Suttas on women

“Be patient, Venerable Kassapa, women are foolish.”
Ven Ananda SN 16 : 10

“If one could rightly say of anything that it is entirely a snare of Māra, it is precisely of women that one might say this.” AN 5 : 55

“Bhikkhus, women die unsatisfied and discontent in two things. What two? Sexual intercourse and giving birth. Women die unsatisfied and discontent in these two things.”
AN 2 : 62

Kamboja

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Kosambī in Ghosita’s Park. Then the Venerable Ānanda approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, sat down to one side, and said:
“Bhante, why is it that women do not sit in council, or engage in business, or go to Kamboja?”
“Ānanda, women are prone to anger; women are envious; women are miserly; women are unwise. This is why women do not sit in council, engage in business, or go to Kamboja.”
AN 2 : 62

Snake (1)

“Bhikkhus, there are these five dangers in a black snake. What five? It is impure, foul-smelling, frightening, dangerous, and it betrays friends. These are the five dangers in a black snake. So too, there are these five dangers in women. What five? They are impure, foul-smelling, frightening, dangerous, and they betray friends. These are the five dangers in women.”

230 (10) Snake (2)

“Bhikkhus, there are these five dangers in a black snake. What five? It is wrathful, hostile, of virulent venom, double-tongued, and it betrays friends. These are the five dangers in a black snake. So too, there are these five dangers in women. What five? They are wrathful, hostile, of virulent venom, double-tongued, and they betray friends.

“Bhikkhus, this is how women are of virulent venom: for the most part they have strong lust. This is how women are double-tongued: for the most part they utter divisive speech. This is how women betray friends: for the most part they are adulterous. These are the five dangers in women.” AN 5 : 229/30

The Blessed One then said to those girls:

(1) “So then, girls, you should train yourselves thus: ‘To whichever husband our parents give us—doing so out of a desire for our good, seeking our welfare, taking compassion on us, acting out of compassion for us—we will rise before him and retire after him, undertaking whatever needs to be done, agreeable in our conduct and pleasing in our speech.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(2) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will honor, respect, esteem, and venerate those whom our husband respects—his mother and father, ascetics and brahmins—and when they arrive we will offer them a seat and water.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(3) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will be skillful and diligent in attending to our husband’s domestic chores, whether knitting or weaving; we will possess sound judgment about them in order to carry out and arrange them properly.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(4) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will find out what our husband’s domestic helpers—whether slaves, messengers, or [38] workers—have done and left undone; we will find out the condition of those who are ill; and we will distribute to each an appropriate portion of food.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(5) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will guard and protect whatever income our husband brings home—whether money or grain, silver or gold—and we will not be spendthrifts, thieves, wastrels, or squanderers of his earnings.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

“When, girls, a woman possesses these five qualities, with the breakup of the body, after death, she is reborn in companionship with the agreeable-bodied devas.”

She does not despise her husband,
the man who constantly supports her,
who ardently and eagerly
always brings her whatever she wants.
Nor does a good woman scold her husband
with speech caused by jealousy;1010
the wise woman shows veneration
to all those whom her husband reveres.
She rises early, works diligently,
manages the domestic help;
she treats her husband in agreeable ways
and safeguards the wealth he earns.

2

The woman who fulfills her duties thus,
following her husband’s will and wishes,
is reborn among the devas
called “the agreeable ones.”
AN 5 : 33

“Visākhā, possessing four qualities, a woman is heading for victory in the present world and her life in this world succeeds.1724 What four? Here, a woman is capable at her work; she manages the domestic help; she behaves agreeably to her husband; and she safeguards his earnings.

(1) “And how, Visākhā, is a woman capable at her work? Here, a woman is skillful and diligent in attending to her husband’s domestic chores, whether knitting or weaving; she possesses sound judgment about them in order to carry out and arrange them properly. It is in this way that a woman [270] is capable at her work.

(2) “And how does a woman manage the domestic help? Here, a woman finds out what her husband’s domestic helpers—whether slaves, messengers, or workers—have done and left undone; she finds out the condition of those who are ill; and she distributes to each an appropriate portion of food. It is in this way that a woman manages the domestic help.

(3) “And how does a woman behave agreeably to her husband? Here, a woman would not commit any misdeed that her husband would consider disagreeable, even at the cost of her life. It is in this way that a woman behaves agreeably to her husband.

(4) “And how does a woman safeguard his earnings? Here, a woman guards and protects whatever income her husband brings home—whether money or grain, silver or gold—and she is not a spendthrift, thief, wastrel, or squanderer of his earnings. It is in this way that a woman safeguards his earnings.

“Possessing these four qualities, a woman is heading for victory in the present world and her life in this world succeeds.

“Possessing four [other] qualities, Visākhā, a woman is heading for victory in the other world and her life in the other world succeeds. What four? Here, a woman is accomplished in faith, accomplished in virtuous behavior, accomplished in generosity, and accomplished in wisdom.

(5) “And how, Visākhā, is a woman accomplished in faith? Here, a woman is endowed with faith. She places faith in the enlightenment of the Tathāgata thus: ‘The Blessed One is an arahant, perfectly enlightened, accomplished in true knowledge and conduct, fortunate, knower of the world, unsurpassed trainer of persons to be tamed, teacher of devas and humans, the Enlightened One, the Blessed One.’ It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in faith.

(6) “And how is a woman accomplished in virtuous behavior? [271] Here, a woman abstains from the destruction of life … from liquor, wine, and intoxicants, the basis for heedlessness. It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in virtuous behavior.

(7) “And how is a woman accomplished in generosity? Here, a woman dwells at home with a heart devoid of the stain of miserliness, freely generous, openhanded, delighting in relinquishment, devoted to charity, delighting in giving and sharing. It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in generosity.

(8) “And how is a woman accomplished in wisdom? Here, a woman is wise; she possesses the wisdom that discerns arising and passing away, which is noble and penetrative and leads to the complete destruction of suffering. It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in wisdom.

“Possessing these four qualities, Visākhā, a woman is heading for victory in the other world and her life in the other world succeeds.”

Capable in attending to her work,
managing the domestic help,
she treats her husband in agreeable ways
and safeguards the wealth he earns.
Rich in faith, possessed of virtue,
charitable and devoid of miserliness,
she constantly purifies the path
that leads to safety in the future life.
They call any woman
who has these eight qualities,
virtuous, firm in Dhamma,
a speaker of truth.
Accomplished in sixteen aspects,1726
complete in eight factors,
such a virtuous female lay follower
is reborn in an agreeable deva world.
AN 8: 49

Peculiar

“Bhikkhus, there are five kinds of suffering peculiar to women, which women experience but not men. What five?

“Here, bhikkhus, even when young, a woman goes to live with her husband’s family and is separated from her relatives. This is the first kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman is subject to menstruation. This is the second kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman becomes pregnant. This is the third kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman gives birth. This is the fourth kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman is made to serve a man. This is the fifth kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“These, bhikkhus, are the five kinds of suffering peculiar to women, which women experience but not men.”

Three Qualities

“Bhikkhus, when a woman possesses three qualities, with the breakup of the body, after death, she is generally reborn in a state of misery, in a bad destination, in the nether world, in hell. What are the three? Here, bhikkhus, in the morning a woman dwells at home with her heart obsessed by the taint of selfishness; at noon she dwells at home with her heart obsessed by envy; in the evening she dwells at home with her heart obsessed by sensual lust. When a woman possesses these three qualities … she is generally reborn in a state of misery … in hell.”

