"Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself. The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself."

Reflection, Pain, Happiness, Wealth, Freedom

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"Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself. The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself."

Exlpore more Reflection quotes

"When you leave a port, ask yourself two questions: What mark you have made on that port and what have you learned from that port?"

Mehmet Murat ildan, Turkish Philosopher

Reflection, Truth, Wisdom, Power, Inspirational

"The laws is not meant to destroy us. But our disobedience leads to our own destruction."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

Reflection, Law, Disobedience, Destruction, Morality

"Whether you are aware of it or not, your life is still disappearing. It's pouring out, it keeps diminishing."

Sunday Adelaja, Nigerian Author

Reflection, Life, Fleeting, Time, Urgency

"You never know what people have endured to get where they are."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

Reflection, People, Endured, Journey

"Why do you compare yourself to others? Can you carry weight of others on your shoulders?"

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

Reflection, Yourself, Weight, Burden, Self-Worth

"Everyone should think about why certain undesirable situations occur in life."

Sunday Adelaja, Nigerian Author

Reflection, Life, Situations, Questions

"Knowing my soul is my lifetime-study."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

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"What you are seeking is yourself."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

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"Life is head and shoulders above all other things we regard as precious in this world."

Sunday Adelaja, Nigerian Author

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"The world is full of vanities."

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Explore more quotes by David Foster Wallace

"It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art."

Art, Exercise, Trying

"For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going."

Cause, Fire, Pain

"One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism."

Philosophy, Artist

"I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader."

Desire, Writers

"Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se."

Society, End, Pleasure, Value

"The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates."

Society, Flaws, Irony

"The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what's going on in front of me."

Awareness, Education, Thinking, Attention

"She was terrified of everything, and terrified to show it."

Emotion, Fear, Sensitivity, Anxiety

"But someone sometime let you forget how to choose, and what. Someone let your peoples forget it was the only thing of importance, choosing. . . How to choose any but a child's greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform, teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?"

Wisdom, Choice, Freedom, Morality, Growth

"What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration."

Creativity, Mind, Effort, Work