Humanity will never be religious unless all organized religions disappear and religion becomes an individual commitment towards existence.
Osho

I am not anti-life as other religions are. I am absolutely for life, and life in its essence means love.
Osho

I don’t want followers, obedient people. I want intelligent friends, fellow travelers.
Osho

I love this world because it is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that’s why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead.
Osho

I resolve never to make any resolutions because all resolutions are restrictions for the future. All resolutions are imprisonments.
Osho

I would like marriage to disappear completely from the world, and with marriage, divorce will disappear.
Osho

I’ll never make any resolutions. Drop all resolutions! Let life be a natural spontaneity. The only golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Osho

If jealousy disappears and love still remains, then you have something solid in your life which is worth having.
Osho

If love can not keep you together, nothing else can keep you together. And if love cannot keep you together, than anything that can keep you together is dangerous.
Osho

If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from you it cannot flee.
Osho

If whatsoever you have been living can be conveyed by words, that means you have not lived at all.
Osho

If you are sad you are wrong; if you are joyful you are right.
Osho

If you cannot enjoy your own company, who else is going to enjoy it?
Osho

If you cannot love yourself, you don’t know even the taste of love or what love means.
Osho

If you clean the floor with love, you have done an invisible painting. Live each moment in such delight that it gives you something inner.
Osho

If you have no conditions you can enjoy life infinitely. If you have conditions, because of them you become incapable.
Osho

If you live with love, through love, you will live a great life, because love makes everything great.
Osho

If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.
Osho

If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. In relationship with others, it is only you mirrored.
Osho

If you love yourself, you will be surprised: others will love you. Nobody loves a person who does not love himself.
Osho

If you remain always far, love will die. If you remain always near, love will die. Love can survive only in a continuous flowing relationship.
Osho

If you work without love, you are working like a slave. When you work with love, you work like an emperor. Your work is your joy, your work is your dance.
Osho

In relationship, be blissful, in aloneness be aware and they will help each other, like two wings of a bird.
Osho

Instead of pleasing, learn the art of happiness.
Osho

Intelligence never grows by imitation: Intelligence grows by experimentation. Intelligence grows by taking challenges.
Osho

It cannot be called freedom, a freedom which can choose only the right and not the wrong; then that is not freedom.
Osho

It does not matter if you are a rose or a lotus or a marigold. What matters is that you are flowering.
Osho

It is a strange experience, that those who have left me have always left places for a better quality of people. I have never been a loser.
Osho

It is always death that comes before your desires are fulfilled. Even if you live for a thousand years your desires are not going to be fulfilled.
Osho

It is because nobody has been teaching you about hate; hence, hate has remained pure, unadulterated. When a man hatesyou, you can trust that he hates you.
Osho

It is better to be ignorant; at least the ignorance is yours. It is authentic, it is real, sincere and honest!
Osho

It is imperfect, and that’s why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead. Growth is possible only if there is imperfection.
Osho

It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love, or how you love, it matters only that you love.
Osho

It’s not a question of learning much. On the contrary. It’s a question of unlearning much.
Osho

Just get out of your own way.
Osho

Just see how much respect God has paid to you. You are a masterpiece – unrepeatable, incomparable, utterly unique.
Osho

Knowledge is borrowed; knowing is yours, your own. It is authentic knowledge is information, knowing is transformation.
Osho

Life begins where fear ends.
Osho

Life exists without rules; games cannot exist without rules. Only false religion has rules, because false religion is a game.
Osho

Life has no meaning. Rejoice! It has no meaning. Dance, sing, enjoy! It has no meaning. You need not be serious. It is a cosmic joke.
Osho

Life in itself is so beautiful that to ask the question of the meaning of life is simply nonsense.
Osho

Life is a mirror, it reflects your face. Be friendly, and all of life will reflect friendliness.
Osho

Life is a mystery, and there is nothing to explain everything is just open, it is in front of you. Encounter it! Meet it! Be courageous!
Osho

