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Ken Wilber

Kenneth Earl Wilber Jr. (born 31 January 1949) is an American author who writes on psychology, philosophy, mysticism, ecology, and spiritual evolution. His work formulates what he calls an "integral theory of consciousness". He is a leading proponent of the integral movement and founded the Integral Institute in 1998.

Quotes

 * In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the "edge of history". There would be a real New Age.
 * Up From Eden (1981), p. 328

 * Modern science is no longer denying spirit. And that, that is epochal. As Hans Küng remarked, the standard answer to "Do you believe in Spirit?" used to be, "Of course not, I'm a scientist", but it might very soon become, "Of course I believe in Spirit. I'm a scientist."
 * The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science (1982), Introduction

 * Prana is implicate to matter but explicate to mind; mind is implicate to prana but explicate to soul; soul is implicate to mind but explicate to spirit; and the spirit is the source and suchness of the entire sequence.
 * Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm (1984), pp. 197-198

 * An argument can be legitimately sustained only if the participants are speaking about the same level. Argumentation would—for the most part—be replaced with something akin to Niels Bohr's principle of complementarity. Information from and about the different vibratory levels of bands of consciousness—although superficially as different as X-Rays and radio waves—would be integrated and synthesized into one spectrum, one rainbow. … Each band or level, being a particular manifestation of the spectrum, is what it is only by virtue of the other bands. The color blue is no less beautiful because it exists along side the other colors of a rainbow, and "blueness" itself depends upon the existence of the other colors, for if there were no color but blue, we would never be able to see it. In this type of synthesis, no approach, be it Eastern or Western, has anything to lose—rather, they all gain a universal context.
 * The Spectrum of Consciousness (1993), Prologue, p. 6

 * The real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought about including them in your own worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody—including me—has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on… At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth—and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial. And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial…
 * Introduction, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII (2000)

 * My ankle hurts from dancing last night, so there is pain, but the pain doesn't hurt me, for there is no me.
 * One Taste (2000), p. 59

 * In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life.
 * "Foreword" to Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (2000) by Frank Visser, p. xv

 * An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct", the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry—including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology—all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing.
 * Forward to Integral Medicine: A Noetic Reader (2003) edited by Marilyn Schlitz & Tina Hyman
 * Unsourced variant: I don't believe that any human mind is capable of 100 percent error… Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995, 2000)

 * It is the integrative power of vision-logic, I believe, and not the indissociation of tribal magic or the imperialism of mythic involvement that is desperately needed on a global scale. For it is vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and the noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance, the unrestrained and unforced forms of global discourse, the nondominating and noncoercive forms of federated states, the unrestrained flow of worldwide communicative exchange, the production of genuine world citizens, and the enculturation of female agency (i.e., the integration of male and female, in both the noosphere and the biosphere)—all of which, in my opinion, is nevertheless simply the platform for the truly interesting forms of higher and transpersonal states of consciousness lying in our collective future—if there is one.

 * The single greatest world transformation would simply be the embrace of global reasonableness and pluralistic tolerance—the global embrace of egoic-rationality (on the way to centauric vision-logic).

 * In other words, the real problem is not exterior. The real problem is interior. The real problem is how to get people to internally transform, from egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric consciousness, which is the only stance that can grasp the global dimensions of the problem in the first place, and thus the only stance that can freely, even eagerly, embrace global solutions.

 * Global consciousness is not an objective belief that can be taught to anybody and everybody, but a subjective transformation in the interior structures that can hold belief in the first place, which itself is the product of a long line of inner consciousness development.

 * The more we emphasize teaching a merely Right-Hand map of systems theory or a Gaia Web of Life, instead of equally emphasizing the importance of interior development from egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric, then the more we are contributing to Gaia's demise.

 * "Saving the biosphere" depends first and foremost on human beings reaching mutual understanding and unforced agreement as to common ends. And that intersubjective accord occurs only in the noosphere. Anything short of that noospheric accord will continue to destroy the biosphere.

A Brief History of Everything (1996)

 * Studies on testosterone … all point to a simple conclusion. I don't mean to be crude, but it appears that testosterone basically has two, and only two, major drives: fuck it or kill it. And males are saddled with this biological nightmare almost from day one, a nightmare women can barely imagine (except when they are given testosterone injections for medical purposes, which drives them nuts. As one woman put it, "I can't stop thinking about sex. Please, can't you make this stop?").
 * Introduction

 * Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
 * p. 42

 * Gaia's main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, overpopulation, or resource depletion. Gaia's main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement in the noosphere about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot rein in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons. And we reach the worldcentric moral perspective through a difficult and laborious process of interior growth and transcendence.

