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Don't Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You. All They Show Is Limitation. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

-Richard Bach

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Don't Believe What Your

Richard Bach

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Don't Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You. All They Show Is Limitation. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

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We [people] Have A Teacher! The Teacher Is Ourselves! We Already Know Everything We Need To Know - Our Challenge Is To Discover That We Know It. Turning To Gurus, I Think, We Become Guru-dependent, No Different From Drug-dependent, Alcohol-dependent - Needing An Outside Force To Control Our Lives.

What If Somebody Came Along Who Could Teach Me How My World Works And How To Control It What If I Could Meet A Super-advanced ... What If A Siddhartha Or A Jesus Came Into Our Time, With Power Over The Illusions Of The World Because He Knew The Reality Behind Them And What If I Could Meet Him In Person, If He Were Flying A Biplane, For Instance, And Landed In The Same Meadow With Me.

Our Soulmate Is Someone Who Shares Our Deepest Longings, Our Sense Of Direction. When We're Two Balloons, And Together Our Direction Is Up, Chances Are We've Found The Right Person. Our Soulmate Is The One Who Makes Life Come To Life.

There Is Something That Is Transcendental About When We Are Immersed In That Which We Most Love.

He Spoke Of Very Simple Things- That It Is Right For A Gull To Fly, That Freedom Is The Very Nature Of His Being, That Whatever Stands Against That Freedom Must Be Set Aside, Be It Ritual Or Superstition Or Limitation In Any Form. "set Aside," Came A Voice From The Multitude, "even If It Be The Law Of The Flock?" "the Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom," Jonathan Said. "there Is No Other.

Numbers Are Limits, And Perfection Doesn't Have Limits.

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

Get This In Mind Early: We Never Grow Up.

We Are Each Given A Block Of Marble When We Begin A Lifetime, And The Tools To Shape It Into Sculpture... We Can Drag It Behind Us Untouched, We Can Pound It Into Gravel, We Can Shape It Into Glory.

Don't You Think Between Here And Now We Will See Each Other Once Or Twice?

Some Choices We Live Not Only Once But A Thousand Times Over, Remembering Them For The Rest Of Our Lives.

You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self.

Here's How The People Live Here, In Big House-shaped Boxes To Keep Off 'rain' And 'snow,' Holes Cut In The Sides So They Can See Out. They Move Around In Smaller Boxes, Painted Different Colours, With Wheels On The Corners. They Need This Box-culture Because Each Person Thinks Of Herself And Himself As Locked In A Box Called A 'body,' Arms And Legs, Fingers To Move Pencils And Tools, Languages Because They've Forgotten How To Communicate, Eyes Because They've Forgotten How To See. Odd Little Planet. Wish You Were Here. Home Soon.

Money Is A Great Isolator. In Fact, We Don't Even Need To Have Money Or Make Money, We Only Need To Be Perceived As Having Money To Be Isolated In The Strangest Ways From Most Of The Community Around Us. It Reaches The Point Where A Person With Money Spends A Great Deal Of Time Reacting To People Who Are Reacting To The Money.

It’s Not When You Start That Makes Your Success In The World, But When You Quit.

You Can Achieve A Goal; You Never Really Achieve Your Purpose, Because Your Purpose Is Ongoing. It Never Stops.

When One Individual Writer Sings Her Song Of Beauty, She Changes The Lives Of A Million Others.

Your Whole Body, From Wingtip To Wingtip," Jonathan Would Say, Other Times, "is Nothing More Than Your Thought Itself, In A Form You Can See. Break The Chains Of Your Thought, And You Break The Chains Of Your Body, Too.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I Like That You Can Open Up Any One Of My Books Anywhere And Immediately Be Lost. I Just Love Them So Much.

An Easy Life Doesn't Teach Us Anything. In The End It's The Learning That Matters: What We've Learned And How We've Grown

Don't Fear Change. It's Always For The Best.

In Order To Live Free And Happily You Must Sacrifice Boredom. It Is Not Always An Easy Sacrifice.

There Is Such A Thing As Perfection...and Our Purpose For Living Is To Find That Perfection And Show It Forth....each Of Us Is In Truth An Unlimited Idea Of Freedom. Everything That Limits Us We Have To Put Aside.

Everybody Is Given A Dream... You May Have To Work For It However.

If We Change In Different Directions, Then We Don't Have Any Future Anyway, Do We? I Think It's Possible For Two People To Change Together, To Grow Together And Enrich Instead Of Diminish Each Other. The Sum Of One And One, If They're The Right Ones, Can Be Infinity! But So Often One Person Drags The Other Down; One Person Wants To Go Up Like A Balloon And The Other's A Dead Weight. I've Always Wondered What It Would Be Like If Both People, If A Woman And A Man Both Wanted To Go Up Like Balloons!