Life is a purposeless play, a play of infinite forces-beautiful if you don’t have an achiever’s mind, ugly if you have ambition to become something.
Osho

Life is absolutely balanced between the positive and the negative. Now it is your choice which side you want to be – in heaven or in hell.
Osho

Life is not a tension anywhere except in the minds of humanity.
Osho

Life is not given to you to murder, to destroy. Life has been given to you to create, and to rejoice, and to celebrate.
Osho

Life is not logic, life is not philosophy. Life is a dance, a song, a celebration! It is more like love and less like logic.
Osho

Love brings freedom. Loyalty brings slavery.
Osho

Love cannot be taught, it can only be caught.
Osho

Love in itself, or just having a relationship with someone, is not going to give you happiness, unless you bring happiness with you.
Osho

Love is a bird and it loves to be free. It needs the whole sky to grow.
Osho

Love is a wine; you have to taste it, you have to drink it, you have to become drunk with it, only then do you know what it is.
Osho

Love is authentic only when it gives freedom. Love is true only when it respects the other person’s individuality, his privacy.
Osho

Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something.
Osho

Love is just like a breeze: it comes, but you should not close your doors to keep the breeze inside.
Osho

Love is not manageable, it is simply something that happens, and the moment you try to manage, everything misfires.
Osho

Love is the ultimate, the end. You love for love’s own sake. It is not a means to anything else, it is its own end.
Osho

Love is true only when it does not interfere in the privacy of the other person. It respects his individuality, his privacy.
Osho

Love is true only when it is spontaneous, unplanned, unpracticed, uncultivated, un-thought.
Osho

Love is ultimate, the highest health, because love makes one whole. When you love a master by and by you completely forgot about love.
Osho

Love knows how to forgive. Love cannot hurt and cannot be violent.
Osho

Love lives in waiting – dies in meeting, becomes ordinary.
Osho

Love means the art of being with others. Meditation means the art of being with yourself. Both are two aspects of the same coin.
Osho

Love needs two things: it has to be rooted in freedom and it has to know the art of trust.
Osho

Love never dies through separation, never. If it dies at all, it dies through too much togetherness; never by separation.
Osho

Lovers are mirrors to each other. Love makes you aware of your original face.
Osho

Lovers have known sometimes what saints have not known.
Osho

Man is always exploited through fear.
Osho

Man is born only as a potential. He can become a thorn for himself and for others, he can also become a flower for himself and for others.
Osho

Mind is the illusion that which is not but appears, and appears so much that you think that you are the mind.
Osho

Misery comes the moment you become clinging, attached. The moment you put conditions on life.
Osho

My enlightenment has freed me from everything, including enlightenment.
Osho

Never ask, “Who is my real friend?” Ask, “Am I a real friend to somebody?” That is the right question. Always be concerned with yourself.
Osho

Never be ashamed of your tears. Be proud that you are still natural. Be proud that you can express the inexpressible through your tears.
Osho

Never obey anyone’s command unless it is coming from within you also.
Osho

Never sacrifice your life for anything! Sacrifice everything for life! Life is the ultimate goal.
Osho

Never try to change a person you love, because the very effort to change says that you love half, and the other half of the person is not accepted.
Osho

No, I don’t want to give my people sticks. I want to give them eyes.
Osho

Nobody else can destroy you except you; nobody else can save you except you. You are the Judas and you are the Jesus.
Osho

Nobody has the power to take two steps together; you can take only one step at a time.
Osho

Nobody is responsible except you. Nobody can make you angry, and nobody can make you happy.
Osho

NOW is the only reality. All else is either memory or imagination.
Osho

Once I was on a journey and someone asked me which word in a man’s vocabulary was the most valuable. My reply was, Love.
Osho

Once you have tasted the juice of the present, you don’t care about dangers. Once you are in tune with life then nothing matter. Life all there is.
Osho

Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.
Osho

One day you will disappear on a funeral pyre – just into nothingness, as smoke. Don’t get attached to anything.
Osho

One who thinks in terms of superiority will always remain inferior because these are two aspects of the same coin.
Osho

Only idiots are not controversial.
Osho

Only people suffering from inferiority complex want to impress others. A really superior person never compares himself with anybody else.
Osho

Only silence communicates the truth as it is.
Osho

Paradise is within you, in your state of no-mind. And hell is also within you, in your very mind.
Osho

People are not things, you cannot have ownership.
Osho

People love freedom – but nobody wants responsibility. And they come together, they are inseparable.
Osho

People say love is blind because they do not know what love is. I say unto you, only love has eyes; other than love, everything is blind.
Osho

Perfect people don’t exist. And perfect people, if they existed, would be very boring. It is imperfection that keeps life interesting.
Osho

Possessiveness destroys love. And they should not be possessed, because that again destroys your love.
Osho

Real love is not an escape from loneliness, real love is an overflowing aloneness. One is so happy in being alone that one would like to share.
Osho

Real love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface your individuality, it gives you individuality. Real love is very respectful.
Osho

Relationship is the need of those who cannot be alone. Two alone persons relate, communicate, commune, and yet they remain alone.
Osho

Remember it is not only you who are seeking truth – truth is also seeking you.
Osho

Resolution is struggle. Resolution is ego. Resolution is saying, “I cannot live spontaneously.
Osho

Respect your life. Out of that respect you will start respecting life in others.
Osho

Respect your uniqueness, and drop comparison. Relax into your being.
Osho

Sadness comes, joy comes, and everything passes by. What remains always is the witness. The witness is beyond all polarities.
Osho

Sharing is the most precious religious experience. Sharing is good.
Osho

Suicide leads nowhere, it simply enters your consciousness into another womb of a lower kind, because you could not manage to live on a higher level.
Osho

Take it easy, and remember “Easy is Right.”
Osho

Take life easily, lovingly, playfully, non-seriously. Seriousness is a disease, the greatest disease of the soul and playfulness the greatest health.
Osho

That which makes you miserable is the only sin. That which takes you away from yourself is the only thing to be avoided.
Osho

That’s why children look so beautiful because they are yet full of hope, full of dreams, and they have not yet known frustration.
Osho

The ego is an island in the ocean of Hell. You want to get rid of the Hell but you don’t want to get rid of that island. Then there is trouble.
Osho

The existence loves you, otherwise you would not be here. Relax into your being, you are cherished by the whole.
Osho

The greatest freedom is to be free of one’s own mind.
Osho

The knowledgeable person lives with a question mark ‘?’ and the man of awe and wonder lives with an exclamation mark.
Osho

The less the head, the more the wound will heal. No head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things.
Osho

The Mind: a beautiful servant, a dangerous master.
Osho

The only authentic responsibility is towards your own potential. Values have not to be imposed on you. They should grow with your awareness, in you.
Osho

The only thing that matters in life is your own opinion about yourself, nobody can destroy your dignity then, because it is not dependent on anybody’s opinion.
Osho

The only thing that matters in life, is your own opinion about yourself.
Osho

The people who ask what is the meaning of life are the people who have missed life, who are alive because they are still breathing; otherwise they are dead.
Osho

The person who can be happy alone is really an individual. If your happiness depends on the others. You are slave. You are yet not free. You are in bondage.
Osho

The person who enjoys his life has no desire to possess, because he knows the real things of life which are worth enjoying cannot be purchased.
Osho

The person who trusts can relax into existence. The person who cannot trust remains tense, remains anxious, afraid.
Osho

The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death.
Osho

The society is ill;individuals are victims. Society needs therapy;individuals simply need love. The society is the patient and needs hospitalization.
Osho

The ultimate state of love is freedom, absolute freedom, and any relationship that destroys freedom is not worthwhile.
Osho