 * Spirit slumbers in nature, awakens in mind, and finally recognizes itself as Spirit in the transpersonal domains.

 * There is intersubjectivity woven into the very fabric of the Kosmos at all levels.

The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (1997)

 * We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding, we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and tortured fragments, lighting the way ahead—this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of each and every step, and grace the tender reward.

 * The integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity. This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general. … The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well.

 * An acknowledgment of the full spectrum of consciousness would profoundly alter the course of every one of the modern disciplines it touches—and that, of course, is an essential aspect of integral studies… A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing—a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit.

 * The integral vision, I believe, is more than happy to welcome empirical science as a part—a very important part—of the endeavor to befriend the Kosmos, to be attuned to its many moods and flavors and facets and forms. But a more integral psychology goes beyond that … With science we touch the True, the "It" of Spirit. With morals we touch the Good, the "We" of Spirit. What, then, would an integral approach have to say about the Beautiful, the "I" of Spirit itself? What is the Beauty that is in the eye of the Beholder? When we are in the eye of Spirit, the I of Spirit, what do we finally see?

 * Anybody can they say they are being "spiritual"—and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern. Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature.

 * The Realization of the Nondual traditions is uncompromising: There is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the degenerate—each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit precisely as they are.  There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.

The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998)

 * There is arguably no more important and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable.

 * These two enormous forces—truth and meaning—are at war in today's world. … And something sooner or later has to give.

 * Within the scientific skeleton of truth, religious meaning attempts to flourish, often by denying the scientific framework itself—rather like sawing off the branch where you cheerily perch. The disgust is mutual because modern science gleefully denies virtually all the basic tenets of religion in general. According to the typical view of modern science, religion is not much more than a holdover from the childhood of humanity, with about as much reality as, say, Santa Claus. Whether the religious claims are more literal (Moses parting the Red Sea) or more mystical (religion involves direct spiritual experience), modern science denies them all, simply because there is no credible empirical evidence for any of them.

 * This is a massive and violent schism and rupture in the internal organs of today's global culture and this is exactly why many social analysts believe that if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precarious.

An Integral Spirituality

 * "An Integral Spirituality" (Beliefnet Essay 1)

 * What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth—or in heaven—do I mean by "integral"? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: "comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness." Short definition, tall order.

 * We have, for the first time in history, easy access to all of the world's great religions. Examine the many great traditions—from Christianity to Buddhism, Islam to Taoism, Paganism to Neoplatonism—and you are struck by two items: there are an enormous number of differences between them, and a handful of striking similarities. When you find a few essential items that all, or virtually all, of the world's great religions agree on, you have probably found something incredibly important about the human condition, at least as important as, say, a few things that physicists can manage to agree on (which nowadays, by the way, ain't all that impressive).

 * These similarities would seem to suggest, among other things, that there are spiritual patterns at work in the universe, at least as far as we can tell, and these spiritual patterns announce themselves with impressive regularity wherever human hearts and minds attempt to attune themselves to the cosmos in all its radiant dimensions.

 * The human organism itself seems to be hardwired for these deep spiritual patterns, although not necessarily for the specific ways that they show up in a particular religion important as those are. Rather, the human being seems imbued by the realities suggested by these cross-cultural spiritual currents and patterns, with which individual religions and spiritual movements resonate, according to their own capacities and to their own degrees of fidelity.

 * Attunement could occur through any of the great religions, but would be tied exclusively to none of them. A person could be attuned to an "integral spirituality" while still being a practicing Christian, Buddhist, New-Age advocate, or Neopagan. This would be something added to one's religion, not subtracted from it. The only thing it would subtract (and there's no way around this) is the belief that one's own path is the only true path to salvation.

 * Finally, integral spirituality—as the very name "integral" implies—transcends and includes science, it does not exclude, repress, or deny science. To say that the spiritual currents of the cosmos cannot be captured by empirical science is not to say that they deny science, only that they show their face to other methods of seeking knowledge, of which the world has an abundance.

 * Let me start with a short and simple list. This is not the last word on the topic, but the first word, a simple list of suggestions to get the conversation going. Most of the great wisdom traditions agree that: 1. Spirit, by whatever name, exists. 2. Spirit, although existing "out there", is found "in here", or revealed within to the open heart and mind. 3. Most of us don't realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, or duality—that is, we are living in a fallen, illusory, or fragmented state. 4. There is a way out of this fallen state (of sin or illusion or disharmony), there is a Path to our liberation. 5. If we follow this Path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within and without, a Supreme Liberation, which 6. marks the end of sin and suffering, and 7. manifests in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings. Does a list something like that make sense to you? Because if there are these general spiritual patterns in the cosmos, at least wherever human beings appear, then this changes everything. You can be a practicing Christian and still agree with that list; you can be a practicing Neopagan and still agree with that list.