If You Want To Meet Someone Who Can Fix Any Situation You Don't Like, Who Can Bring You Happiness In Spite Of What Other People Say Or Believe, Look In A Mirror, Then Say This Magic Word: 'hello.'

You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self. Don't Turn Away From Possible Futures Before You're Certain You Don't Have Anything To Learn From Them. You're Always Free To Change Your Mind And Choose A Different Future, Or A Different Past.

Reality Is Divinely Indifferent.

When You Dream, All The Scenery, Characters, Events, Perils, And Outcomes Are Built From Your Own Consciousness, The Darks And Oppressions As Well As The Delights. Same With The World Awake, Though It Takes You Longer To Build It.

You Are Not The Child Of The People You Call Mother And Father, But Their Fellow-adventurer On A Bright Journey To Understand The Things That Are.

It's Easy To Live The Expected And Conventional. It's When You Live The Unexpected That You Start Having Fun With Your Life.

And Like No Other Sculpture In The History Of Art, The Dead Engine And Dead Airframe Come To Life At The Touch Of A Human Hand, And Join Their Life With The Pilot's Own.

We Choose Our Next World Through What We Learn In This One. Learn Nothing, And The Next World Is The Same As This One, All The Same Limitations And Lead Weights To Overcome.

Nothing Happens By Chance, My Friend... No Such Thing As Luck.

It Doesn’t Take Time To Change Once You Understand The Problem...somebody Hands You A Rattlesnake, It Doesn’t Take Long To Drop It, Does It?

You're Master Of What You've Lived, Artisan At What You're Living, Amateur At What's Next To Live.

Why Fly? Simple. I'm Not Happy Unless There's Some Room Between Me And The Ground.

Without My Airplane I Am An Ordinary Man, And A Useless One - A Trainer Without A Horse, A Sculptor Without Marble, A Priest Without A God. Without An Airplane I Am A Lonely Consumer Of Hamburgers.

You Don't Want A Million Answers As Much As You Want A Few Forever Questions. The Questions Are Diamonds You Hold In The Light. Study A Lifetime And You See Different Colors From The Same Jewel.

We Wait All These Years To Find Someone Who Understands Us, I Thought, Someone Who Accepts Us As We Are, Someone With A Wizard's Power To Melt Stone To Sunlight, Who Can Bring Us Happiness In Spite Of Trials, Who Can Face Our Dragons In The Night, Who Can Transform Us Into The Soul We Choose To Be. Just Yesterday I Found That Magical Someone Is The Face We See In The Mirror: It's Us And Our Homemade Masks.

The Conversation Between Fletcher And Jonathan Livingston Seagull Is Centered On Why Some Have Achieved More Than Others . . . Are They Divine . . . Ahead Of Their Times . . . Fletcher Says, Well, This Kind Of Flying Has Always Been Here To Be Learned By Anybody Who Wanted To Discover It; That's Got Nothing To Do With Time. We're Ahead Of The Fashion, Maybe. Ahead Of The Way Most Gulls Fly. Poor Fletch. Don't You Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You? All They Show Is Limitations. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

We [people] Have The Power To Destroy Ourselves As Well As The Environment. As A Species We Love What I'd Call Brinks-person-ship, Going Right To The Edge Of Disaster And Somehow Managing To Pull Back And Recover. But My Bet Is Still On The Creative And Playful And Positive In The Species. I Think We Will Manage To Survive And Gradually Turn Things Around.

The Ideas Behind The Words Are Simple Ones That Work In Everyday Life; Find What We Most Want To Do; Do It, No Matter What; And In The Doing Be Guaranteed A Very Difficult And A Very Happy Lifetime.

Some Religions Believe That There's A Hierarchy, That You Don't Have A Connection, But You Must Go Through The Shaman Or The Priest Or Whoever The Religious Leader Is. And That's What Surprises Me, That Some People Who Find A Huge Value In These Kinds Of Systems Also Seem To Enjoy Illusions. I Can't Figure It Out.

So This World, I Think, And An Indefinite Number Of Other Worlds Of Our Creation, Are Also - We're Here For Fun; We're Here For Learning; We're Here For Remembering Who We Are, And Who We Are, Are Expressions Of Life So Absolutely Linked With The Life That Is, Always Was, Always Will Be.

With Every Choice You Risk The Life You Would Have Had; With Every Decision, You Lose It.

The Only Thing That's Real In Any Universe [is] That Brilliant Fire Of Love That Burns To The Exclusion Of Everything Else. As We Recognize The Presence Of Love, We Break Through The Wall Of Grief That Would Try To Convince Us That The Dear Soul With Whom We Have Learned And Loved So Much No Longer Exists, Or That She Or He Cannot Speak With Us. There Is No Wall That Love Cannot Vaporize. We May Believe In Death, Love Doesn't.

