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A Totalitarian Monopolistic Merger of Literature, History, Science, Math, Art, Computers, Martial Arts, Religion, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics into One

The meaning of life

"They say the best kept secret is the one everyone knows …" ~ Anonymous/Unknown until further notice

History repeats itself, history is a pattern. Humans are pattern-recognizing machines, are we not? Then why aren't we learning from our pattern-ized mistakes?

No matter what path you take, you will reach a place. Even as a lower class, middle class, upper class, you can find answers. Even as whatever label you so fancy, you can find answers. Even while sitting bare-naked in the elements, you can find "it". The more important question is though, do you want to find the meaning of life? Or are you content with the way things are?

On a different tone, the following is a collection of quotes that link everything to everything else. I don't know anything, so how can I include everything? I also list a quote of a respectable person in his/her field (whatever subject it might be) to represent that field. Note that I have not concluded anything throughout these quotes (or have I?) - this is not an exhaustive representation of everything (or is it?); I am just trying to get you interested enough to look things up for yourself and teach yourself (a good start is WikiQuote and its QOTD Archive), simply because "I can't teach you anything; only help you to explore yourself, nothing more."

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, 'Verify your quotations.' ~ Winston Churchill

Taoism

• The Way takes no action, but leaves nothing undone.
• A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
• Deal with the difficult while it is yet easy; Deal with the great while it is yet small;
• A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, 'We did this ourselves.'
• Above all, do not compete.

Zen

• If you meet the Buddha, kill him. If you meet the Patriarch, kill him...
• Go slower to go faster ~ I think first heard from Chuck Norris, Zen origins

Buddhism

• All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.
• Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
• Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.
• Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
• For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. ~ My personal variation of karma based from Newton's law of motion
• We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
• Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
• Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

Random quotes

• It's either this or that way; it's one way or the other; it should be one direction; it could be on reflection ~ Anywhere Is, Enya
• Only if you want to will you fly away... ~ Only If, Enya
• A faithful heart makes wishes come true. ~ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire
• Where there's a will, there's a way. ~ Unknown
• When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. ~ Anatole France
• Talent borrows; genius steals ~ Oscar Wilde
• Use what is useful, and take it from wherever you can. ~ Bruce Lee
• Use no way as way; use no limitation as limitation ~ Bruce Lee
• Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is essentially your own ~ JKD credo, Bruce Lee
• To change with change is the changeless state. ~ Bruce Lee
• Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do. ~ Bruce Lee
• I can not teach you; only help you to explore yourself, nothing more ~ Bruce Lee
• I always believe that the easy way is the right way. ~ Bruce Lee
• Simplicity is the key to brilliance. ~ Bruce Lee
• It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential.
  In JKD, one does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. ~ Bruce Lee
• If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away. ~ Linus Pauling
• Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. ~ Yoda, George Lucas
• Be mindful of your thoughts, Anakin. They can betray you. ~ Obi-wan Kinobi, George Lucas
• Let go of your feelings. ~ Obi-wan Kinobi, George Lucas
• Truth is a pathless land. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. ~ Albert Einstein
• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
• Just because something is unexplained doesn't mean it's magic or mystic or supernatural. It just means we haven't explained it yet ~ Bill Nye
• Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. ~ Albert Einstein
• A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving... ~ Albert Einstein
• One person can't change the world. ~ Unknown
• Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. ~ Albert Einstein
• If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. ~ Albert Einstein
• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. ~ Albert Einstein
• I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority. ~ Rita Mae
• Rules were made to be broken. ~ Unknown
• A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. ~ Einstein?
• There is no such thing as a wise person, only a less stupid person ~ Unknown/Anonymous until further notice
• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. ~ Einstein
• Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. ~ Elbert Hubbard
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. ~ Einstein
• I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ~ Mark Twain
• When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all ~ Paul Simon
• Death to ceilings ~ Anonymous until further notice
• DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER ~ 1984, George Orwell
• 2+2=5 ~ 1984, George Orwell
• All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
• All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts... ~ As You Like It, William Shakespeare
• Don't be somebody else, be yourself. ~ Unknown (I'm not sure if I made this one up)
• KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid ~ Unknown
• When one is postulating correlations or causations extant in reality, one should always remember that the human brain is mainly a pattern recognition engine. And it is such a persistent pattern recognition engine that it often perceives patterns where none exist. ~ Jeff Walther
• Be sure that you are right, and then go ahead. ~ Davy Crockett
• The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less. ~ Piet Hein
• We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
• Any fool can use a computer. Many do. ~ Ted Nelson
• If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge. ~ Henry Spencer
• I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence. All the neurons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion. ~ Bill Gates
• One virtue is more virtue than two. ~ F.N.
• Money is the root of all evil ~ Unknown
• Ignorance is the root of all evil ~ Socrates
• The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~ Isaac Asimov
• I took the road less travelled by, and that has made all the difference ~ The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
• The only way through is around ~ Unknown (Tao?)
• The Sea is the mightiest thing on the Earth, yet it is lower than all. ~ Unknown (Tao?)
• If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it. ~ Donald Rumsfeld
• I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~ Bill Cosby
• TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. ~ Jon Postel
• Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. ~ Jimmy Wales
• Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with new ones. ~ Ambrose Bierce
• Government is a necessary evil ~ Common Sense, Thomas Paine?
• The only future Peace has to offer is War. ~ Diablo I Game Manual
• At the end of the day, it does not matter what we think, only what we do ~ Inaccurate quotation
• Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. ~ Abraham Lincoln
• I am nothing ~ Henry David Thoreau
• Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• I was an athiest until I realized I was God! ~ Unknown
• We are not God. Not only do we have limited power, but sometimes we are driven to be the devil himself ~ Unknown
• We must not forget who we are, or where we come from ~ Shogun, Last Samurai
• Know Thyself ~ Ancient proverb that was inscribed upon the temple of the Oracle of Delphi.
• The worst fight is with oneself. ~ Anno Tanaka and Huo YuanJia, Fearless
• I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and I have the power to be born a second time. I am the divine hidden Soul who created the gods and gives sepulchral meals to the denizens of the deep, the place of the dead, and heaven...Hail, lord of the shrine that stands in the center of the earth. He is I, and I am he! ~ Egyptian Book of the Dead
• Be strong yet supple. This is the way to rule. ~ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

From here, I link to how math relates into this monopolistic merger. I offload this explanation to BBC's The Story of One, as they do a much better job than I could (even if it is a little bit funny :)). What's that you say? You watched it and it still didn't make any sense? You are still distinguishing, still attaching to ideas, concepts, things... "Give up thinking as though not giving it up. Observe techniques as though not observing." ~ Bruce Lee

So where's the politics and economics, you ask? Unfortunately, I am severely lacking in that department. Yet again, here is where I offload this discussion to the late Milton Friedman, an economist commentator, who appeared on episode 494 of Open Mind ™.

Et cetera... the patterns are everywhere...

I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts. ~ Einstein

I can't think for you; you need to think for yourself. In the end, all that matters is what you think. Why is that? Because as soon as there is one style, there is immediately another style. Even more pointedly: "Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom." ~ Hermann Hesse. Wait... what's that you say? It should be one direction? It could be on reflection...

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

I hope that you will take what I have written (esp those sayings/quotes that I made up/judged [e.g. totalitarian monopolistic merger]) with a grain of salt - sifting, sorting, and parsing so that ... something...