Why Do Religions Teach Love and Yet Cause So Much War?

 * "Why Do Religions Teach Love and Yet Cause So Much War?" (Beliefnet Essay 2)"

 * It seems as if there are almost two different kinds of religion, one of which brutally divides, and one of which unites (or can unite). How do we tell them apart, and how might we begin to switch allegiance from the former to the latter?

 * In my previous column I didn't spell out, or really indicate what an "integral approach" to spirituality would include. Many readers naturally assumed that this was simply another version of "universalism"—the belief that there are certain truths contained in all the world's religions. But the integral approach emphatically does not make that suggestion. Other readers maintained that I was offering a version of the "perennial philosophy" espoused by Aldous Huxley or Huston Smith. Does the integral approach believe that all religions are saying essentially the same thing from a different perspective? No, almost the opposite. Yet the integral approach does claim to be able to "unite", in some sense, the world's great spiritual traditions, which is what has caused much of the interest in this approach. If humanity is ever to cease its swarming hostilities and be united in one family, without squashing the significant and important differences among us, then something like an integral approach seems the only way. Until that time, religions will continue to brutally divide humanity, as they have throughout history, and not unite, as they must if they are to be a help, not a hindrance, to tomorrow's existence.

 * If you are talking to me about your new car, you are the first person, I am the second person, and the car is the third person. These pronouns actually represent three perspectives that human beings can take when they talk about the world or attempt to know the world… The fascinating part is that these three perspectives might actually give rise to art, morals, and science. Or the Beautiful, the Good, and the True: the Beauty that is in the eye (or the "I") of the beholder; the Good or moral actions that can exist between you and me as a "we"; and the objective Truth about third-person objects (or "its") that you and I might discover: hence, art ("I"), morals ("we"), and science ("it").

Which Level of God Do You Believe In? (2004)

 * "Which Level of God Do You Believe In?" (Beliefnet Essay 3)

 * I began my previous Beliefnet column with the line, "Throughout history, religion has been the single greatest source of human-caused wars, suffering, and misery. In the name of God, more suffering has been inflicted than by any other manmade cause." I was, of course, using the word "religion" in its sociological meaning, as any belief invested with "ultimate concern", in which case not only Islam, Christianity, and Shintoism are religions, but Marxism, Nazism, and Eco-terrorism are all versions of religions or religiously held beliefs. Seen as such, the opening sentence is obviously true.

 * There are several different meanings of the words "religion" and "spirituality", all of which are important. The whole point about an integral or comprehensive approach is that it must find a way to believably include all of those important meanings in a coherent whole.

 * Human beings undergo psychological development. At each level or stage of development, they will see the world in a different way. Hence, each level of development has, as it were, a different religious belief or worldview. This does not make God or Spirit the result of human development; it does, however, make the ways in which humans conceive of God or Spirit the result of development. And this is where it gets really interesting.

 * Put bluntly, there is an archaic God, a magic God, a mythic God, a mental God, and an integral God. Which God do you believe in? An archaic God sees divinity in any strong instinctual force. A magic God locates divine power in the human ego and its magical capacity to change the animistic world with rituals and spells. A mythic God is located not on this earth but in a heavenly paradise not of this world, entrance to which is gained by living according to the covenants and rules given by this God to his peoples. A mental God is a rational God, a demythologized Ground of Being that underlies all forms of existence. And an integral God is one that embraces all of the above. Which of those Gods is the most important? According to an integral view, all of them, because each "higher" stage actually builds upon and includes the lower, so the lower stages are more fundamental and the higher stages are more significant, but leave out any one of them and you're in trouble. You are, that is, less than integral, less than comprehensive, less than inclusive in your understanding of God.

Integral Spirituality in Real Life

 * "Integral Spirituality in Real Life" (Beliefnet Essay 4)

 * I am in the awkward situation of writing a foreword to a book by a gay person. This is an awkward situation not because Joe Perez is gay, but because I have to point it out. I feel the same damn irritation as having to refer to, say, Edmund White as a "gay writer". Nobody has to point out that I am heterosexual, although now I hear that I am not a heterosexual but a metrosexual, although, in fact, I have never had sex with a metro in my life. But I'm sure it is a wonderful experience.