SN 37 : 3/4

Confident

“Bhikkhus, there are five powers of a woman. What are the five? The power of beauty, the power of wealth, the power of relatives, the power of sons, the power of virtue. These are the five powers of a woman. When a woman possesses these five powers, she dwells confident at home.”

Having Won Over /
“Bhikkhus, there are five powers of a woman…. (as above ) ... When a woman possesses these five powers, she dwells at home having won over her husband.” / with her husband under her control.

One

“Bhikkhus, when a man possesses one power, he abides with a woman under his control. What is that one power? The power of authority. When a woman has been overcome by the power of authority, neither the power of beauty can rescue her, nor the power of wealth, nor the power of relatives, nor the power of sons, nor the power of virtue.”

“Bhikkhus, it is not because of the power of beauty, or the power of wealth, or the power of relatives, or the power of sons, that with the breakup of the body, after death, a woman is reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world. It is because of the power of virtue that a woman is reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world.
SN 37 : 25 - 28 ; 31

Eight capital points for bhikkhunis

These are the eight points. A bhikkhuni who has been admitted even a hundred years must pay homage to, get up for, reverentially salute, and respectfully greet, a bhikkhu admitted that day. A bhikkhuni must not spend the rains in a place where there are no bhikkhus. Every half-month a bhik-khuni should expect two things from the Sangha of bhikkhus; the appointment of the Uposatha day of observance each half-month, and a visit for exhortation. At the end of the rains a bhikkhuni must invite criticism of both Sanghas in the three instances, that is, whether anything improper in her conduct has been seen, heard or suspected. When a bhikkhuni has committed a grave offence, she must do the penance before both Sanghas. A probationer who seeks admission must do so from both Sanghas and after training in the six things for two years. A bhikkhuni must not find fault with or abuse a bhikkhu in any manner at all. From today onwards it is not allowed for bhikkhunis to address discourses to bhikkhus, but it is allowed for bhikkhus to address bhikkhunis. These eight things are to be honoured, respected, revered and venerated, and they are not to be transgressed as long as life lasts. If Mahāpajāpati Gotami accepts these eight capital points, that will count as her full admission.’

(...)

Ānanda, if women had not obtained the going forth from the house life into homelessness in the Dhamma and Discipline declared by the Perfect One, the holy life would have lasted long, the holy life would have lasted a thousand years. But now, since women have obtained it, the holy life will not last long, the holy life will last only five hundred years.

“Just as clans with many women and few men are easily ruined by robbers and bandits, so too in the Dhamma and Discipline in which women obtain the going forth the holy life does not last long. Just as when the blight called gray mildew falls on a field of ripening rice, that field of ripening rice does not last long—just as when the blight called red rust falls on a field of ripening sug-arcane, that field of ripening sugarcane does not last long—so too in the Dhamma and Discipline in which women obtain the going forth the holy life does not last long. As a man might construct in advance an embankment so that the waters of a great reservoir should not cause a flood, so I too have made known in advance these eight capital points for bhikkhunis not to be transgressed as long as life lasts.”

Vin. Cv. 10:1; A. 8:51

Aphorisms from Lichtenberg Philosophical Writings

When we teach men how they should think and not always what they should think, we avoid much misunderstanding. It is a kind of initiation into the mysteries of mankind. Whoever stumbles upon a peculiar proposition in his own thinking will readily depart with it if it is false. A peculiar proposition taught by a respected man, however, may mislead thousands who do not examine it. One cannot be cautious enough in disclosing one's own opinions in matters of life and felicity and not diligent enough in inculcating understanding and doubt. To this belongs Bolingbroke's statement, “Every man's reason is every man's oracle.”
Doubt must be no more than vigilance; otherwise it can become dangerous.

Man has an irresistible instinct to believe he is not seen when he himself sees nothing, like children who shut their eyes in order not to be seen.

A clever child raised with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible that he can become a fool through reason.

In past times, when the soul was still immortal.

All impartiality is artificial. Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial. He belonged to the party of the impartial.

We must not believe if we make a few discoveries here and there that things will go on like this forever. An acrobat may leap higher than a plowboy, and one acrobat may leap higher than another, yet the height over which no human can leap is still very low. Just as we find water when we dig in the earth, sooner or later we discover the incomprehensible everywhere.

To think this causes such confusion in my head, almost as though I tried to think that Poland lies to the west of us.

That men so often make false judgments is certainly not due solely to a lack of insight and ideas but primarily to the fact that they do not put every element of the proposition under the microscope and examine it.

Thousands can see that a proposition is nonsense without possessing the capacity to refute it formally.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I do not deny they are sometimes correct, but are they not just as often incorrect? Is that not what I intended to say? A game of chance.

An ass was obliged to carry an image of Isis, and when the people kneeled to worship the image, he thought they were honoring him.

How perfectible man is and how necessary education can be seen from the fact that he now appropriates in sixty years a culture that the whole race has taken five thousand years to create. A youth of eighteen can contain within himself the wisdom of whole ages. If I learn the proposition, the force that attracts in polished amber is the same as that which thunders in the clouds, I have learned something quite quickly, the discovery of which cost mankind several thousand years.

First there is a time when we believe everything without reasons; then for a short time we believe with discrimination; then we believe nothing at all; and then we believe everything again and indeed give reasons for believing everything.

You have discovered these traits together ten times, but have you also counted the cases in which you have not found them together?

An amusing thought: a scholar weeping because he cannot understand his own writings. […]

When something bites us in the dark, we can usually locate the spot with the point of a needle. What an exact plan the soul must have of its body.

There are few people who are not obliged to believe many things that upon closer examination they would not understand. They do this simply on the authority of others, or they think they lack the additional knowledge necessary to abolish all doubt. In this regard, it is possible for a proposition, whose truth has not yet been verified, to be universally believed.
I have long known, dear sir, that here and everywhere observations must be our primary concern and that a profound theory always allows enough room for two heads of equal size to distance themselves nearly to the point of being pro and contra. Only I assumed we are consistent, and what you have taken to be mere theory was a probable explanation of my numerous errors.

That people who read so astonishingly much are often such bad thinkers may also have its origin in the constitution of our brain. It is certainly not all the same whether I learn a proposition without effort or if I finally arrive at it myself through my own system of thought. In the latter everything has its roots; in the former it is merely superficial.

Let us take Sir Isaac Newton. All discoveries belong to chance, whether they come at the end or the beginning of the process, for otherwise reasonable people could sit down and make discoveries like they write letters. Wit spots a similarity, and reason tests it and finds it to be true: that is discovery.

One rule in reading is to condense the intention and main thoughts of the author into a few words and in this way to make them one's own. Whoever reads in this way is occupied and gains something. When one reads without comparison with one's own inventory of knowledge or without synthesizing it with one's own system of thought, the mind gains nothing and loses much.

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.

What people call a subtle knowledge of human nature is for the most part nothing other than one's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

Whoever knows himself properly can very soon know all other men. It is all reflection.

Men who know well how to observe themselves, and thus secretly know a great deal, often are pleased to discover a weakness in themselves, where such a discovery would normally disappoint. For many, the professor is much more esteemed than the man.

It is certainly quite true that most people who are not capable of love are also worth little in friendship. Still, one often sees the opposite.

It is a fault common to all people of little talent and more erudition than understanding that they discover artificial rather than natural explanations.

It has always been true that most men live more according to fashion than reason.

There is in my opinion a great difference between teaching reasoning and being rational. There may be people who possess anything but common sense and yet who speculate admirably upon the rules it must observe, just as a physiologist can have knowledge of the constitution of the body and yet be quite unhealthy.