The Bond That Links Your True Family Is Not One Of Blood, But Of Respect And Joy In Each Other's Life.

Laughing On The Way To Your Execution Is Not Generally Understood By Less-advanced Life Forms, And They Call You Crazy.

Remember Where You Came

Your Only Obligation In Any Lifetime Is To Be True To Yourself. Being True To Anyone Else Or Anything Else Is Not Only Impossible, But The Mark Of A Fake Messiah.

We Must Honor Our Dragons, Encourage Them To Be Worthy Destroyers, Expect They'll Strive To Cut Us Down. It Is Their Duty To Ridicule Us, It Is Their Job To Demean Us, To Force Us If They Can To Stop Being Different! And When We Walk Our Way No Matter Their Fire And Their Fury, Our Dragons Shrug When We're Out Of Sight, Return To Their Card-games Philosophical: 'ah Well, We Can't Toast 'em All...'

Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is A Mystery, Today Is A Gift, That's Why We Call It The Present. If I Am Not For Myself, Who Will Be For Me? And If I Am Only For Myself, What Am I? And If Not Now, When? A Brick Alone Is Nothing But A Brick. It Takes A Collection Of Bricks To Build A House. Instructor, What?? You Mean You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn

Everything In This Book May Be Wrong. - The Savior's Manual

Remember Where You Came From, Where You're Going, And Why You Created This Mess You Got Yourself Into In The First Place.

Every Word That Judges Value Is Circular. 'good' Is 'right' Is 'proper' Is 'just' Is 'good'. But Check The Examples, And They're Not Circular At All: Every One Says 'makes Me Happy'.

There Is No Such Thing As A Problem Without A Gift For You In Its Hands. You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

When We Put Up With Any Situation We Don’t Have To Put Up With, It’s Not Because We’re Dumb. We Put Up With It, Because We Want The Lesson Only That Situation Can Teach, And We Want It More Than Freedom Myself.

There's So Much To Learn! And Just When We Think, "i've Got It. I Really Understand What's Going On," We're Shown A Whole New Stage Set On Which To Play.

Just Be Who You Are, Calm And Clear And Bright. Automatically, As We Shine Who We Are, Asking Ourselves Every Minute Is This What I Really Want To Do, Doing It Only When We Answer Yes, Automatically That Turns Away Those Who Have Nothing To Learn From Who We Are And Attracts Those Who Do, And From Whom We Have To Learn, As Well.

Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

That’s Why Love Stories Don’t Have Endings! They Don’t Have Endings Because Love Doesn’t End.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Whatever Happens On The Surface, It's Leading Us In A Direction. That Beautiful Core Within Us That Is Our Character Will Make Choices That Will Inevitably Leads Us To A Higher Understanding Of Who We Are And Why We're Here. And It's Best To Be Aware Of That While It's Happening.

Choose A Love And Work To Make It True, And Somehow, Something Will Happen, Something You Couldn’t Plan, Will Come Along To Move Like To Like, To Set You Loose, To Set You On The Way To Your Next Brick Wall.

Avoid Problems, And You'll Never Be The One Who Overcame Them.

To Fly As Fast As Thought, To Anywhere That Is, You Must Begin By Knowing That You Have Already Arrived.

No Matter How Qualified Or Deserving We Are, We Will Never Reach A Better Life Until We Can Imagine It For Ourselves And Allow Ourselves To Have It.

Overcome Space, And All We Have Left Is Here. Overcome Time, And All We Have Left Is Now.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

He Moves Not Through Distance, But Through The Ranges Of Satisfaction That Come From Hauling Himself Up Into The Air With Complete And Utter Control; From Knowing Himself And Knowing His Airplane So Well That He Can Come Somewhere Close To Touching, In His Own Special And Solitary Way, That Thing That Is Called Perfection.

The Simplest Questions Are The Most Profound. Where Were You Born? Where Is Your Home? Where Are You Going? What Are You Doing? Think About These Once In A While And Watch Your Answers Change.

Whatever It Is That Calls Us, That's Our Path. And As We Walk That Path, We Have A Chance To Shine Forth Who We Are. It Affects Other People Around Us.

All Of Us Are Called By Something In This World That Attracts Us. And It Doesn't Matter What It Is - You Can Be An Engine Mechanic Or An Aviator Or You Can Be Someone Who Loves Their Flower Garden Or The World Of Commerce Or Sailboats.

Thanks To You, I Always Am So Happy. Now I Want To Give You All The Happiness On Your Birthday.

