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

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

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

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

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

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

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