What can be the reason for man's terrible aversion to showing himself as he is, whether in his bedroom or in his most private thoughts? In the material world, everything is both what it can be and at the same time very forthright. According to our concepts, things are all that they can possibly be with respect to one another, but man is not. He appears rather to be that which he should not be. The art of concealing ourselves, or our aversion to letting ourselves be seen naked, intellectually or morally, is carried astonishingly far.

Words must occasionally be investigated, for the world can move on while words remain behind. Thus always things not words! For even the words infinite, eternal, and always have lost their meaning.

He was astonished that cats have two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes are.

Through our excessive reading we learn not only to take things for true that are not, but our proofs also acquire a form that is often demanded not so much by the nature of the case as by our unnoticed adherence to fashion. Using familiar examples, we demonstrate things that we could as convincingly support with examples from our own experience; and we even cite as support sentences that prove nothing and propositions that are mere tautologies. It is quite difficult to regard something in a new way and not mediated by fashion or determined by our accepted paradigm. When we should offer reasons and arguments, we instead offer our reputation; where we should teach, we instead threaten; and where humans would have been sufficient, we enlist gods for support.

Many people claim philosophical objectivity about certain things because they understand nothing of them.

A great way of attaining common sense is to strive constantly for clear concepts—not merely by relying on the definitions of others, but as far as possible by personal inquiry. We should repeatedly scrutinize things with the intention of discovering something others have not yet observed. For every word, we should at least once give ourselves an explanation and never use any word we do not understand.

It is not easy to think too much, but it is easy to read too much. The more things I think about, the more I endeavor to associate them with my experiences and my own system of thought, the stronger I become. With reading it is the contrary; I extend myself without increasing my strength. When I notice in my thinking gaps I cannot fill or difficulties I cannot overcome, I must consult a book and read. Either this is how one becomes useful, or there is no way.

It would be a blessing if we could shut our ears and other senses like we shut our eyes.

That it is so easy to shut our eyes and so difficult to shut our ears, except by covering them with our hands, shows undeniably that heaven was more concerned with the maintenance of our sensible apparatus than with the pleasure of our soul. Our ears are our most alert sentinels in sleep. What a blessing it would be if we could close and open our ears as easily as our eyes!

The noble simplicity in the works of nature has its origin only too often in the noble shortsightedness of the one who observes it.

There is a great difference between believing something and not being able to believe the contrary. I can often believe things without being able to prove them, just as I disbelieve others without being able to disprove them. The position I take is determined not strictly by logic but by the preponderance of evidence.

Anyone who reflects on the history of philosophy and natural science will find that the greatest discoveries were made by people who regarded as merely probable what others advanced as certain. They might be described as adherents of the New Academy—a school that maintained a balance between the rigorous certainty of the Stoics and the uncertainty and indifference of the Skeptics. Such a philosophy is all the more to be recommended in that we accumulate our ideas and opinions at a time when our understanding is at its weakest.

In all sciences, it can be advantageous to posit cases that as far as we know do not occur in nature, just as mathematicians posit alternative laws of gravity. It is always heuristic and may sometimes provoke insights.

If only I could dishabituate myself from everything, so I could see anew, hear anew, and feel anew. Habit corrupts our philosophy.

We can do good in as many ways as we can sin, in thought, word, and deed.

There are truths that go about so garishly attired that we should take them for lies, but they are pure truths nonetheless.

Premeditated virtue is not worth much; feeling or habit is the thing.

If only children could be educated so that all things unclear were entirely incomprehensible to them.

It is very good to read once again the books others have read already a hundred times, for though the object remains the same, the subject is different.

Shortsighted and farsighted are used incorrectly as metaphors of mental capacity. Here shortsighted means blind; but it is clear that shortsighted people also see things others do not.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

The human tendency to regard little things as significant has produced much that is great.

It is a great trick of rhetoric merely to persuade people when one could have convinced them; they often think themselves convinced when merely persuaded.

With prophecies, the interpreter is often a more important man than the prophet.

Nothing is more agreeable to me than instances where my sympathy or antipathy precedes reason to discover how these are related, in other words, to become aware of what I am in this world and why I am this way.—Our entire philosophy, I believe, consists in becoming distinctly aware of what we already are mechanically.

The mind of man is no less provided for than is the body of an animal; what in the latter is called appetite and instinct is in the former called common sense. Both can suffocate; the only difference being that for an animal the cause must be external, but for man it can also be internal. An animal is for itself always a subject, while man is for himself also an object.

However we imagine representing to ourselves the things outside of us, these representations will and must invariably carry some trace of the subject in them. It seems to me a very unphilosophical idea to regard our soul as merely passive; no, it also contributes something to the objects. Thus there can be no being in the world that recognizes the world as it really is. I would like to call this the affinities of the mental and physical worlds, and I can very well imagine there might be beings for whom the order of the universe would be music to which they dance while heaven plays accompaniment.

Just as the highest law is the greatest injustice, so too is the greatest injustice often the highest law.

What am I? What shall I do? What may I hope and believe? All things in philosophy can be reduced to this.

It is actually evidence for the great limitation of our sensibilities that we do not see the essence of things. We see the color, feel the weight, impenetrability, and density of a magnet; but these properties are not—whether taken separately or together—that by virtue of which the magnet attracts iron, for other objects also possesses all of these properties.

It is necessary to agitate all of our knowledge and then let it settle again in order to see how everything is arranged. […]

To discover between things relationships and similarities that no one else sees. In this way, wit can lead to invention.

Writing is an excellent means of awakening the system sleeping within each of us; anyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something that, though it lay within us, we did not previously clearly recognize.

When he attends church and reads his bible, the ordinary man confuses the means with the end—a very common error.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at his mishap, “if only I had done something delightfully sinful this morning, I would know why I am suffering now!”

That a false hypothesis is at times to be preferred to the correct one can be seen in the doctrine of the freedom of man. Man is certainly not free, but a quite profound study of philosophy is required not to be misled by this idea. Among a thousand people, none has the time and patience for such study, and among the hundred that do, not one has the mind or spirit for it. Freedom is thus really the most convenient way of thinking about the matter for oneself and, since it has appearance on its side, will always remain the most conventional one.

We must have hypotheses and theories in order to organize our knowledge, otherwise everything remains merely detritus—and we already have a great deal of scholars who produce this.

An autopsy cannot uncover those faults that end with death.

An excellent motto: “Opinions are continually varying, where we cannot have mathematical evidence of the nature of things; and they must vary. Nor is that variation without its use, since it occasions a more thorough discussion, whereby error is often dissipated true knowledge is encreased and its principles become better understood and more firmly established” (Franklin's Letters on Philosophical Subjects, Letter 38)

Those who think a great deal for themselves will find much wisdom recorded in language. We probably do not add it all ourselves

Just as the followers of Herr Kant always accuse their opponents of not understanding him, I suspect there are many who believe he is correct simply because they understand him. His way of representing things is novel and differs considerably from the usual, and once we finally gain some insight into it, we are inclined to regard it as true, especially since it has so many zealous adherents. We should always remember, however, that understanding something is no reason for believing that it is true. I believe the satisfaction in having understood an extremely abstract and obscure system leads many to believe that its truth has thereby been demonstrated.

Nothing is more common than for people to consider themselves convinced of the truth of something as soon as they have understood the opinion a great man has held about the matter. These are, however, very different things. It has often happened to me. I believe that many people, once they have labored their way through the difficulties of the Tychonian system and all its epicycles, have thought: “Praise the Lord, I have finally figured it all out."