 * The last item—the occasional trip into realms labeled madness—can mean, especially if you are a writer, that you are given to telling the unvarnished, brutal, searing truth, whether society likes it or not. And not the Sylvia Plath look-at-me kinds of truth, but the spiritual-seer and mad-shaman types of truth, the truths that really hurt, the truths that get into society's craw and stick there, causing festering metaphysical sores indicative of social cancers or worse—but also the types of truth that speak to you deeply, authentically, radiantly, if you have the courage to listen.

 * What often happens if you study this integral map is that it begins to make room in your psyche, in your being, in your soul, for all the parts of you that were disowned, whether by society, your parents, your peers, whomever. An integral approach even makes room for those who did the disowning to you.

 * An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth, but some views are more true than others, more evolved, more developed, more adequate. And so let's get that part out of the way right now: homophobia in any form, as far as I can tell, stems from a lower level of human development—but it is a level, it exists, and one has to make room in one's awareness for those lower levels as well, just as one has to include third grade in any school curriculum. Just don't, you know, put those people in charge of anything important.

Official sites

 * Ken Wilber's Official Website
 * Ken Wilber's Integral Institute
 * Integral Naked
 * Ken Wilber Online at Shambhala Publications
 * Belief.com Articles By Ken Wilber
 * "An Integral Theory of Consciousness", an essay by Wilber

Interviews

 * Interview by Otto Scharner by Dialog on Leadership (September 2003)
 * Interview with Andrew Cohen
 * Shambhala Interview conducted shortly before the release of Boomeritis
 * Video of Wilber discussing "How to Stage a 2nd-Tier Protest" on YouTube
 * Ken Wilber audio from DIYDharma.org

Sites of friends and fans of Wilber

 * Who Is Ken Wilber?, by Jack Crittenden
 * Reading Ken Wilber: A beginner's guide to his works
 * Mini-review of A Theory of Everything
 * The website of What Is Enlightenment? print magazine, founded by guru Andrew Cohen, and heavily influenced by Wilber and his associates
 * The Integral Encyclopedia Wiki A separate Wiki based on the integral theory of Wilber and others
 * "Ken Wilber" by Alex Burns on disinformation.com
 * "Extended Glossary" for Speaking of Everything on enlightenment.com
 * Ken Wilber on Goodreads

Critiques

 * Ken Wilber's Philosophy, and some critical appraisals by M. Alan Kazlev, Arvan Harvat, Michel Bauwens and others on Wilber and Sri Aurobindo
 * Critics of Ken Wilber – a collection of critiques of the work of Ken Wilber, some online.
 * The Wild West Wilber Report – Frank Visser's summing up of the Wyatt Earp episode, including links to all relevant Wilber posts, as well as to comments and responses by others.
 * A Spectrum of Critics organises Wilber critics in a spectrum from "strong positive" to "strong negative"
 * Wilber Watch – a blog by Frank Visser that provides a forum for both supporters and critics of Wilber to discuss integral ideas outside official forums like Integral Naked and the Integral Institute.
 * Bald Ambition; A Critique of Ken Wilber's Theory of Everything by Jeff Meyerhoff, for a synopsis of the same arguments see Meyerhoff Six Criticisms of Wilber's Integral Theory
 * "Adi Da and The Case of Ken Wilber" contains a collection of Ken Wilber's writings on Adi Da, with critical commentary from Adi Da's devotees
 * A Critical Look at Ken Wilber’s Four Quadrant Model – essay by Thomas J. McFarlane
 * A Critique of Ken Wilber's Account of Deep Ecology & Nature Religions by Gus DiZerega
 * Critiques of Ken Wilber by Geoffrey D. Falk and others
 * "Norman Einstein": The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber – online book by Geoffrey D. Falk
 * Wilber's misrepresentations of Spiral Dynamics®, Part I – Part II – according to Spiral Dynamics co-founder Chris Cowan
 * On Ken Wilber – Hopelessly New Age, Hopeless for the Humanities – critical essay by integral artist Matthew Dallman, some of which is based on his experience as art director at Integral University
 * "Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective" by Rod Hemsell – argues that Wilber misinterprets Aurobindo's teachings.
 * Response to Ken Wilber's, "Integral Theory of Consciousness" by Garry Jacobs. Criticises Wilber's position from an Aurobindonian perspective.
 * Wilber's AQAL Map and Beyond – online book by Rolf Sattler. Proposes a dynamic mandala that transcends the AQAL map but includes it as a special case.

title: Ken Wilber


text:
Talk:Marilyn Monroe

"I've been on a calendar, but never on time."
This was previously listed as being sourced from Look magazine (5 March 1957). However, I just searched through that issue of the magazine on microfilm and could not find this quotation. I also double-checked vol. 22 from later in that same year (Look - 22 October 1957) which featured an article on Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, thinking it might have been a matter of a date mixup. Although there are references to Marilyn Monroe's tardiness in that piece, I could not find the quote there either. If whoever originally posted this quotation could double check the issue they are referencing and provide a page number for verification purposes, it would be very helpful.