Of Course I'm A Fake. We're All Fakes On This Whole World, Pretending To Be Something We're Not. We Are Not Just Bodies Walking Around, Not Just Atoms, Molecules. We Are Unkillable, Undestroyable Ideas Of The Is, No Matter How Much We Believe Otherwise.

If You Love Someone, Set Them Free. If They Come Back They're Yours; If They Don't They Never Were.

Character Comes From Following Our Highest Sense Of Right, From Trusting Ideas Without Being Sure They’ll Work.

The World Is A Dream, You Say, And It’s Lovely, Sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.” “no. The Image Is A Dream. The Beauty Is Real. Can You See The Difference?

There Are Two Tests That We [writers] Have For All Of Our Writing: So What? And Who Cares? There Is An Answer To Both. The Answer To Who Cares Is That A Reader Cares, If The Writing Is Good. The Answer To So What Is That These Ideas Give Us Completely New Understanding, Change Our Sense Of Who We [people] Are And Why We're Here [on This Planet].

I'm Not A Celebrity Or Near Celebrity. Sometimes People Will Say, "you're Famous" And That Stops Me Right There. What Does Fame Mean? Fame Is In The Eye Of The Beholder. So, If Somebody Wants To Call Me 'famous', That's Their Business. I'm Just Me, A Guy Who Messes Around With Airplanes And Writes Books That Make Sense To Him.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

She Didn't Mean To Be Sexy That Moment, But Even A Winter Nightgown Couldn't Hide That Lovely Outline. When Will I Outgrow My Simple-minded Fascination With The Form She Had Happened To Choose For Her Body? Never, I Thought

Two Thousand Years Ago, Five Thousand, They Didn't Have A Word For Imagination, And Faith Was The Best They Could Come Up With For A Pretty Solemn Bunch Of Followers.

Flyers Have A Sense Of Adventures Yet To Come, Instead Of Dimly Recalling Adventures Of Long Ago As The Only Moments In Which They Truly Lived.

Anyone Desperate Enough For Suicide... Should Be Desperate Enough To Go To Creative Extremes To Solve Problems: Elope At Midnight, Stow Away On The Boat To New Zealand And Start Over, Do What They Always Wanted To Do But Were Afraid To Try.

Flyers Fell A Certain Kinship With The Sight Of The Earth Unencrusted By Humanity, They Want To See It That Way In One Sweeping View, In Reassurance That Nature Still Exists On Her Own, Without A Chain-link Fence To Hold Her.

It's Like A Pulsar Inside Me. There Is This Great Burst Of Energy, Forcing Me To Write, And Then The Star Goes Quiet For A Time, And I Think It's Gone, But It's Gathering Energy For Another Burst. And I Seem To Be Almost Unwilling Participants In This.

Part One: I Do Not Exist To Impress The World. I Exist To Live My Life In A Way That Will Make Me Happy. Part Two: Everybody Else Is Free To Do Whatever They Feel Like Doing, For A Living. Part Three: Responsible Is Able To Respond, Able To Answer For The Way We Choose To Live. There's Only One Person We Have To Answer To, Of Course, And That Is Ourselves.

The Man Who Flies An Airplane ... Must Believe In The Unseen.

For Pilots Sometimes See Behind The Curtain, Behind The Veil Of Gossamer Velvet, And Find The Truth Behind Man, The Force Behind A Universe.

Whatever Enchants Also Guides And Protects.

A Name Is A Label, And As Soon As There Is A Label, The Ideas Disappear And Out Comes Label-worship And Label-bashing, And Instead Of Living By A Theme Of Ideas, People Begin Dying For Labels... And The Last Thing The World Needs Is Another Religion.

Nothing Happens By Chance, My Friend... No Such Thing As Luck. A Meaning Behind Every Little Thing, And Such A Meaning Behind This. Part For You, Part For Me, May Not See It All Real Clear Right Now, But We Will, Before Long.

Languages Are Fluffy Big Pillows Stuffed Between Nations - What Others Say Is Muffled And Nearly Lost In Them, And When We Speak Their Grammar We Get Feathers In Our Mouth. It's Worth It. What Pleasure To Phrase An Idea, Even In Child's Words, Slowly, And Sail It Across The Gulf In Another Language To A Different-speaking Human Being!

Of Course There’s Destiny, But Destiny Doesn’t Push You Where You Don’t Want To Go. You’re The Ones Who Choose. Destiny Is Up To You.

Grief Is No More Necessary When We Understand Death Than Fear Is Necessary When We Understand Flying.

In The Highest Sense, We Are All Creatures Of Light. And I Have A Very Difficult Time Talking With People Who Are Cynical About The World. "the World Is No Damn Good, And We're All Animals," And That Kind Of Thing. Well, I'm An Animal.

