Brad Blanton Quotes

“A mind is a terrible thing; waste it.”

“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.”

“Bullsh*t is a sales pitch for an interpretation of reality that comes with any interpretation of reality. All interpretations of reality are bullsh*t. Freedom is not being dominated by your own bullsh*t.”

“Fantasies about the future, based on the past, are the hope and hype we con ourselves with. Even if we get what we always wanted it never looks like we thought it would when it arrives.”

“First, it is of vital importance that you learn to be lost both in experience and in your mind, but not permanently, so that you get the avenue of escape each offers from the other.”

“For my own good, I want to hang out with people who want to find out what it would be like to live in such a way as to leave no unspoken words, no unfinished business; I want to be with people who are hungry for the truth, who want to spend time learning and sharing what they have learned rather than defending their images or reputations.”

“I am an anti-moralism moralist and I write righteously indignant diatribes against righteous indignation. I contradict myself. I have great ideas and a lot to say, but I'm not much of a writer. I don't learn to control myself and do what is required.”

“Instead of amalgamations of parts having contradictory and uncontrollable purposes, suppose we consider ourselves to be already what we long to be: functional, integrated wholes who produce the results we choose, effortlessly, with our entire beings. Suppose we all, already, are that. All the apparent contradictions and dichotomies the fat person struggling to be thin, the sinner trying to be good, the workaholic longing for time with his family are actually smokescreens, false struggles enacted by our own minds to hide from others or ourselves our true intent. Our true intent is to do just what we do.”

“Integrity, wholeness, at-one-ness, is the opposite of moralism. Having integrity is the opposite of being moral. If one has integrity, one doesn't need morals. People with integrity operate with rules of thumb, not morals.”

“Intense emotional attachment to any value, any virtue, any set of 'shoulds' is a disease, a mental illness, a condition of self-murder and cultural assassination.”

“It may feel less secure than if everyone agrees on what is true, but the feeling of security is just that - a feeling, not the real thing. Less secure is often more reliable.”

“It's not normal to be honest. What is normal is to be concerned foremost with having a good cover story. Normal people are concerned with figuring out the right thing to say that puts them in the best light. They want to live up to their own best guess about what the people they are talking to want to hear.”

“Love is when you let someone be the way she is. When you let up on your judgments of someone, there is a free space in which forgiveness and love occur.”

“Manipulation never works to get the result desired, but it always seems like it's just about to work. When you get what you said you wanted by manipulation, it is never enough.”

“Many of us won't express anger with a loved one. We believe that if we expressed our resentment, it would destroy our relationship and our beloved would leave us.”

“Meaninglessness is of great value. When you finally get that who you actually are is empty and meaningless, it doesn't matter to you whether you are a jerk or not. There is where your power lives.”

“Most people, however, won't express their resentment in person to the person at whom they are angry. Instead, they gossip, complain, criticize, fantasize about telling the person off, and let it out in other indirect ways. Suppression and displacement to ideals, indignation, and judgments (against others and ourselves) usually work well enough that by the time we males reach 18 years of age and some elder *sshole tells us to kill some people to defend some bullsh*t principle, we run right out and do it.”

“One of these games is called, "Okay, okay, I'm guilty." This game is to make it look like you have taken responsibility for yourself when you haven't. Admitting you are guilty is a great way to avoid being responsible.”

“Politeness and diplomacy are responsible for more suffering and death than all the crimes of passion in history. F*ck politeness. F*ck diplomacy. Tell the truth.”

“Telling stories about your memory of what happened may be entertaining for a while, but if that is all you can do it gets boring pretty fast.”

“The best people in a dying culture are the outcasts considered crazy by the leaders; the ones most disillusioned with their own culture. In Yeats' phrase, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

“The kind of lying that is most deadly is withholding, or keeping back information from someone we think would be affected by it.”

“The problem is that ideas about forgiveness are not forgiveness. They don't even help. What you are left with is the experience of resentment and the concept of forgiveness and a deteriorating relationship.”

“The stress that kills or cripples most of the population comes from people being too hard on themselves when they don't live up to their own imaginings about how other people think they should behave.”

“Therapy doesn't always work. Sometimes when it does work, it works only for a while and then the person degenerates back to living out of more bullsh*t - this time about how well therapy worked - and loses whatever relearning occurred.”

“Therapy is over when a person stops incessantly demanding that other people be different from what they are, forgives his or her parents and other begrudged former intimates, reclaims the power to make life work, and takes responsibility for doing so.”

“Thinking and deciding what to do about the person only serves to suppress the anger. Even though you think the anger is over, it will manifest itself in other ways. Your communication will be less honest and spontaneous; you may be more critical of him; you may find being
with him more physically tiring, forget appointments with him, and find yourself inexplicably angry at him more and more. After a while, your friendship may feel more superficial than before and you may not like spending as much time with him as you used to.”

“We all lie like hell. It wears us out. It is the major source of all human stress. Lying kills people.”

“We are against politeness as a substitute for the truth because that politeness kills. Politeness and diplomacy are responsible for more suffering and death than all the crimes of passion in history. F*ck politeness. F*ck diplomacy. Tell the truth.”

“We learn to act nice and deny that we are angry, and we make ourselves sick in the process of denial. This is one of the main areas in which something we can't tell the truth about ruins our lives.”