"a man being rich is like a girl being pretty"
"* Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help? o As "Lorelei Lee" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)"
 * is that really a "Marilyn Monroe" quote? isn't it technically by Charles Lederer, the screenwriter?

Bolded Quotes
It's an eyesore having so many quotes bolded, then not bolded, and so on. It's uncessesary, it detracts entirely from the page, and it's really just favourtism for quotes that may hold meaning to one person and then may not appeal to another user. I feel like it really should be toned down, especially with the longer quotes. Sweet Pinkette 09:57, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I often note that italics don't render well onscreen in a number of fonts and browsers, but the only time I find bolding an actual eyesore is on the very rare occasions I use serif fonts on-screen, and serif fonts on a computer screen at anything less than headline size are nearly always an eyesore, no matter how well they might look on printed pages. To quote the current Wikipedia article on sans-serif fonts:
 * Sans-serif fonts have become the de facto standard for body text on-screen, especially online because electronic screens (computer monitor or otherwise) provide a cleaner and more legible rendering of sans-serif fonts than they do for serif fonts.
 * I do believe that we are all in the process of exercising some degree of "favouritism" in the act of quotation itself, and in selecting, organizing and emphasizing in various ways the statements of others that we find most notable, inspiring, amusing or otherwise interesting, whether we agree with them or not, and I do not believe that this process should be artificially constrained beyond very minimal rules and guidelines, as regard to consensus criteria for notability and those essential to preventing copyright violations. I find pages full of quotes without any formatting differences at all to be generally drab and uninteresting. Formatting guidelines are useful, but beyond a regard for basic MediaWiki formatting essentials, establishing certain styles or constraints of style as mandatory is something I do not generally agree with. ~ Kalki 11:13, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Kalki, thank you for your input. I agree with much of what you said and, to be concise, also agree that it is a matter of preference.  I'm also a believer in adding some uniqueness to pages and articles but, as I have learned at other Wikimedia projects, most sysops do not approve.  After seeing the Television page and how one outspoken user feels it strays from neutrality it gave me a new persepctive on how others feel about quotations that refer to their favourite actors, past times, etc.  I imagine if more than half of the quotes were bolded in the sourced section, as they are on the Marilyn Monroe page, it would have been obviously unneutral and ridiculously folly as an unbiased article.  Sweet Pinkette 09:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

 * I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

 * If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.

 * Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely stupid.

 * I don't know who invented High heels but all women owe him a lot.

 * A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left.

 * As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person who can take things in stride. I'm grateful for people in my past. They helped me get to where I am, wherever that is. But now, I am thinking for myself and sitting in on all the business transactions.

 * Blond hair and breasts, that's how I got started. I couldn't act. All I had was blond hair and a body men liked. The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men.

 * Fame is fickle and I know it. It has its compensations, but it also has its drawbacks and I've experienced them both.

 * For breakfast, I have two raw beaten eggs in a glass of hot milk. I never eat dessert. My nail polish is transparent. I never wear stockings or underclothes because I think it is important to breathe freely. I wash my hair everyday and I am always brushing it. Every morning I walk across my apartment rolling an empty soda bottle between my ankles, in order to preserve my balance.

 * I always felt I was nobody and the only way for me to be somebody was to be... well, somebody else.

 * I always felt insecure and in the way — but most of all I felt scared. I guess I wanted love more than anything else in the world.

 * I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.

 * I don't understand why people aren't a little more generous with each other. SOURCE: Interview published in LIFE Magazine, 1962.

 * I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.

 * I knew I belonged to the public and to the world. Not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

 * I let them think what they want. If they just care enough to bother with what I do then, I'm already better than them anyway.

 * I never intentionally mean to hurt anyone, but you can't be too nice to people you work with, else they will trample you to death.

 * I think cheesecake helps call attention to you. Then you can follow through and prove yourself.

 * I used to think as I looked at the Hollywood night, 'There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.'

 * I want to be an artist not an erotic freak. I don't want to be sold to the public as a celluloid aphrodisiac.

 * I want to grow old without face-lifts ... I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made. Sometimes, I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but you'd never complete your life, would you? You'd never wholly know yourself.