He learned to play a few pieces on the metaphysic.

Anyone who plunders the ideas of an ancient writer could defend himself by appealing to metempsychosis and say: “Prove I was not also that writer.”

We cannot really know whether we are not at this moment sitting in a madhouse.

Most teachers of faith defend their propositions, not because they are convinced of their truth, but because they once claimed they were true.

Nothing more clearly proves to me how matters stand in the world of learning than the fact that Spinoza was for so long regarded as an evil, disreputable man and his opinions as dangerous; the reputations of so many others have suffered a similar fate.

A character: everyone forms an incorrect idea of him and hates and persecutes him according to this image.

It is astonishing how often the word infinite is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, and so on. There must be something agreeable about the concept, or its misuse could not have become so widespread. What have the ancients to gain from this?

In order to find something, many, if not most, people must first know that it is there.

I believe that in comparison with the English, the German suppresses more with reason, which really should never happen. On many occasions, for instance, on which it would never occur to the Englishman to laugh, a German does not laugh because he knows it would be improper.

He was no “slave to his word,” as they say; on the contrary, he exercised such despotism over his promises that he could do with them whatever he wished.

In this world, you can live well from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.

One of the strangest delusions man would be capable of is to believe he is insane and sitting in a madhouse but actually be acting completely rational. If someone once became convinced of this, I really do not see how one could convince him otherwise.

A golden rule: we must judge people, not by their opinions, but by what these opinions make of them.

Certainly happiness cannot be the first principle of morality, for it shows me only the direction but not the way. Furthermore, happiness must be subordinated to reason, for otherwise, as Pütter once demonstrated quite well in collegio, perfice te could lead to the devil.*
*This ethical principle is attributed to the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762): Perfice te ut finem, perfice te ut medium (“Perfect yourself as an ends, perfect yourself as a means”). Kant discusses this principle in section 4 of the Metaphysik der Sitten (Metaphysics of Morals) (1797) regarding the duties owed by persons to themselves. The translation is from Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals

If a war has lasted twenty years, it may well last for a hundred. For war has now become a status. Polemocracy. People who have tasted peace die out.

To doubt things that are now believed without any investigation, that is everywhere the essential thing.

Why do I believe this? Is it actually this way?

It really deserves sincerely to be investigated, for my own housekeeping, why most discoveries happen by chance. The principle reason is really that people learn to regard things as their teachers and acquaintances do. That is why it would be quite useful for once to give instructions on how one can deviate from the rule according to certain laws.

Whenever I arrive at a new thought or theory, always to ask: Is this really as new as you believe it to be? This is also in general the best reminder never to be amazed at anything in the world (nil admirari).

My body is that particular part of the world that my thoughts are able to alter. Even imaginary illnesses may become real ones. In the rest of the world, my hypotheses cannot disturb the order of things.

To ask in everything the question: is this true? and then to seek reasons for why one believes it is not true.

It is strange that only extraordinary people make the discoveries that afterward seem so easy and simple; this presupposes that to perceive the most simple but true conditions of things requires very profound knowledge.

How do we arrive at the concept outside us? Why do we not believe that everything is within us and occurs within us? How is it that we arrive at the concept of distance at all? This seems quite difficult to resolve. We go as far as to locate that which is in us and occurs within us, namely, the changes of the images on our retina, outside ourselves, and yet when we are pricked or feel a pain in the eye, we immediately locate it in the eye itself.

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as even existing. Away with it!

Outside us. It is certainly difficult to say how we arrived at this concept, for we actually merely sense things within us. To sense something outside oneself is a contradiction; we sense things only within ourselves, and what we sense is a mere modification of our self and thus within us. Because these alterations are not dependent upon us, we ascribe them to other things that are outside us and say that there are things we should call “praeter nos”; but for praeter we substitute the preposition extra, which is something entirely different. That we think of these things as being in a space outside us is clearly not a matter of sensation; it seems to be something that is most intimately interwoven with the nature of our sensible faculty of cognition; it is the form in which the representation of something praeter nos is given to us. The form of sensibility.

Man is a creature who searches for causes; in a hierarchy of minds, he could be called a “cause-seeker.” Other minds perhaps conceive of things according to different relations that to us are incomprehensible.

To invent an inventor for all things.

Is this really the only way of explaining this?

Seeing black is not the same as seeing nothing. Someone who has no eyes does not see everything around himself as black but does not see at all. We do not see black with our ears but do not see at all. Black then is seen or sensed to a certain degree; it is the feeling of tranquility for a sense engaged by light.

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how the rest would behave: for example, if the world were without iron, where would we be? This is an old example.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Philosophical Writings
Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by
Steven Tester

Self' could never be either a thing of parts or part of a thing

Attached to the article on pañc'upādānakkhandhā→

For the puthujjana ... a 'self' exists, as an extra-temporal monolithic whole ('self' could never be either a thing of parts or part of a thing). Nanavira Thera
Grenier: 'What has parts and successions is repugnant to the very nature of our being.'

Without understanding this basic thing, Suttas below must remain incomprehensible.

“Suppose, bhikkhus, there was a king or a royal minister who had never before heard the sound of a lute. He might hear the sound of a lute and say: ‘Good man, what is making this sound—so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling?’ They would say to him: ‘Sire, it is a lute that is making this sound—so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling.’ He would reply: ‘Go, man, bring me that lute.’

“They would bring him the lute and tell him: ‘Sire, this is that lute, the sound of which was so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling.’ The king would say: ‘I’ve had enough with this lute, man. Bring me just that sound.’ The men would reply: ‘This lute, sire, consists of numerous components, of a great many components, and it gives off a sound when it is played upon with its numerous components; that is, in dependence on the parchment sounding board, the belly, the arm, the head, the strings, the plectrum, and the appropriate effort of the musician. So it is, sire, that this lute consisting of numerous components, of a great many components, gives off a sound when it is played upon with its numerous components.’

“The king would split the lute into ten or a hundred pieces, then he would reduce these to splinters. Having reduced them to splinters, he would burn them in a fire and reduce them to ashes, and he would winnow the ashes in a strong wind or let them be carried away by the swift current of a river. Then he would say: ‘A poor thing, indeed sir, is this so-called lute, as well as anything else called a lute. How the multitude are utterly heedless about it, utterly taken in by it!’

“So too, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu investigates form to the extent that there is a range for form, he investigates feeling to the extent that there is a range for feeling, he investigates perception to the extent that there is a range for perception, he investigates determinations to the extent that there is a range for determinatios, he investigates consciousness to the extent that there is a range for consciousness. As he investigates form to the extent that there is a range for form ... consciousness to the extent that there is a range for consciousness, whatever notions of ‘I’ or ‘mine’ or ‘I am’ had occurred to him before no longer occur to him.” from SN 22 : 246

Flowers

At Sāvatthī. “Bhikkhus, I do not dispute with the world; rather, it is the world that disputes with me. A proponent of the Dhamma does not dispute with anyone in the world. Of that which the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, I too say that it does not exist. And of that which the wise in the world agree upon as existing, I too say that it exists.

“And what is it, bhikkhus, that the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, of which I too say that it does not exist? Form that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, and I too say that it does not exist. Feeling … Perception … Determinations … Consciousness that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, and I too say that it does not exist.

“That, bhikkhus, is what the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, of which I too say that it does not exist.