You Have The Freedom To Be Yourself, Your True Self, Here And Now, And Nothing Can Stand In Your Way".

For Most Gulls It Was Not Flying That Matters, But Eating. For This Gull, Though, It Was Not Eating That Mattered, But Flight.

Not Being Known Doesn't Stop The Truth From Being True. You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self. What The Caterpillar Calls The End Of The World, The Master Calls A Butterfly. Learning Is Finding Out What We Already Know. Doing Is Demonstrating That You Know It. Teaching Is Reminding Others That They Know Just As Well As You. You Are All Learners, Doers And Teachers. The Best Way To Pay For A Lovely Moment Is To Enjoy It.

Have You Ever Felt So At One With The World, With The Universe, With Everything That Is, That You Were Overcome With Love? That Is Reality. That Is The Truth. What We Make Of It Is Up To Us, As The Painting Of The Sunrise Is Up To The Artist. In Our World Humanity Has Strayed From That Love. It Lives Hatred And Power Struggles And Manipulations Of The Earth Itself For Its Own Narrow Reasons. Continue And No One Will See The Sunrise. The Sunrise Will Always Exist, Of Course, But People On Earth Will Know Nothing Of It And Finally Even Stories Of Its Beauty Will Fade From Our Knowing.

I Think There's An Invisible Principle Of Living Too. If We Believe We're Guided Through Every Step Of Our Lives, We Are. It's A Lovely Sight, Watching It Work.

Reputation Is What People Think You Are. Character Is Who You Really Are. Take Care Of Your Character And Your Reputation Will Take Care Of Itself. The More I Want To Get Something Done, The Less I Call It Work.

There Are No Mistakes. The Events We Bring Upon Ourselves, No Matter How Unpleasant, Are Necessary In Order To Learn What We Need To Learn; Whatever Steps We Take, They're Necessary To Reach The Places We've Chosen To Go.

And Behind It Lies Not Blind Chance But A Principle That Works To Help Us Understand, A Thousand "coincidences" And Friends Come To Show Us The Way When The Problem Seems Too Hard To Solve Alone. Problems For Overcoming. Freedom For Proving. And, As Long As We Believe In Our Dream, Nothing By Chance.

Silly Ideas, Worth The Admission Price In Smiles, But They're True. Is High-energy Physics Interesting Because It's True Or Because It's Crazy?

Part Of Us Is Always The Observer, And No Matter What, It Observes. It Watches Us. It Does Not Care If We Are Happy Or Unhappy, If We Are Sick Or Well, If We Live Or Die. It’s Only Job Is To Sit There On Our Shoulder And Pass Judgment On Whether We Are Worthwhile Human Beings.

I Do Not Enjoy Writing At All. If I Can Turn My Back On An Idea, Out There In The Dark, If I Can Avoid Opening The Door To It, I Won't Even Reach For A Pencil.

Can Miles Truly Separate You From Friends... If You Want To Be With Someone You Love, Aren't You Already There?

Why Had Such A Promising World Been Crucified On The Tree Of Obligation, Thorned By Duties, Hanged By Hypocrisy, Smothered By Customs?

Before You'll Change, Something Important Must Be At Risk.

The Only Way To Avoid All Frightening Choices Is To Leave Society And Become A Hermit, And That Is A Frightening Choice.

Responsible Is Able To Respond, Able To Answer For The Way We Choose To Live. There's Only One Person We Have To Answer To, Of Course, And That Is Ourselves.

You Teach Best That Which You Need Most To Learn.

From Time To Time It's Fun To Close Our Eyes, And In That Dark Say To Ourselves, 'i Am The Sorcerer, And When I Open My Eyes I Shall See A World That I Have Created, And For Which I And Only I Am Completely Responsible.' Slowly Then, Eyelids Open Like Curtains Lifting Stage-center. And Sure Enough, There's Our World, Just The Way We've Built It.

Next To ‘god’, ‘love’ Is The Word Most Mangled In Every Language.

Isn't It Strange How Much We Know If Only We Ask Ourselves Instead Of Somebody Else.

Every Gift From A Friend Is A Wish For Your Happiness.

For A Moment, Off Balance, Was I Annoyed? Anger Is Always Fear, I Thought, And Fear Is Always Fear Of Loss. Would I Lose Myself If He Made Those Choices? It Took A Second To Settle Down: I'd Lose Nothing. They'd Be His Wishes, Not Mine, And He's Free To Live As He Wants. The Loss Would Come If I Dared Force Him, Tried To Live For Him And Me As Well. There'd Be Disaster Worse Than Life On A Bar Stool.