 * I was a mistake. My mother didn't want to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I know I must have disgraced her. A divorced woman has enough problems getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby.... I wish, I still wish, she had wanted me.

 * I won't be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me.

 * I'm not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful.

 * I've never dropped anyone I believed in.

 * I've never liked the name Marilyn. I've often wished that I had held out that day for Jean Monroe. But I guess it's too late to do anything about it now.

 * If I am a star the people made me a star.

 * If I had observed all the rules, I'd never have gotten anywhere.

 * In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty.

 * Joe doesn't think any man can love me except him. He's my best friend in the world. I don't want to lose him. I don't want to lose Jose (Bolanos). Oh, help me, somebody...

 * Men who think that a woman's past love affairs lessen her love for them are usually stupid and weak. A woman can bring new love to each man she loves, providing there aren't too many.

 * My great ambition is to have people comment on my fine dramatic performances.

 * My how fast the months go — and the calendars!

 * My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve!

 * No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they are pretty, even if they aren't.

 * No sex is wrong if there is love in it. But, too often, people act like it's gymnasium work, mechanical.

 * Only the public can make a star. It's the studios who try to make a system out of it.

 * People ask me if I am going on making cheesecake pictures now that I'm a star. My answer is that as long as there is a boy in Korea who wants a pinup of me, I'll go on posing for them.

 * Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature.

 * She (the character, Sadie Thompson) was a girl who knew how to be gay even when she was sad. That's important, you know?

 * Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work.

 * The most unsatisfactory men are those who pride themselves on their virility and regard sex as if it were some form of athletics at which you can win cups. It is a woman's spirit and mood a man has to stimulate in order to make sex interesting. The real lover is the man who can thrill you just by touching your head or smiling into your eyes or by just staring into space.

 * Those people have been writing all those lies about me, all I know, it's their problem. Those people, I don't even know them or if we met it's been brief. Can I take it? Most of course! I'm used to it and remember the old saying: 'consider the source'.

 * With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, and somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself — for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

 * You can't sleep your way into being a star. It takes much, much more. But it helps a lot of actresses get their first chance that way.

 * You know who I always depend on? Not strangers, not friends. The telephone! That's my best friend. I seldom write letters, but I love calling friends, especially late at night, when I can't sleep.

 * Beneath the make-up and behind the mask I am just a girl who wishes for the world.

 * I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best. (No book source from before 2009 on Google Books) --Slashme (talk) 17:24, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

 * A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before she is left.

 * I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so you can appreciate them when they’re right. You believe lies so eventually you trust no one but yourself. And sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

 * A wise girl knows her limits. A smart girl knows she has none. Variation: A girl knows her limits; but a wise girl knows she has none.

 * I am good, but I am no angel. I sin, but I am not the Devil. I am pretty, but I am not beautiful. I have friends but I am not the peacemaker. I am just a small girl in a big world, trying to find someone to love.

 * Remember - Life is short, so live it up, drink it down, laugh it off, avoid the drama, take chances, and never have regrets, because at one point everything you did was exactly what you wanted." (In some versions, 'drama' is substituted with 'bullshit'.

 * Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

 * The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space.

 * Nothing last forever, so live it up, drink it down, laugh it off, avoid the drama and have no regrets, because at one point everything you did was exactly what you wanted.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Marilyn Monroe


text:
Conservation

Conservation is the act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; wise use.

 * CONTENT : A - F, G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

 * Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

 * More than a billion women around the world want to emulate western women’s lifestyles and are rapidly acquiring the material ability to do so. It is therefore vital that in our leadership we display some reserve and responsibility in our spending so that the world’s finite resources will be available for our children, their children and their children’s children.
 * Louise Burfitt-Dons, Speech on Hot Women Campaign given at UK Aware circa 2008.

 * I take courage, however, in the fact that the conservation effort has a broader base than ever before. There is more organized effort; there are many more individuals who are conscious of conservation problems and who are striving, in their own communities or on the national scene, to solve these problems.
 * Rachel Carson Speech receiving the Audobon Medal (1963)

 * The most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never permanent. If we save a priceless woodland today, it is threatened from another quarter tomorrow.
 * , quoted in Facing Florida's Environmental Future, April 1990.