“And what is it, bhikkhus, that the wise in the world agree upon as existing, of which I too say that it exists? Form that is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as existing, and I too say that it exists. Feeling … Perception … Determinations … Consciousness that is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as existing, and I too say that it exists.

“That, bhikkhus, is what the wise in the world agree upon as existing, of which I too say that it exists.

“There is, bhikkhus, a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it.

“And what is that world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through? Form, bhikkhus, is a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it. When it is being thus explained … and elucidated by the Tathāgata, if anyone does not know and see, how can I do anything with that foolish worldling, blind and sightless, who does not know and does not see?

“Feeling … Perception … Determinations … Consciousness is a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it. When it is being thus explained … and elucidated by the Tathāgata, if anyone does not know and see, how can I do anything with that foolish worldling, blind and sightless, who does not know and does not see?

“Bhikkhus, just as a blue, red, or white lotus is born in the water and grows up in the water, but having risen up above the water, it stands unsullied by the water, so too the Tathāgata was born in the world and grew up in the world, but having overcome the world, he dwells unsullied by the world.”

SN 22 : 94

To err may be human, but to admit it isn't - selected quotes slightly misanthropic

From various authors.

To do an evil act is base. To do a good one without incurring danger, is common enough. But it is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds though he risks everything in doing them.
[Doing them he doesn't risk to be reborn in lower realms, and lack of self-respect]

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

To err may be human, but to admit it isn't.

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.

The only man who can change his mind is a man that's got one.

Light travels inconceivably fast until it encounters the human mind.

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

For most, life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

The praise of a fool is more harmful than his blame.

Blessed is he who has made it through University without being made a fool of.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

The scholar labours meticulously for years on end to produce his masterpiece - which the thinker destroys with a single sentence.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

A child miseducated is a child lost.

You can lead high school graduates to University, but you can't make them think.

Anyone who has ever been to school will always feel comparatively at home in prison.

Very few can be trusted with an education.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Never let your studies interfere with your education.

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

The average PhD thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

Truth may kill a man, but he dies with dignity. And if the human race goes extinct, let it be for truth and not for the cowardice of ignorance.

Nothing makes you as sure of yourself as ignorance.

Goodness plus ignorance makes one Devil.

Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice because it is not subject to the regulation of conscience.

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.

If you are dealing with a fool, dictate, but never argue.

The surest sign that you have no brains is to argue with one who hasn't.

Some of the new books are so down to earth they ought to be ploughed under.

What an author doesn't know usually fills a book.

The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

If ignorance is bliss then a lot of people are going to die of joy.

The reason there's so much ignorance is that those who have it are so eager to share it.

To be a success in life all you need is confidence and ignorance.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

The man who listens to reason is usually thinking of some way to refute it.

Wit helps to play the fool with more confidence.

The human race's favourite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them.

The ignorance of most people gives one a rough sense of the infinite.

Nothing is impossible for anyone impervious to reason.

His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere.

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether people do.

Most fools think they are only ignorant.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

There is no difference between a wise man and a fool when they fall in love.

You can't depend on anyone to be wrong all the time. Even a fool must now and then be right by chance, just as a broken clock is correct twice a day.

Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and the half-wise that are dangerous.

Infatuation is what makes an intelligent man look foolish to a foolish girl who looks intelligent to him.

Silence is the wisdom of the fool. To make a noise is to be found out.

Remain silent and others suspect that you are ignorant; talk and you remove all doubt of it.

The ignorant are aware of many mysteries and understand everything else, whereas the wise are aware of one mystery and understand nothing else.

Time alone relieves the foolish from sorrow, but reason relieves the wise.

When drunk, men often say sensible things which sound foolish to them when sober.

When the people applauded wildly, Diogenes turned to one of his friends and said "Have I said something foolish?"

If I was appreciated along with other men I would depreciate myself.

A man who has a million dollars feels as well off as if he were not a fool.

Some people gather a lot of money thinking it will make them worth more.

One should not seek to be of value to society any more than one would wish to be popular with a fool.

A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his forefathers.

To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

What men call good fellowship is commonly but the Virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.

No two things in Nature have less affinity than violence and reflection.

No one ever thought to give awards for wisdom, which is a great relief.

Words are like leaves And where they most abound Much fruit and sense beneath is rarely found.

He writes quickly, with the fluency of the artist who has nothing whatsoever to say.

You should read it, though there is much that is skipworthy.

It was a book to kill time, for those who like it better dead.

The ordinary man would rather read the life of the cruelest pirate that ever lived than the wisest philosopher.

There are two common ways to avoid thinking: one is to never read, and the other is to do nothing but read.

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to prove your talent to people who have none.
The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editions.

There is no worse robber than a bad book.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.

He who wields a pen is in a state of war.

Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do.

To write prose, one must have something to say; but he who has nothing to say can still make verses and rhymes, where one word suggests the other, and at last something comes out which in fact is nothing but looks as if it were something.

If you find writing prose too boring you can always convert to poetry by starting each sentence with a capital letter, and making each paragraph a stanza, with each line ending on the margin except the last one.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

A poet is a person who simply cannot keep his confusion to himself.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

He is a sheep in sheep's clothing.

To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.

The first among the flock is still a sheep.

Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.

Only dead fish swim with the stream.

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

Society is the process in which everyone fights all battles except the one that should be fought.

The length of life ought to be measured by the number and importance of our ideas and not by the number of our days. By this standard, some people have never been born.

I know of very few individuals who deserve to live.

Fame is proof that people are gullible.

"Be yourself" is the worst advice you can give some people.

All that I care to know is that a man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

The greatest act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God.

It must be a very weary day to the youth, when he first discovers that after all he will only become a man.

"The way he (George Bernard Shaw) believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many believe in no God at all."

The only excuse for God is that He doesn't exist.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

He who always finds fault with his friends has faulty friends.

With each friend you buy you get an enemy free.

Judge a man by his foes.

Know a man by the company he avoids.

The wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.

Have no illusions, people do not think about you, but of what you are thinking about them.

Vanity is the result of a delusion that someone is paying attention.

You can say what you want to around home because no one pays any attention to you.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

While each man loves himself more than anyone else, he sets less value on his own estimate than on the opinions of others.

Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution.

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs less.

Who'd want to be an adult in this world? The normal, relaxed, well-adjusted adult is constantly exhausting itself playing a thousand games - 250 of these are spent in frantic pursuit of what it wants; another 250 are spent trying to avoid what it does not want; a further 250 involve elaborate justifications, trying to give the whole process some semblance of respectability; and the final 250 entail the efforts of trying to appear normal, relaxed, and well-adjusted.

If a growing object is both fresh and spoiled at the same time, chances are it is a child.

We're all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.

By the time we arrive at middle age, we have settled on definite convictions, most of which are wrong.

People quiet down as they grow older, probably because they have more to be quiet about.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.

It is a man's fate to keep growing older long after he is old enough.

Last will and testament: a pathetic attempt at immortality.

Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Nothing fails like success.

Nothing succeeds like failure.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Success in almost any field depends more on energy, drive and persistence than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.

In judging others people will work overtime for no pay.

The place where optimism most flourishes is in the lunatic asylum.

The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."

Dangerous exercise - jumping to conclusions.

Only the poor are forbidden to beg.

Time is money if you are willing to sell your life.

I cannot afford to waste my time making money.

To be clever enough to make a lot of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

Money costs too much.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up that makes us rich.

There are no dollar signs on tombstones.

No man ever said on his deathbed: "I wish I had spent more time on my business."

Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it.

The love of money grows as the money itself grows.

Nobody has money who ought to have it.