The word devil is very beautiful, if you read it backwards it becomes lived. That which is lived becomes divine and that which is not lived becomes the devil.
Osho

There has never been a person like you before, there is nobody else like you right now in the whole world, and there will never be anybody like you.
Osho

These are the only two real emotions and love. If you don’t love, you will be in fear. If you are in fear, you cannot love. If you love, fear is impossible.
Osho

This very moment you can drop all problems because they are your creation.
Osho

This world is just a game. Winners lose and losers win the game is still the same. This life is just a play. Those who say dont know and those who know dont say.
Osho

To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life.
Osho

To choose is to choose a prison; to choose is to choose a bondage. To choose is wrong, to be choiceless is to be right.
Osho

To create guilt, all that you need is a very simple thing: start calling mistakes, errors sins. They are simply mistakes, human.
Osho

To love means to drop the ego, to drop yourself. Love means not to BE.
Osho

To possess anything is to be possessed by it. The more you possess, the more slavery you create around yourself.
Osho

Tomorrow-drop that word from your vocabulary! Tomorrow does not exist, it cannot exist: it is not in the nature of things. Only this day exists.
Osho

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.
Osho

U bring a beautiful prince;in the morning he becomes a frog! Every prince turns into a frog in the end. And then you are puzzled: What went wrong.
Osho

Unless you love yourself, you can’t love anybody. Be selfish.
Osho

Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind.
Osho

We have to change this world by celebrating, by dancing, by singing, by music, by meditation, by love, not by struggle.
Osho

We remain unnecessarily worried. All worries are futile because that which is going to happen is going to happen.
Osho

Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind;don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet.
Osho

Whatsoever you hide goes on growing, and whatsoever you expose, if it is wrong it disappears, evaporates in the sun, and if it is right it is nourished.
Osho

Whatsoever you possess will not give you contentment. The mind, the ego, will always feel unfulfilled.
Osho

When I say that you are Gods and Goddesses I mean that your possibility is infinite, your potentiality is infinite.
Osho

When it comes to deciding between your love and your truth, truth has to be the decisive factor.
Osho

When you are different the whole world is different. It is not a question of creating a different world. It is only a ques of creating a different you.
Osho

When you really laugh for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together.
Osho

When your ego is no more, only then will you know who you are.
Osho

Whenever you plan for love, whenever deliberateness enters into it it becomes phony and false.
Osho

Wherever you are afraid, try to explore, and you will find death hiding somewhere behind. All fear is of death. Death is the only fear source.
Osho

Whoever may have died right now, each death is your death, because each death is a reminder that you are not going to be here forever.
Osho

You are a great problem-creator. Just understand this and suddenly problems disappear.
Osho

You are creating your own hell.
Osho

You can become happy just by deciding to be happy.
Osho

You can go on changing the outer for lives and you will never be satisfied. Unless the inner changes, the outer can never be perfect.
Osho

You cannot think about love. Either you can love, or you cannot, but you cannot think about it.
Osho

You don’t have any problems. Only this much has to be understood. This very moment you can drop all problems because they are your creations.
Osho

You have to drop all your defenses, only then is intimacy possible. We are all hiding a thousand and one things, not only from others but from ourselves.
Osho

You just listen to your own heart – that is your only teacher. In the real journey of life, your own intuition is your only teacher.
Osho

You will come closer and closer to perfection, but you will never be perfect. Perfection is not the way of existence. Growth is the way.
Osho

Your heaven and your happiness is always somewhere else; it is never where you are. Real happiness is always HERE, it is always NOW.
Osho

Your honesty, Your love, Your compassion should come from your inner being, not from teachings and scriptures.
Osho

Your marriage is a subtle politics of domination. Your fatherhood, motherhood, is a subtle politics.
Osho

Your politicians, priests, parents, they all are guilt-creators, because that is the only way that you can be controlled and manipulated.
Osho

Your real being only flowers with unconditional love. Ambition is against love. Anything that is against love is against you and your real life.
Osho

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Jiddu Krishnamurti reflections, ideas and thoughts, this Indian philosopher and theologian was the first teacher to spread Eastern religious thought in the United States.