The Big Thing About Writing Is Three Commands: Have Fun. Don't Think. Don't Care.

Sometimes When You Say Goodbye, That's The Right Thing To Do In A Relationship.

I Belong To A Group Of Men Who Fly Alone. There Is Only One Seat In The Cockpit Of A Fighter Airplane. There Is No Space Alotted For Another Pilot To Tune The Radios In The Weather Or Make The Calls To Air Traffic Control Centers Or To Help With The Emergency Procedures Or To Call Off The Airspeed Down Final Approach. There Is No One Else To Break The Solitude Of A Long Cross-country Flight. There Is No One Else To Make Decisions.

There's This Wonderful And Very Important Event When We're Born, And We Forget Everything That's Gone Before, Or Else We'd Be Such A Mass Of Rememberings That We Couldn't Operate Successfully On This Planet.

Forget Everything

Important Events

You Don't Tell The Quality Of A Master By The Size Of His Crowds.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves. We Live In Denial Of What We Do, Even What We Think. We Do This Because We're Afraid.we Fear We Will Not Find Love,and When We Find It We Fear We'll Lose It. We Fear That If We Don't Have Love We Will Be Unhappy.

I Relax My Body Completely, Relax My Mind Completely, And Then Imagine Myself At A Level Where Anything Can Happen.

Whatever We Hold In Thought Comes True In Our Experience; Like Attracts Like; We Experiment With The Law Of Changing Appearances, To Make Our Outer World Reflect Our Inner.

One School Is Finished, And The Time Has Come For Another To Begin.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

Just Because Somebody Drops In On You From Another Dimension, Don't Assume They're Wiser Than You About Anything At All, Or That They Can Do Anything Better Than You Can Do Yourself. Discarnate Or Mortal, What Matters About People Is What They Know.

The World Is Your Exercise Book, The Pages On Which You Do Your Sums. It Is Not Reality, Though You May Express Reality There If You Wish. You Are Also Free To Write Lies, Or Nonsense, Or To Tear The Pages.

Then Be Sure Of One Thing: The Is Has Imagined It Quite A Bit Better Than You Have. The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

You Will Begin To Touch Heaven, Jonathan, In The Moment That You Touch Perfect Speed. And That Isn’t Flying A Thousand Miles An Hour, Or A Million, Or Flying At The Speed Of Light. Because Any Number Is A Limit, And Perfection Doesn’t Have Limits. Perfect Speed, My Son, Is Being There.

A Writer, Or A Beginning Writer, Is Faced By The Huge Walls Of Self-consciousness. Most People Think, "what If I Say The Wrong Thing? What If I Don't Sound Erudite And Sophisticated? I'll Be Considered A Fool." In Time, With A Lot Of Practice, You Realize That's Your Foolishness Is Your Gift.

Do You Have Any Idea How Many Lives We Must Have Gone Through Before We Even Get The First Idea That There Is More To Life Than Eating, Or Fighting, Or Power In The Flock? A Thousand Lives, Jon, Ten Thousand! And Then Another Hundred Lives Until We Began To Learn That There Is Such A Thing As Perfection, And Another Hundred Again To Get The Idea That Our Purpose For Living Is To Find That Perfection And Show It Forth... We Choose Our Next World Through What We Learn In This One. Learn Nothing, And The Next World Is The Same As This One, All The Same Limitations And Lead Weights To Overcome.

You Are Life, Inventing Form. No More Can You Die On Sword Or Years Than You Can Die On Doorways Through Which You Walk, One Room Into Another. Every Room Gives Its Word For You To Speak, Every Passage Its Song For You To Sing.

A Drug For Everything Is Madness. Legal Or Not, Prescribed Or Not, Over-counter Under-counter Bought For Blood On Street-corners-every Pill Separates Us From Knowing Our Own Completion And From Being Taught By What's True.

A Moment Later Jonathan's Body Wavered In The Air, Shimmering, And Began To Go Transparent. "don't Let Them Spread Silly Rumors About Me, Or Make Me A God. O.k., Fletch? I'm A Seagull. I Like To Fly, Maybe...

Ask Yourself The Secret Of Your Success. Listen To Your Answer, And Practice It.

If Your Happiness Depends On What Somebody Else Does, I Guess You Do Have A Problem.

The One Thing We Fear Most Is The One Thing That Is Not Possible: We Cannot Die, We Cannot Be Destroyed.

"what Is My Highest Sense Of Right?" We Can Ask At Any Decision Point In Our Lives And Not Worry About If This Is Going To Lose Us A Lot Of Money Or Is This Going To Make Us A Lot Of Money Or Whatever.

How Can We Resent The Life We've Created For Ourselves? Who's To Blame, Who's To Credit, But Us? Who Can Change It, Any Time We Wish, But Us?