God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind person he selects to receive it.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

The poor live the most independent lives of any.

Many people have character who have nothing else.

Confound these ancestors . . . They've stolen our best ideas!

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

Plagiarism is sometimes unrecognized originality.

Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.

Everything has been thought of before; the problem is to think of it again.

I hold it a noble task to rescue from oblivion those who deserve to be eternally remembered.

The historian is a prophet looking backwards.

All history is the propaganda of the victorious.

The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.

There's only one thing that can continue to grow without nourishment: the human ego.
[Ego also requires nourishment, but its cultivation comes effortlessly.]

The man who lives by himself and for himself is apt to be corrupted by the company he keeps.

Some people have such open minds that nothing stays in them long.

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

He that hath ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.

The best way of answering a bad argument is to let it go on.

If someone says they agree with you in principle, it means they haven't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover about everybody's face but their own.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.
Somebody's boring me . . . I think it's me.

I am always embarrassed by compliments - I always feel that they have not said enough.

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.

Never do today what you can do tomorrow. Something may occur to make you regret your premature action.

It is well to put off until tomorrow what you ought not to do at all.

Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Invention is the mother of necessity.

The line is often busy when your conscience tries to speak.

My duty is a thing I never do, on principle.

When a man claims that he is working toward the betterment of humanity - and humanity agrees - you can be sure he is not.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

If you are good, you'll be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you'll get out of doing it.

It is, no doubt, an immense advantage to have done nothing, but one should not abuse it.

Many a man holds both day and night jobs so he can drive from one to the other in a more expensive car.

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do with their time.

Work is a form of nervousness.

I do not like work even when another person is doing it.

The lazy man gets round the sun as quickly as the busy one.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

People who like to be referred to as dreamers are too often merely sleepers.

Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.

Actions lie louder than words.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgement.

You can make the average man mad by referring to him as the average man.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Nobody minds a clever man, as long as he does not impart his cleverness to others.

Take care that no one hates you justly.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

They who know _the truth_ are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

I have yet to see a problem, however complicated, which, when you look at it in the right way, did not become more complicated.

The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

If you think the world is against you - it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.

In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

What governs men is the fear of truth.

Children are afraid of being left in the dark; men are afraid of not being left in it.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

Judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made them.
Self-love seems so often unrequited.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

The worst thing about war is that it seldom kills off the right people.

A nation is only at peace if it's at war.

A human relationship is what happens when you know you can rely on the other person to be as dishonest as you are.

The human race expresses great concern that everyone should express their abilities to the full, and never more so than when those abilities are non-existent.

One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.

Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present.

Equality: It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them appear equally clever.

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

At one time I thought he wanted to be an actor. He had certain qualifications, including no money and a total lack of responsibility.

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

Women of Substance Are Made, Not Born

When looking around at the quality of modern-day women, the majority would be considered by men to be utterly disappointing long-term material, their traits, their composure and their very nature are all entirely questionable if not downright undesirable. Society downplays, justifies and otherwise ignores the weaknesses of women with cultural ignorance that mislabels objective criticism as misogyny, whilst it simultaneously and quite ironically misrepresents women in a positive light by projecting all these unsubstantiated idealistic qualities onto them, claiming that such qualities are fundamentally innate merits of the universal female identity.

In all its unfounded perversity, this baseless bullshit is a type of religion, everyone believes blindly in “the goodness of women” because they have been raised to do so, contrary to the behaviour that women around them are actually engaging in on a daily basis. Even when said behaviour is found to be bad, it is always disregarded due to some baseless belief in female sanctity, which in reality is nothing more than an ideal, a projection, not an universal truth. It is this unfairly unrealistic deception, this hallucinogenic depiction of womankind that is presented to women, which leads men who begin to learn what women are like in nature to feel disillusioned and disenchanted, they feel this way because what they were taught to believe about women from a young age is far removed from who they really are. Whilst women are flattered by the bullshit pandering that they are sugar and spice and everything nice – men are crushed by the fact that they are indeed, not so.

In comparison to all the hopes and dreams men have been fed to expect from women, it’s this perverse Disney funded fantasy that makes men everywhere feel duped, let-down and even misanthropic when they find themselves ill-equipped to cope with the let-down which is the modern-day woman.

Those living in today’s Anglosphere and western European civilizations should typically expect very little of women, so few are worthy of anything more than a rumble in the hay simply because they haven’t been raised right, cue the malignancy of the single mother epidemic and the erosion of conducive moral, religious and family. Even good company and banter with such women tends to be a rarity as quite a many of them lack the ability to be mentally stimulating on a conversational level. Occasionally you may find yourself pleasantly surprised and in such a circumstance run the risk of falling very hard for the woman in question, as in comparison to her brethren she will shine out like a lighthouse in a sea of drudgery with imposing prominence, however no matter her beneficial difference, she is a woman like any other. She has the same psychological and most importantly, emotional needs and as such will run all the usual shit tests, making the same type of demands that the legions of broken women will, the question you will find yourself asking though, is this one worth it?

For those who decide yes, such a woman is worth it, and are in the right phase of their life to do so, you have a project on your hands, one that will require much mental investment. If you want yourself a desirable woman you will have to cultivate femininity and desirability into her yourself if you deem she has the necessary raw material to become a desirable lady worthy of raising a family with, wife material. Such is the inherent focus of the red pill woman project.

Red pill women are women on a quest to be “wife/mother material” to the perception of a man, they are works in progress, the counterpart to the red pill philosophy. Essentially, they are guided by a social network of traditionally minded matriarchs and if in a serious relationship, the desires and authority of the man she has pledged her allegiance to. For those of us who have neither the time nor the inclination to practice the patience required to effectively create our own red pill woman, indulging in the idea of red pill women is not an option for us. Women of all kinds require vast reservoirs of patience and love as it is the basis of their erratic emotionalism which leads them to be ever demanding.

Heed me when I say that all red pill women are trained by men, they are not magically born out of the womb, a “unicorn” is merely a high quality red pill woman raised, cultivated and overseen by men of value, integrity and intelligence. Whether that man is her father or later on, a serious boyfriend, she is trained and maintained by men to be a quality woman. To an extent she is trained by her mother also, who respects the strength of an authoritarian man and imparts the ideas of the father onto her daughter by proxy, but a mother who was unable to secure a strong man, in her bitterness and ineptitude, will typically not pass on conducive moral and sexual values that will lead to romantic success for her daughter. After all, she cannot do for her daughter what she was unable to obtain for herself.

Often a woman who is of quality from a young age, non-promiscuous, good-natured, talented, intelligent, humorous, not hateful of men and emotionally stable is a woman who has had a good relationship with her father. Her father having been what for lack of a better term is considered an alpha male, instilling positive traits into her psyche with a firm, loving hand, raising her to respect men and accommodate them in the social contract; rather than hold them in contempt and challenge them as adversaries like mainstream society would indoctrinate.

It is the job of the man who commits to such a woman romantically to then maintain the legacy that her father left, good girls will turn bad in the absence of a strong male figure, for it is woman’s emotional transient nature which causes them to stray from the path of romantic success. It is woman’s emotional nature whether she consciously desires it or not that necessitates her need for strong trustworthy leadership, so that she may absolve herself of responsibility in her inevitable moments of weakness, she wants someone to lean on but fears that the dissolution of that responsibility will be abused, a connection of trust to a powerful man is what women crave.