 * Agriculture represents the single most profound ecological change in the entire 3.5 billion-year history of life.
 * , "The Sixth Extinction", 2001

 * Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems — converting land to produce one or two food crops, with all other native plant species all now classified as unwanted 'weeds' — and all but a few domesticated species of animals now considered as pests.
 * , "The Sixth Extinction", 2001

 * There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past.
 * , "The Sixth Extinction", 2001

 * This explosion of human population, especially in the post-Industrial Revolution years of the past two centuries, coupled with the unequal distribution and consumption of wealth on the planet, is the underlying cause of the Sixth Extinction.
 * , "The Sixth Extinction", 2001

G - L

 * All life is impermanent. We are all children of the Earth, and, at some time, she will take us back to herself again. We are continually arising from Mother Earth, being nurtured by her, and then returning to her. Like us, plants are born, live for a period of time, and then return to the Earth. When they decompose, they fertilize our gardens. Living vegetables and decomposing vegetables are part of the same reality. Without one, the other cannot be. After six months, compost becomes fresh vegetables again. Plants and the Earth rely on each other. Whether the Earth is fresh, beautiful, and green, or arid and parched depends on the plants. It also depends on us.
 * Thích Nhất Hạnh  The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (2008), Ch. 1 : The Bells of Mindfulness, p. 3

 * Our way of walking on the Earth has a great influence on animals and plants. We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments. Many are now extinct. In turn, our environment is now harming us. We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps.
 * Thích Nhất Hạnh  The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (2008), Ch. 1 : The Bells of Mindfulness, p. 3

 * We may not appreciate the fact; but a fact nevertheless it remains: we are living in a Golden Age, the most gilded Golden Age of human history—not only of past history, but of future history. For, as Sir Charles Darwin and many others before him have pointed out, we are living like drunken sailors, like the irresponsible heirs of a millionaire uncle. At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth’s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on? Estimates vary. But all are agreed that within a few centuries or at most a few millennia, Man will have run through his capital and will be compelled to live, for the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and seventy or eighty centuries of his career as Homo sapiens, strictly on income. Sir Charles is of the opinion that Man will successfully make the transition from rich ores to poor ores and even sea water, from coal, oil, uranium and thorium to solar energy and alcohol derived from plants. About as much energy as is now available can be derived from the new sources—but with a far greater expense in man hours, a much larger capital investment in machinery. And the same holds true of the raw materials on which industrial civilization depends. By doing a great deal more work than they are doing now, men will contrive to extract the diluted dregs of the planet’s metallic wealth or will fabricate non-metallic substitutes for the elements they have completely used up. In such an event, some human beings will still live fairly well, but not in the style to which we, the squanderers of planetary capital, are accustomed.
 * Aldous Huxley, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", Collected Essays (1959), pp. 293–94 (1959); first published in Adonis and the Alphabet in 1956.

 * Even if the Democratic administration were resoundingly successful on all fronts, its initiatives would still be utterly insufficient to resolve the existential threat of climate breakdown and the devastation of our planet’s life-support systems. That’s because the multiple problems confronting us right now are symptoms of an even more profound problem: The underlying structure of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice... As long as government policies emphasize growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe... We need to forge a new era for humanity — one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior. In short, we need to change the basis of our global civilization. We must move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to one that is life-affirming: an ecological civilization...
 * Jeremy Lent, What Does An Ecological Civilization Look Like? Yes! Magazine (16 February 2021)

 * An ecological civilization is both a new and ancient idea. While the notion of structuring human society on an ecological basis might seem radical, Indigenous peoples around the world have organized themselves from time immemorial on life-affirming principles....Every year that we head closer to catastrophe—as greater climate-related disasters rear up, as the outrages of racial and economic injustice become even more egregious, and as life for most people becomes increasingly intolerable—the old narrative loses its hold on the collective consciousness. Waves of young people are looking for a new worldview—one that makes sense of the current unraveling, one that offers them a future they can believe in. It’s a bold idea to transform the very basis of our civilization to one that’s life-affirming. But when the alternative is unthinkable, a vision of a flourishing future shines a light of hope that can become a self-fulfilling reality. Dare to imagine it. Dare to make it possible by the actions you take, both individually and collectively—and it might just happen sooner than you expect.
 * Jeremy Lent, What Does An Ecological Civilization Look Like? Yes! Magazine (16 February 2021)

 * Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.
 * Aldo Leopold "Game Cropping in Southern Wisconsin", Our Native Landscape; Published by "The Friends of Our Native Landscape," October 1927.

M - R

 * Civilization began around wetlands; today's civilization has every reason to leave them wet and wild.
 * Edward Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 1986.

 * Earth has undergone radical changes throughout its [4.5] billion year history, and as such, it would be curious if it had just now reached the state that is intrinsically valuable and ought to be preserved in perpetuity.
 * Ole Martin Moen, "The ethics of wild animal suffering" (2016)

 * Conservation biology is an ideology masquerading as a science.
 * David Pearce, "Why would someone want to end humanity?", 2015.

