A mind that is not concerned with itself, that is free of ambition, a mind that not caught up in its own desires or driven by its own pursuit of success – such a mind is not shallow and it flowers in goodness.
All great things start on a small scale, all great movements begin with individuals; and if we wait for collective action, such action, if it takes place at all, is destructive and conducive to further misery. So revolution must begin with you and me.
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end – you don’t achieve, you don’t come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.
Society is an abstraction. Abstraction is not a reality. What is reality is relationship. The relationship between human beings has created what we call society.
Ambition is a form of power, the desire for power over oneself and others, the power to do something better than anybody else. In ambition is a sense of comparison, and so the ambitious man is not a creative man, is never a happy man; in himself he is discontented.