Surely that thing which you fight you become. If I am angry and you meet me with anger what is the result? More anger. You have become that which I am. If I am evil and you fight me with evil means then you also become evil, however righteous you may feel. If I am brutal and you use brutal methods to overcome me, then you become brutal like me. And this we have done for thousands of years. Surely there is a different approach than to meet hate by hate. If I use violent methods to quell anger in myself then I am using wrong means for a right end, and thereby the right end ceases to be. In this there is no understanding; there is no transcending anger. Anger is to be studied tolerantly and understood; it is not to be overcome through violent means. Anger may be the result of many causes and without comprehending them there is no escape from anger.
We have created the enemy, the bandit, and becoming ourselves the enemy in no way brings about an end to enmity. We have to understand the cause of enmity and cease to feed it by our thought, feeling, and action. This is an arduous task demanding constant self-awareness and intelligent pliability, for what we are the society, the state is. The enemy and the friend are the outcome of our thought and action. We are responsible for creating enmity and so it is more important to be aware of our own thought and action than to be concerned with the foe and the friend, for right thinking puts an end to division. Love transcends the friend and the enemy.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically there is nothing in the world, that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness. Is this not what is actually taking place all over the world? Our present education is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in this machine of ruthless competition and mutual destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine…
Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply – aware.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Voilà ce que des millions de personnes soi-disant religieuses ont fait au cours des âges ; soit en s’isolant, en s’en allant dans un désert, sur une montagne ou dans une caverne ; soit en errant de village en village avec un bol de mendiant ; ou bien en se réunissant en groupes, dans des monastères, en vue de contraindre leur esprit à se conformer à des modèles établis.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect … Your have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are the world. The world is you and me, the world is not separate from you and me. We have created this world – the world of violence, the world of wars, the world of religious divisions, sex, anxieties, the utter lack of communication with each other, with no sense of compassion, consideration for another. Wherever one goes in any country throughout the world, human beings, that is, you and another, suffer; we are anxious, we are uncertain, we don’t know what is going to happen. Everything has become uncertain. Right through the world as human beings we are in sorrow, fear, anxiety, violence, uncertain of everything, insecure. There is a common relationship between us all. We are the world essentially, basically, fundamentally. The world is you, and you are the world. Realizing that fundamentally, deeply, not romantically, not intellectually but actually, then we see that our problem is a global problem. It is not my problem or your particular problem, it is a human problem.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Beauty is complete order. But most of us have not that sense of beauty in our lives. We may be great artists, great painters, expert in various things, but in our own daily life, with all the anxieties and miseries, we live, unfortunately, a very disordered life. It is a fact. You may a great scientist, you may be a great expert in a subject, but you have your own problems, struggles, pain, anxieties and the rest of it. We are asking, is it possible to live in complete order within, not impose discipline, control, but to inquire into the nature of this disorder, what are the causes, and to dispel, move away, wash away the cause. Then there is a living order in the universe.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. An Ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is. To have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them. As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological security we need; food, clothing and shelter, is destroyed. Some of you will nod your heads and say, I agree, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be only stopped when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Mais lire, jouer, rire, être cruel, être bon, contempler le fleuve, les nuages, tout cela fait partie de la vie, et si vous ne savez pas lire, si vous ne savez pas marcher, si vous êtes incapable d’apprécier la beauté d’une feuille, vous n’êtes pas vivant. Vous devez comprendre la globalité de la vie, pas simplement une parcelle. Voilà pourquoi vous devez lire, voilà pourquoi vous devez regarder le ciel, voilà pourquoi vous devez chanter, et danser, et écrire des poèmes, et souffrir, et comprendre: car c’est tout cela, la vie.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You are Christians; find out what is true and false in Christianity – and you will then find out what is true. Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and cruelties, and then you will find out what is true. Why do you want philosophies?
You are this, which does not satisfy, so you want to be that. If there were an understanding of this, would that come into being? Because you do not understand this, you create that, hoping through that to understand or to escape from this.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You cannot reconcile creativeness with technical achievement. You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter…having lost the song, we pursue the singer. We learn from the singer the technique of song, but there is no song; and I say the song is essential, the joy of singing is essential. When the joy is there, the technique can be built up from nothing; you will invent your own technique, you won’t have to study elocution or style. When you have, you see, and the very seeing of beauty is an art.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don’t know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he doesn’t find a way out of it. Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in different ways. What we are trying to do, during all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind, not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn’t answer a thing. You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You say you love your wife. You depend on her; she has given you her body, her emotions, her encouragement, a certain feeling of security and well-being. Then she turns away from you; she gets bored or goes off with someone else, and your whole emotional balance is destroyed, and this disturbance, which you don’t like, is called jealousy. There is pain in it, anxiety, hate and violence. So what you are really saying is, ‘As long as you belong to me I love you but the moment you don’t I begin to hate you.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, “What did that man pick up?” “He picked up a piece of the truth,” said the devil. “That is a very bad business for you, then,” said his friend. “Oh, not at all,” the devil replied, “I am going to help him organize it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