I’m Here Not Because I Am Supposed To Be Here, Or Because I’m Trapped Here, But Because I’d Rather Be With You Than Anywhere Else In The World.

The Creative, Loving-something Life Is Also The Healthy One. There Is Healing And Protection In Doing What Makes You Happy.

Thousands Of Volumes Have Been Written About Aviation, But We Do Not Automatically Have Thousands Of True And Special Friends In Their Authors. That Rare Writer Who Comes Alive On A Page Does It By Giving Of Himself, By Writing Of Meanings, And Not Just Of Fact Or Of Things That Have Happened To Him. The Writers Of Flight Who Have Done This Are Usually Found Together In A Special Section On Private Bookshelves.

The Gull Sees Farthest Who Flies Highest

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It.

Use It Or Lose It

Flying Has Always Been To Me This Wonderful Metaphor. In Order To Fly You Have To Trust What You Can't See. Up On The Mountain Ridges Where Very Few People Have Been I Have Thought Back To What Every Flyer Knows. That There Is This Special World In Which We Dwell That's Not Marked By Boundaries, It's Not A Map. We're Not Hedged About With Walls And Desks. So Often In An Office The Very Worst Thing That Can Happen Is You Could Drop Your Pencil. Out There's A Reminder That Are A Lot Worse Things, And A Lot Greater Rewards.

To Me, One Of The Most Profound Questions We Can Ask Is: "so What?" And So What If There's An Indefinite Number Of Worlds With Alternate "us-es" In Them? The "so What," To Me, Comes Alive When I Ask Myself: "what If I Could Find A Way To Get In Touch With Those Alternate Mes Who Made Those Choices?" That Is, Persons Who, If I Saw Them Now, I Wouldn't Even Recognize Because Their Choices, Once Small, Have Multiplied To Make Them Such Different People.

Don't Be Dismayed By Good-byes. A Farewell Is Necessary Before You Can Meet Again. And Meeting Again, After Moments Or Lifetimes, Is Certain For Those Who Are Friends.

At Last, The Answer Why. The Lesson That Had Been So Hard To Find, So Difficult To Learn, Came Quick And Clear And Simple. The Reason For Problems Is To Overcome Them. Why, That’s The Very Nature Of Man, I Thought, To Press Past Limits, To Prove His Freedom. It Isn’t The Challenge That Faces Us, That Determines Who We Are And What We Are Becoming, But The Way We Meet The Challenge, Whether We Toss A Match At The Wreck Or Work Our Way Through It, Step By Step, To Freedom.

You've Given Up Your Whole Life To Be The Person You Are Now. Is It Worth It?

I Am Tired Of Clinging. Though I Cannot See It With My Eyes, I Trust That The Current Knows Where It Is Going. I Shall Let Go, And Let It Take Me Where It Will. Clinging, I Shall Die Of Boredom.

We All Know Those Who Draw Their Boundaries Carefully And Say, "i'm Only Human. Nobody's Perfect. I Accept My Limitations." And We Know Others Who Take An Opposite View And Say, "i Can Do Anything I Choose To Do. It Is In My Power To Change The World." And Those Are The Ones Who Most Often Change The World.

Anybody Who's Ever Mattered, Anybody Who's Ever Been Happy, Anybody Who's Ever Given Any Gift Into The World Has Been A Divinely Selfish Soul, Living For His Own Best Interest. No Exceptions.

I Do Not Exist To Impress The World. I Exist To Live My Life In A Way That Will Make Me Happy.

Respect For Sovereignity, For Privacy, For Total Independence. Gentle Alliances Against Loneliness, They Were, Cool Rational Love-affairs Without The Love.

Look In The Mirror And One Thing Is Sure: What We See Is Not Who We Are.

If You're Always Looking At Someone Else, Trying To Imitate Them, How Can Your Natural Gifts Ever Emerge?

He Was Not Bone And Feather But A Perfect Idea Of Freedom And Flight, Limited By Nothing At All

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Within Each Of Us Lies The Power Of Our Consent To Health And Sickness, To Riches And Poverty, To Freedom And To Slavery. It Is We Who Control These, And Not Another.

Allow The World To Live As It Chooses, And Allow Yourself To Live As You Choose.

Never Stop Feeling And Seeing And Being Excited With Great Things Like Air And Engines And Sounds Of Sunlight Within You.

A Cloud Does Not Know Why It Moves In Just Such A Direction And At Such A Speed, It Feels An Impulsion... This Is The Place To Go Now. But The Sky Knows The Reasons And The Patterns Behind All Clouds, And You Will Know, Too, When You Lift Yourself High Enough To See Beyond Horizons.