 * Jane Spencer : Oh, Frank, we were no good together. All you ever lived for was your police work.
 * Lieutenant Frank Drebin : And you were always busy trying to save the end zone layer.
 * Jane Spencer : Ozone layer. Frank, you never tried to understand.
 * Lt. Frank Drebin : How can you say that? I sank every penny I had into buying that 1,000 acres of Brazilian rainforest. Then I had it slashed and burned so we could build our dream house.
 * Jane Spencer : Frank! How could you be so insensitive?
 * Lt. Frank Drebin : Insensitive? You think it's easy displacing an entire tribe? You try it sometime.
 * The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

 * By 2050, at bio-extinction's current rate, between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of all species will have disappeared or be too few in numbers to survive. There'll be a few over-visited parks, the coral reefs will be beaten up, grasslands overgrazed.  Vast areas of the tropics that have lost their forests will have the same damn weeds, bushes and scrawny eucalyptus trees so that you don't know if you're in Africa or the Americas.
 * , "Mass Extinction Not Inevitable", circa 2004.

 * Conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, "Rural Life", in The Outlook (August 27, 1910), republished in American Problems (vol. 16 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), chapter 20, p. 146.

 * The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, speech before the Colorado Live Stock Association, Denver, Colorado (August 29, 1910); in The New Nationalism (1910), p. 52; inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.

 * Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds, and mammals—not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening. Many leading men, Americans and Canadians, are doing all they can for the Conservation movement.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, "Our Vanishing Wildlife", in The Outlook (January 25, 1913); republished in Literary Essays (vol. 12 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), chapter 46, p. 420.

 * The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained, and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition. The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system, with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect on the reëlection or defeat of a Congressman here and there—a theory which, I regret to say, still obtains.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Chapter XI : The Natural Resources of the Nation, p. 386.

 * The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, Address to the Deep Waterway Convention, Memphis, TN, 4 October 1907

S - Z

 * The conservationist's most Important task, if we are to save the earth, is to educate.
 * Peter Scott, founder chairman of the World Wildlife Federation, quoted in the Sunday Telegraph, November 6, 1986.

title: Conservation


text:
Niles Eldredge

Niles Eldredge (born August 25, 1943) is an American biologist and paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972.

Quotes

 * There is presumably an upper limit to the carrying capacity of humans on earth—of the numbers that agriculture can support—and that number is usually estimated at between 13-15 billion, though some people think the ultimate numbers might be much higher. (2001)
 * "The Sixth Extinction", an ActionBioscience.org original article

 * At the core of punctuated equilibria lies an empirical observation: once evolved, species tend to remain remarkably stable, recognizable entities for millions of years. The observation is by no means new, nearly every paleontologist who reviewed Darwin's Origin of Species pointed to his evasion of this salient feature of the fossil record. But stasis was conveniently dropped as a feature of life's history to he reckoned with in evolutionary biology. And stasis had continued to be ignored until Gould and I showed that such stability is a real aspect of life's history which must be confronted-and that, in fact, it posed no fundamental threat to the basic notion of evolution itself. For that was Darwin's problem: to establish the plausibility of the very idea of evolution, Darwin felt that he had to undermine the older (and ultimately biblically based) doctrine of species fixity. Stasis, to Darwin, was an ugly inconvenience.
 * Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, pp.188-189

Quotes about Eldredge

 * Eldredge and Gould and their many colleagues tend to codify an incredible ignorance of where the real action is in evolution, as they limit the domain of interest to animals... very tardy on the evolutionary scene, and they give us little real insight into the major sources of evolution's creativity.
 * Lynn_Margulis The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution ed. John Brockman (1995)

 * Although Haldane accepted the earlier and incorrect paleontological interpretation of the fossil record of Gryphaea, in his overall belief that the pace of evolution was rapid and seemingly discontinuous, rather than slow and continuous, he anticipated, at least in part and by three decades, the model of punctuated equilibria, which was proposed by... Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould.
 * Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species (1999)

 * According to Gould and Eldredge, the reason why so many links are missing is that they simply do not exist. They take the view that biological evolution proceeds in successive stages of "punctuated equilibrium." Living species would remain unchanged for extremely long stretches of time, and then undergo profound changes in relatively short periods. To borrow a term from the quantum theory of atoms, evolution would occur in "quantum jumps." It is very likely that the spark of life appeared during the first such "jump."
 * Trinh Xuan Thuan, Chaos and Harmony (2001)

title: Niles Eldredge