By our pontifical assertions, our superior impatience, and our casual brushing aside of their curiosity, we do not encourage their inquiry, for we are rather apprehensive of what may be asked of us; we do not foster their discontent, for we ourselves have ceased to question.
conformant, notre action et notre pensée deviennent mécaniques, nos réactions de la Terre. Si leurs récits nous satisfont, c’est que nous vivons de découvert par nous-mêmes, rien d’originel, de non corrompu, de clair.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Find out what it means to die – not physically, that’s inevitable – but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known, the known pleasures, the known fears. Die to that every minute and you will see what it means to die so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent, so that there is incarnation not in a next life, but the next day.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it means to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters and my thirst was appeased. …I have seen the Light. I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world. …Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds – in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Order is virtue. And order isn’t a thing to be cultivated; you can’t say I will be orderly, I will do this and I won’t do that – then you are merely disciplining yourself, becoming more and more rigid, mechanical. Such a mind is totally incapable of coming upon this beauty that has no name, no expression. Order, like virtue, cannot be cultivated-if you cultivate humility you are obviously not humble; you can cultivate vanity, but to cultivate humility is not possible any more than to cultivate love. So order which is virtue cannot be practised. All that one can do is to see this total disorder within and outside oneself-see it! You can see this total disorder instantly and that is the only thing that matters-to see it instantly.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Nous, les êtres humains, somme ce que nous avons été pendant des millions d’années, colossalement avides, envieux, agressifs, jaloux, angoissés et désespérés, avec d’occasionnels éclairs de joie et d’amour. Nous sommes une étrange mixture de haine, de peur et de gentillesse ; nous sommes à la fois violents et en paix. Il y a eu un progrès extérieur depuis le char à boeufs jusqu’à l’avion à réaction, mais psychologiquement l’individu n’a pas du tout changé et c’est l’individu qui, dans le monde entier, a créé les structures des sociétés. Les structures sociales extérieures sont les résultantes des structures intérieures, psychologiques, qui constituent nos relations humaines, car l’individu est le résultat de l’expérience totale de l’homme, de sa connaissance et de son comportement. Chacun de nous est l’entrepôt de tout le passé. L’individu est l’humain qui est toute l’humanité. L’histoire entière de l’homme est écrite en nous-mêmes.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our look is as bound by time-space as our brain. We never look, we never see beyond this limitation; we do not know how to look through and beyond these fragmentary frontiers. But the eyes have to see beyond them, penetrating deeply and widely, without choosing, without shelter; they have to wander beyond man-made frontiers of ideas and values and to feel beyond love. Then there is a benediction which no god can give.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world’s problems.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To me, then, true criticism consists in trying to find out the intrinsic worth of the thing itself, and not in attributing a quality to that thing. You attribute a quality to an environment, to an experience, only when you want to derive something from it, when you want to gain or to have power or happiness. Now this destroys true criticism. Your desire is perverted through attributing values, and therefore you cannot see clearly. Instead of trying to see the flower in its original and entire beauty, you look at it through coloured glasses, and therefore you can never see it as it is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into works, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organizations become your chief concern.
How many members are there in it?” That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. “How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false.” I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. As I said, if there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough.
Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity.
So you will see how absurd is the whole structure that you have built, looking for external help, depending on others for your comfort, for your happiness, for your strength. These can only be found within yourselves.
You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible? You are not serious in these things.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