If We Agree That The World Is Not What It Seems, Then We Have An Important Question: What Shall We Do About It?

Argue For Your Limitations, And Sure Enough They're Yours.

What Matters Is How I Use What I Know, Every Minute Of Every Day; How I Use It To Remember, In The Midst Of The Game.

We [americans] Are Game-playing, Fun-loving Creatures; We Are The Otters Of The Universe.

A Professional Writer Is An Amateur Who Didn't Quit.

We Thought Humble And Proud At The Same Time, All At Once In Love Again With This Painful Bittersweet Lovely Thing Called Flight.

Heaven Isnot A Place, And It Isnot Atime.heaven Isbeing Perfect.

Good And Evil Are Not What Our Parents Told Us, Not What Our Church Tells Us, Or Our Country, Not What Anybody Else Tells Us! All Of Us Decide Good And Evil For Ourselves, Automatically, By Choosing What We Want To Do!

There’s No Disaster That Can’t Become A Blessing, And No Blessing That Can’t Become A Disaster.

Listen,' He Said. 'it's Important. We Are All. Free. To Do. Whatever. We Want. To Do.

If We Want To End This Lifetime Higher Than We Began, We Can Expect An Uphill Road.

Jonathan Seagull Discovered That Boredom And Fear And Anger Are The Reasons That A Gull's Life Is So Short, And With Those Gone From His Thought, He Lived A Long Fine Life Indeed.

We Don't Have Rights Until We Claim Them.

Judge Not By The Form Of The Messenger, But The Form Of The Message.

If You Will Practice Being Fictional For A While, You Will Understand That Fictional Characters Are Sometimes More Real Than People With Bodies And Heartbeats.

We're All The Sons Of God, Or Children Of The Is, Or Ideas Of The Mind, Or However Else You Want To Say It.

Cherish Yesterday, Dream Tomorrow, Live Today.

Yesterday And Today

No Matter How Qualified You Are, You Won't Reach A Better Life Until You Imagine It.

Law Of Attraction

Like Everything Else, Fletcher. Practice.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

We Know Nothing Until Intuition Agrees.

Anything We Need To Know, We Can Learn It From A Book.

Happiness Is The Reward We Get For Living To The Highest Right We Know.

There Is A Sense Of Oneness That From Time To Time I'm Aware Of In My Life. Certainly Not All The Time, And There Are Times When I Get Frightened And When I Get Upset. But At The Best Of Times, It's A Personal Oneness.

One Of The Cosmic Laws, I Think, Is That Whatever We Hold In Our Thought Will Come True In Our Experience.

Law Of Attraction

The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

Fear Is All The Fear Of Some Loss: "i'm Going To Lose Something." If We Declare, And If We Know In Our Hearts, "i Already Have Everything That I Need: I Have Life, I Have Creativity, I Have Joy, I Have Nourishment. I Have Everything I Need," And If We Just Say, "it Doesn't Depend On My Having A Physical Body To Do It," Then Everything Opens Up.

The Highest Art Form Of All Is A Human Being In Control Of Himself And His Airplane In Flight, Urging The Spirit Of A Machine To Match His Own.

Sooner I'd Try To Change History Than Turn Political, Than Try Convincing Others To Write Letters Or To Vote Or To March Or To Do Something They Didn't Already Feel Like Doing.

To Learn Anything, You Must Put Aside The Safety Of Your Ignorance.

Strong Beliefs Win Strong Men, And Then Make Them Stronger.

Real Integrity Is Doing The Right Thing, Knowing That Nobody's Going To Know Whether You Did It Or Not. Sooner Or Later, Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

There Is A Kind Of Silver Spiderweb That's Spun Around The World, And The Strands Of That Web Are Certain Loves And Certain Understandings. And If We Follow Those, And If We Walk Those Strands, We're Going To Meet Others At The Intersections Who Have Been Walking The Same Way Across This Web. And When We Meet, There's A Kind Of "i Know Who You Are."

Two Things I Do Value A Lot, Intimacy And The Capacity For Joy, Didn't Seem To Be On Anyone Else S List. I Felt Like The Stranger In A Strange Land, And Decided I'd Better Not Marry The Natives.

Don't Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You. All They Show Is Limitation. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

If You Don't Want To Be A Teacher, You'd Better Get Off This Planet.

It Was Morning, And The New Sun Sparkled Gold Across The Ripples Of A Gentle Sea.

Instead Of Our Drab Slogging Forth And Back To The Fishing Boats, There's Reason To Live! We Can Lift Ourselves Out Of Ignorance, We Can Find Ourselves As Creatures Of Excellence And Intelligence And Skill. We Can Learn To Be Free! We Can Learn To Fly!

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Queen Elizabeth II

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