In essence, this is why women tend to look for “men who were like their fathers” they seek dominance in which they can trust, and it is this dominance which allows them to remain emotionally stable, offloading their neuroticism onto the stoicism of the man that they pair with. Good women are not only made by men, but must also be maintained by men. In the absence of such leadership, women take on detrimental qualities in the name of “freedom”, being poor leaders themselves (due to the erraticism of emotionalism) and in the absence of authority (typically a strong patriarch and an equally traditional matriarch) they become feral and pursue self-destruction, always chasing the nearest perceivable “emotional high”, rather than planning ahead for the days where the temporary adrenaline-filled joyful experience that short-term liaisons provide are no longer available to them as their sexual appeal evaporates with age, leaving them without legacy and family with a firm foot in spinsterhood.

Essentially, all women have daddy issues (no I’m not going to qualify that as “most” or “some” but forthrightly tell you ALL), if he was a good father she wants a serious relationship with a man who was like her father, strong, compassionate, worldly, a badass, but with a soft spot unique to her, women love to feel special, in fact, they crave it. If she had a good father, as a man looking to date such a woman (a woman with a good father) your life has already been made infinitely easier by his diligence, he has already raised an appealing woman and then left the foundations in place to cultivate this valuable raw material into a long-term partner, a mother and a wife. However, the onus is on you to be strong enough to maintain the status quo, such a woman will not respect weakness and thus will not follow the lead of a man who is too inept to take charge, such a woman will hold you to the standard set by her father and as such will compare you both in starkness.

If her father was absent or otherwise a let-down, she wants her boyfriend to be everything he wasn’t, her mind has filled in the blanks with what he should have been, some of that of course will be complete fantastical bullshit. What she will want in this scenario is for a man to essentially fill the emotional void the lack of a father figure left her with, whilst perversely in simultaneity she will find it hard to trust men due to her sense of abandonment. Maintaining a healthy, loving and conducive relationship with such a woman will be exceptionally difficult. She will effectively be both her own as well as your own worst enemy, actively sabotaging everything you’re trying to build with all the irrationality of her delinquency manifesting itself in the present day as morbid insecurity.

This is why women with poor relationships with their fathers are a massive red flag. When eying up a woman for a prospective long-term romantic engagement, find out what her relationship with her father is like, the absence of a father or a negative relationship with her father are massive red flags as she is already set-up to be a poor romantic prospect, mainly due to how she was (or wasn’t) raised.

Single mothers quite simply are inept to raise quality children singlehandedly. The presence of a weak father is better than nothing, but typically you want her to have had a father who was a patriarch, a dominant man who taught her discipline so that her base schematic of “what men should be like” is healthy and isn’t formed from unhealthy feminist stereotypes and the ramblings of a bitter and romantically unsuccessful single mother. Still, even the presence of a patriarch in a young girl’s life isn’t always enough to ensure a quality woman; as the prevailing socially engineered cultural forces around her proactively do their utmost to undermine the will and intent that her father’s best interests have for her.

Red pill women are not “unicorns”, they are women capable of curbing their instincts whilst using logic to be more desirable in an effort to secure provisioning in their old age, effectively they’re investing in the long-game and have been made self-aware enough to realise that being a slut getting by on her sexuality and youth is not a gravy train that is going to last forever. They are women who will compromise and work with a man who is equally strong enough and patient enough to deal with them. Everything is a compromise with women, whether she’s a cunt, has BPD, is unintelligent or is as high-caliber and well cultivated as an emotionally stable and feminine red pill woman, the inherent difference between masculine and feminine nature leads to a process of unending compromise.

No matter the woman, she will test your patience; this is just women full-stop. Not got a lot of patience? Women are going to just piss you the hell off then. It does help however when a woman can offset this inherently annoying trait of trying a man’s patience by bringing more than merely a vagina to the table. As a man you should be informed that an inherently irrational being is going to do nothing but antagonise the patience of someone who thinks in logic rather than the cognitive cartwheels of reactive transient emotionalism.

The biggest flattery of all to women, which only an intelligent woman will realise, is that despite the sheer frustration and pain she causes him with her volatile emotivity, is that such a man still chooses to stick with her and provide for her despite her shortcomings. A female’s self-awareness of his sacrifice and a declaration of appreciation for that sacrifice goes a long way to help reconcile the huge fundamental differences in expectation that men and women have of each other, women being far more audaciously demanding and stringently needy by nature of their disposition than men are.

I’ll end this article on the following closing thought: it is somewhat insane how the appreciation of an intrinsically irrational woman within the paradigm of a relationship is valued so intimately by the romantic disposition of what is otherwise a rational man. It is often true after all that we value that which is hardest to obtain, and a woman’s appreciation is scarcely given in earnest.

Illimitable Man

Understanding Female Psychology

“One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Contents:
1.) Introduction
2.) The Cultural Battle of the Sexes
3.) Solipsism’s Role In Femininity
4.) The Role of Rationalisation & Sophistry
5.) In Closing/Relevant Reading

1.) Introduction:

As I write this, I cast my mind back to a time I did not understand women. It is surreal to write on “how women work” when one so vividly remembers being a man clueless in such matters.

As a clueless man bereft of the knowledge my sanity demanded, I would ask men to explain women, I would ask women to explain women, and I would ask Google to explain women. Nobody really knew what they were talking about. The only answers I would get were gynocentric inanities mixed with general rhetorical platitudes such as “be yourself” and “be confident”.

The problem with the mainstream gynocentric viewpoint is it teaches men how to be a good slave, rather than a good master. It teaches men how to cater to women, rather than how to inspire a woman’s desire to cater to them. It actively suppresses truths related to women, whilst spreading vitriolic untruth about men. At this point it seems the system would prefer men are useful but ignorant, rather than enlightened and sovereign.

Men yearn to understand women, for they wish to attract them, as well as protect themselves from womanly predations. This knowledge is essential paramount sustenance all but crucial for the preservation of man’s sanity. And yet quite sadistically, this wisdom eludes most men no matter how earnestly they seek it.

Today, life changing truth is only readily available should a man happen upon a site such as this. Most men are unaware of women’s true nature, and the minority who are aware dare not discuss the elephant in the room, for doing so may come at incredible cost.

2.) The Cultural Battle of the Sexes:

The number of men aware of the realities inherent to female nature continues to dwindle, whilst the cultural hysteria touting “men are evil and women can do no wrong” reigns pervasively. Men are taught to worship women, whilst women are taught to distrust men. Men are taught to serve women, whilst women are taught to deceive men. Society believes it morally reprehensible for a man to dupe a woman, and yet bares no such disdain when the polarity is reversed, often going to extreme lengths to rationalise aesthetically pleasing justifications for immoral female behaviour.

Before the emergence of red pill philosophy, no meaningful infrastructure existed to support and educate men on matters of women, and this is why what we do is crucial. We educate boys and men on matters nobody else is capable of, and support them where nobody else cares.
Culturally there is a power imbalance where the masculine has become so weak and the feminine has gotten so out of control, that she threatens to destabilise civilization’s very core with a tyrannic power she is not fit to wield. The red pill (as well as this very publication) does to the extent of its reach, attempt to redress this imbalance by giving men the tools they need to exercise power and remain sovereign.

Red pill philosophy is effective, it thoroughly details female behaviour from numerous perspectives (sociologically, evolutionarily and occasionally, economically) to form a rich and comprehensive philosophy.

However, having internalised much of this “forbidden knowledge” over the years, I wish to do something I do not believe has been done before: unify the red pill understanding of women into a framework that depicts the relationships between the mechanisms that embody the feminine.
When I was clueless about women, I’d have killed for an article like this, so if that sounds like you, strap yourself in because you’re in for a treat. You’re going to learn what many men never learn, and what many others pay in pain and poverty to merely intuit.