All that we have invented, the symbols in the church, the rituals, they are all put there by thought. Thought has invented these things. Invented the savior. Invented the temples of India and the contents of the temples. Thought has invented all these things called sacred. You cannot deny that. So thought in itself is not sacred. And when thought invents God, God is not sacred. So what is sacred? That can only be understood or happen when there is complete freedom, from fear, from sorrow, and when there is this sense of love and compassion with it’s own intelligence. Then when the mind is utterly still, that which is sacred can take place.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

As one sat in the aeroplane amidst all the noise, smoking and loud talking, most unexpectedly, the sense of immensity and that extraordinary benediction which was felt at il L., that imminent feeling of sacredness, began to take place. The body was nervously tense because of the crowd, noise, etc. but in spite of all this, it was there. The pressure and the strain were intense and there was acute pain at the back of the head. There was only this state and there was no observer. The whole body was wholly in it and the feeling of sacredness was so intense that a groan escaped from the body and passengers were sitting in the next seats. It went on for several hours, late into the night. It was as though one was looking, not with eyes only but with a thousand centuries; it was altogether a strange occurrence. The brain was completely empty, all reaction had stopped; during all those hours, one was not aware of this emptiness but only in writing it is the thing known, but this knowledge is only descriptive and not real. That the brain could empty itself is an odd phenomenon. As the eyes were closed, the body, the brain seemed to plunge into unfathomable depths, into states of incredible sensitivity and beauty. The passenger in the next seat began to ask something and having replied, this intensity was there; there was no continuity but only being. And dawn was coming leisurely and the clear sky was filling with light – As this is being written late in the day, with sleepless fatigue, that sacredness is there. The pressure and the strain too.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

How does fear come into this? I had pain yesterday; there is the memory of it and I do not want it again tomorrow. Thinking about the pain of yesterday, thinking which involves the memory of yesterday’s pain, projects the fear of having pain again tomorrow. So it is thought that brings about fear. Thought breeds fear; thought also cultivates pleasure. To understand fear you must also understand pleasure – they are interrelated; without understanding one you cannot understand the other. This means that one cannot say ‘I must only have pleasure and no fear’; fear is the other side of the coin which is called pleasure.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there’s no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for sport, for food, or for knowledge. Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty. You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places but you are a killer and so lose their friendship. You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Je pense qu’il y a une différence entre l’être humain et l’individu. L’individu est une entité locale, qui vit dans tel pays, qui appartient à telle culture, à telle société, à telle religion. L’être humain n’est pas une entité locale. Il est partout. Si l’individu n’agit que dans un coin du vaste champ de la vie, son action n’aura aucun lien avec la totalité. Veuillez donc tenir présent à l’esprit que ce dont nous parlons est la totalité, non la partie, car dans le plus grand est le plus petit, mais dans le plus petit, le plus grand n’est pas.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer, and you are impatient. You want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

La cause fondamentale du désordre en nous-mêmes est cette recherche d’une réalité promise par autrui. Nous obéissons mécaniquement à celui qui nous promet une vie spirituelle confortable. Alors que la plupart d’entre nous sont opposés à la tyrannie politique et à la dictature, c’est extraordinaire à quel point nous acceptons l’autorité et la tyrannie de ceux qui déforment nos esprits et qui faussent notre mode de vie.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I think it is always important to ask fundamental questions, but when we do ask a fundamental question, most of us are seeking an answer, and then the answer is invariably superficial because there is no yes or no answer to life. Life is a movement, an endless movement, and to inquire into this extraordinary thing called life, with all its innumerable aspects, one must ask fundamental questions and never be satisfied with answers, however satisfactory they may be, because the moment you have an answer, the mind has concluded, and conclusion is not life – it is merely a static state. So what is important is to ask the right question and never be satisfied with the answer, however clever, however logical, because the truth of the question lies beyond the conclusion, beyond the answer, beyond the verbal expression. The mind that asks a question and is merely satisfied with an explanation, a verbal statement, remains superficial. It is only the mind that asks a fundamental question and is capable of pursuing that question to the end – it is only such a mind that can find out what is truth.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another – and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not.
If I use you for my fulfillment for my happiness, you become very unimportant, because it is my happiness I am concerned with. So when the mind is concerned with the idea that it can have happiness through somebody, through a thing or through an idea, do I not make all these means transitory? Because my concern is then something else, to go further, to catch something beyond.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

La Vérité n’a pas de sentier, et c’est cela sa beauté : elle est vivante. Une chose morte peut avoir un sentier menant à elle, car elle est statique. Mais lorsque vous voyez que la vérité est vivante, mouvante, qu’elle n’a pas de lieu où se reposer, qu’aucun temple, aucune mosquée ou église, qu’aucune religion, qu’aucun maître ou philosophe, bref que rien ne peut vous y conduire . alors vous verrez aussi que cette chose vivante est ce que vous êtes en toute réalité : elle est votre colère, votre brutalité, votre violence, votre désespoir. Elle est l’agonie et la douleur que vous vivez. La vérité est en la compréhension de tout cela, vous ne pouvez le comprendre qu’en sachant le voir dans votre vie. Il est impossible de le voir à travers une idéologie, à travers un écran de mots, à travers l’espoir et la peur.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is one of the most serious things; you do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody “I love you”, when you are considering your children, when you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, worshipping the flag, educating them to enter into this trap of the modern world; watching all that, realizing your part in it, all that is part of meditation. And when you so meditate you will find in it an extraordinary beauty; you will act rightly at every moment; and if you do not act rightly at a given moment it does not matter, you will pick it up again – you will not waste time in regret. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Now, please has created this pattern of social life. We take pleasure in ambition, in competition, in acquiring knowledge or power, or position, prestige, status. And that pursuit of pleasure as ambition, competition, greed, envy, status, domination, power is respectable. It is made respectable by a society which has only one concept: that you shall lead a moral life, which is a respectable life. You can be ambitious, you can be greedy, you can be violent, you can be competitive, you can be a ruthless human being, but society accepts it, because at the end of your ambition, you are either so called successful man with plenty of money, or a failure and therefore a frustrated human being. So social morality is immorality.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

One of our difficulties is, surely, that we want to be happy through something, through a person, through a symbol, through an idea, through virtue, through action, through companionship. We think happiness, or reality, or what you like to call it, can be found through something. Therefore we feel that through action, through companionship, through certain ideas, we will find happiness. So being lonely, I want to find someone or some idea through which I can be happy. But loneliness always remains; it is ever there.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It’s the mirror of your consciousness: this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joys and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

So let us decide whether you want a shelter, a safety zone, which will no longer yield conflict, whether you want to escape from the present conflict to enter a condition in which there shall be no conflict; or whether you are unaware, unconscious of this conflict in which you exist. If you are unconscious of the conflict, that is, the battle that is taking place between that self and the environment, if you are unconscious of that battle, then why do you seek further remedies? Remain unconscious.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

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