3.) Solipsism’s Role In Femininity:

One cannot deny that women are vigorously interested in themselves and how men perceive them, yet regardless, this passion does not translate into a meaningful philosophical enquiry on womankind by herself. As such, a woman’s opinion of her sex is inseparably tied up with how she sees herself.

To simplify: whatever a woman believes to be true of women, is 99 out of 100 times, something she believes to be true of herself.

Solipsism leads women to believe the opinions they hold of themselves accurately represent the behaviours generalisable to their sex. Naturally most women are oblivious to their flaws, and are as a matter of ego, unwilling to even ponder the possibility they’re not intrinsically wonderful.
Most women do not realise the negative traits they possess should be rectified where possible or otherwise mitigated, because they do not recognise themselves as having said undesirable qualities to begin with. Simply put, women lack self-awareness, they tend to deny their shortcomings rather than fix them, and this is why there is a substantial lack of bodies in the women’s online self-improvement community.

If you talk about the general nature of women to a woman, but you do not distinguish between her and “most women”, she will almost always lump herself in with “most women” and fail to make the distinction between herself and women as a whole. This leads her to constantly miss the forest for trees, stating that “she was in a similar situation and she was never like that” when you generalise her sex.

Now, whilst it is certainly possible the woman you’re talking to may be the exception to something, it is more likely that she is not but believes in all delusional earnest that she is. Because she follows her feelings, and it feels better for her to believe she’s different than to be aware of her shortcomings, she will believe an aspect of her behaviour immune to generalisation even when her behaviours confirm the generalisation!

You may even remember a time when the woman you’re talking to embodied the exact generalisation you’re asserting, and yet like a crazy person with amnesia, she will claim to be nothing like that. This is another “function” of solipsism, a woman’s pre-occupation with the self is mirrored by an utter lack of self-awareness of what said self consists of.

And so it is only in the grand denial of a woman’s solipsism that if she believes there’s nothing “wrong” with her, then there’s nothing “wrong” with women either. If she believes she’s not like that, then she incorrectly concludes that most women aren’t like that either.

It is the observation that nearly all women will unironically say “not all women are like that” that gives away the feminine’s solipsistic point of reference, that a woman will attempt to differentiate herself as superior when in competition, but should you criticise women in general, suddenly her ability to make distinctions between herself and her group vanishes.

In juxtaposition, if something negative is said about men, most men can simultaneously weigh up whether the generalisation applies to men as a group, and if it does, if it applies to them. They do not instantly conflate opinions of their sex with opinions of themselves, and so unlike women, are not reflexively offended by negative statements made about their sex if an element of that statement is based in reality.

Naive men believe “women must be experts on women, because being women themselves they know all about women!” such a belief is folly, and no more than a reflection of a man’s naivety, for it assumes women are abstractive rather than solipsistic, that is, more interested in the truth than being purposefully ignorant in order to maintain an optimum level of happiness. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

When women talk about women, they project rather than investigate because they’re prone to emotional solipsism, not rational investigation. Solipsism is the core base of all female behaviour, it is the intrinsic way of being, the very foundation on which the female’s other psychological aspects spawn.

Women with little power and low self-esteem are solipsistic and prone to infantile narcissism, whilst those with high self-esteem and great power are grandiosely narcissistic, the latter meaning they possess a characteristically masculine air of arrogant detachment.

Where solipsism is her internal dialogue and mode of thought, its external counterpart is infantile narcissism, women’s insecurity of her relative inferiority to man, and dependence on men. If one analyses the thinking of the feminist movement for a second, a great part of it fixates on “empowering women by granting them independence.”

This suggests a few things, that firstly, women do not possess the ability or desire to take independence for themselves and so need powerful politicians to legally mandate it. And secondly, that the feminist fixation with independence is a macro manifestation of female insecurity. This to say, that women are all too aware of their reliance on men for both economic and emotional support, and that collectively, rather than be grateful for man’s magnanimity, a great deal despise it. The saying “no good deed goes unpunished” seems apt here.

Women are deadly, yet needy. They have always needed men, still do, and most likely always will. And yet it is in the infantile stubbornness of femininity that a resentment brews for this biologically ordained neediness.

Even the women who do well to provide for themselves end up requiring a man who earns more than they, who is mentally stronger than they, and so on. A woman is hypergamous by her very nature, and thus much to the disdain of her insecurity, requires male superiority in order to even find men attractive.

The topic of feminine infantile narcissism presents the perfect opportunity to explore why women are more inherently cunning than men. It is because women are so incredibly aware of their heightened neediness relative to men that they develop an intrinsic penchant for cunning. They are all too aware the depth and breadth of assistance they require from the opposite sex is greater than the inverse, and so it is this position in large part which fuels their motive for manipulating as a way of life.

Women are in a position of neediness, and yet they cannot fully trust men to give them what they need, so they manipulate men in order to give them what they want, but then resent the men who fall prey to such devices. This phenomenon alone should explain to you the mental hell women occupy, and explain much of their external craziness.

Even the sweetest, kindest, best raised woman is a cunning creature, for it is in the insecurity inherent to reliance that a woman protects herself via the impassioned practice of cunning. I believe that where nature gave man superior strength, women were bestowed pathological cunning. Unfortunately, what was granted to be used as a means of defence, is often in practice used for anything but.

Infantile as they are, women are ill-equipped to handle power, and that which is born out of the insecurity that a man may do her wrong, turns into an exploitative, predatory misuse of power that fuels grandiose narcissism, and thus masculinises her. The aforementioned relationships between the different aspects of the female psyche do not explain it in its entirety, but nonetheless, should accurately depict its root and core.

4.) The Role of Rationalisation & Sophistry:

In contrast to the prior section, this section will be quite short as many of the mechanisms relevant to this behaviour are aptly described in my distillation of solipsism. Whilst solipsism requires greater explanation because of its breadth as “something she is”, rationalisation requires less explanation because it’s merely “something she does.”

Rationalisation is the grand act of seeking justification or explanation for something that has occurred in order to flatter/benefit the person who performed the behaviour. It is not an honest attempt to understand what causes a behaviour.

Women often do not understand why they feel what they feel, because rationally verbalising primal impulses is difficult if not impossible. She cannot acknowledge that she doesn’t even know why she said or did something as she’ll look stupid. So to save face, she will come up with persuasive nonsense to reconcile the irrationality of her behaviour with the aestheticism of something that sounds convincing.

To simplify, she will find something that sounds reasonable to explain her behaviour, regardless of whether this is the true cause of said behaviour. As long as it makes her look and feel good, it is a sufficient rationalisation that serves the purpose she needs it to.

Women are far less concerned with communicating the truth about themselves than they are maintaining an acceptable image. Again, this is why it is folly to ask women about women. They’re less interested, capable and incentivised to understand themselves than men are.

5.) In Closing / Relevant Reading:

Here before you lies just a few of the aspects inherent to the operating system of female psychology.

It is incomplete, as a complete treatise on the topic is not merely substantial in depth, but likewise of breadth. Time permitting, it is my desire to pen a follow up piece that details other aspects inherent to female nature, linking them in with the aspects previously described in order to create a coherent framework.

Blog:
Fifty Shades of Red
Fifty Shades Redder
The AWALT
Misconception The Myth of Female Rationality – [Part 1] – [Part 2]
The Nature of Women

Book(s):
The Manipulated Man

Illimitable Man