Gurdjieff Quotes

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

Knowledge and Understanding are quite different. Only understanding can lead to being, whereas knowledge is but a passing presence in it.

Remember yourself always and everywhere.

By teaching others you will learn yourself.

Conscious love evokes the same in response.
Emotional love evokes the opposite.
Physical love depends on type and polarity.

Faith of consciousness is freedom.
Faith of feeling is slavery.
Faith of body is stupidity.

Hope of consciousness is strength.
Hope of feeling is cowardice.
Hope of body is disease.

Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.

He who has got rid of the disease "Tomorrow" has the possibility to attain what he is here for.

Don't judge a man by the tales of others.

If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt... It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics.

There is only one kind of magic and this is ‘doing.’

You must understand that ordinary efforts do not count; only super-efforts count.

In the river of life suffering is not intentional. In conscious life suffering is intentional and of great value.

Man is given a limited quantity of experiences; being economical with them lengthens his life.

Man is refreshed not by the quantity but by the quality of sleep—sleep little without regret.

Men have their minds and women their feelings more highly developed. Either alone can give nothing. Think what you feel and feel what you think. Fusion of the two produces another force.

Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.

The only type of sexual relations possible are those with someone who is as advanced and capable as oneself.

We attract forces according to our being. 
We have good and bad angels. The good angels work by way of our voluntary, active nature and the bad through our passive nature.

What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses.

You should understand, and establish it as a firm rule, not to pay attention to other people’s opinions. You must be free of people surrounding you, and when you are free inside you will be free of them.

Only help him who is not an idler.


Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot even conceive a shadow of what man is capable of attaining.

 By Teaching others you will learn yourself.

Life is real only then, When 'I am'

We are sheep kept to provide wool for our masters 
who feed us and keep us as slaves of illusion. 
But we have a chance of escape and our masters 
are anxious to help us, 
but we like being sheep. It is comfortable.

Do not be affected by externals. 
In themselves they are harmless; 
it is we who allow ourselves to be hurt by them.

Unconscious sufffering will have no result; 
it is better to have bread and voluntarily not eat it. 
Unconscious suffering, in one center only, l
eads to lunatic asylum. 
Only conscious suffering is of value.

Self-observation is an instrument of selfchange, 
a means of awakening. 
By observing himself he throws, as it were, 
a ray of light onto his inner processes 
which have hitherto worked in complete darkness. 
And under the influence of this light 
the processes themselves begin to change. 

Man has no individuality. 
He has no single, big I. 
Man is divided into a multiplicity of small I’s.
A man decides to get up early beginning from the following day. 
One I, or a group of I’s, decide this. 
But getting up is the business of another I 
who entirely disagrees with the decision 
and may even know absolutely nothing about it. 

The more a man understands what he is doing,
the greater will be the result of his efforts.
This is a fundamental principle of the Fourth Way.
The results of his work are in direct proportion
to the consciousness of the work.

All new powers and capacities of realization 
come always in one and the same way. 
At first they appear in the form of flashes 
at rare and short moments; 
afterwards they appear more often 
and last longer until, finally, 
after very long work 
they become permanent. 

A man sees the faults of others more easily than he sees his own.
At the same time on the path of self-study he learns that 
he himself possesses all the faults that he finds in others. 
But there are many things that he does not see in himself, 
whereas in other people he begins to see them. 
But, as I have just said, in this case he knows that 
these features are his own. 
Thus other members of the group serve him as mirrors 
in which he sees himself. 
But, of course, in order to see himself in other people's faults 
and not merely to see the faults of others, 
a man must be very much on his guard against 
and be very sincere with himself.

I ask you to believe nothing that 
you cannot verify for yourself.

In the river of life suffering is not intentional.
In conscious life suffering is intentional and of great value.

Laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, 
which, if it remained unused,
might become negative, that is, poison.
Laughter is the antidote.

As long as our ideas are the same,
we will never be apart.

You are in prison.
If you wish to get out of prison,
the first thing you must do is to realize that
you are in prison.
If you think you are free, you can't escape.

A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws,
but rather represents laws which are 
incomprehensible to us.

Remember yourself always and everywhere.

Awakening is possible 
only for those who seek it and want it,
for those who are ready to struggle with themselves
and work on themselves 
for a very long time
and very persistently in order to attain it.

Conscious faith is freedom.
Emotional faith is slavery.
Mechanical faith is foolishness.

Two things in life are infinite;
the stupidity of man 
and the mercy of God.

Without struggle, no progress and no result.
Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine.

You can never awaken using the same system
that put you to sleep in the first place.

Don't judge a man by the tales of others.

What is possible for individual man
is impossible for the masses.

A considerable percentage of the people 
we meet on the street are people 
who are empty inside, that is, 
they are actually already dead.
It is fortunate for us that we do not see and
do not know it. 
If we knew what a number of people are actually dead 
and what a number of these dead people govern 
our lives, we should go mad with horror.

Self-observation brings man to
the realization of the necessity of self-change. 
And in observing himself a man notices 
that self-observation itself 
brings about certain changes in his inner processes. 
He begins to understand that self-observation
is an instrument of self-change, 
a means of awakening.

By grounding our awareness 
in the living sensation of our bodies the 'I AM', 
our real presence, can awaken.

Love of consciousness evokes the same in response.
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of body depends only on type and polarity.

Without self knowledge, without understanding
the working and functions of his machine,
man cannot be free, 
he cannot govern himself and
he will always remain a slave.

One must do everything one can and then say 
'God have mercy!'

Better to die than live in sleep.

Only super-efforts count.

man lies to himself a lot.

A man will renounce any pleasures you like
but he will not give up his suffering.

It is the greatest mistake to think that 
man is always one and the same.
A man is never the same for long.
He is continually changing.
He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.

Patience is the mother of will.

Humanity is moving in a circle.
The progress in mechanical things 
of the past hundred years has proceeded
at the cost of losing many other things which
perhaps were much more important for it.

Practice love on animals first;
they react better and more sensitively.

A man can only attain knowledge 
with the help of those who possess it.
This must be understood
from the very beginning.
One must learn from him who knows.

The key to happiness is not to be identified with 
what is impermanent.

Only help him who is not an idler.

Rest comes not from the quantity 
but from the quality of sleep.

The only type of sexual relations possible are those
with someone who is as advanced and capable as oneself.

Awakening begins when a man realizes that 
he is going nowhere
and does not know where to go.

Love without knowledge
is demonic.

Begin with the possible;
begin with one step.

A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws,
but rather represents laws which are 
incomprehensible to us.

Exercise: The Last Hour of Life

Look back at the hour that has passed, as if it was the last hour for you on the earth and that you have just acknowledged that you have died. Ask yourself, were you satisfied at that hour? And now reanimate yourself again and set up the aim for yourself. In the next hour (if you are lucky to live one more) try to extract from life a little more than you did in the last hour. Define, where and when you should have been more aware, and where you should have put more inner fire. 

And now open your eyes wider, and by this I mean—open more possibilities for yourself, be a little more brave, than you were in the previous hour. Since you know that this is your last hour and you have nothing to loose, try to gain some bravery—at least now. Of course, you don’t have 
to be silly about it. 

Get to know yourself better, look at your machine as if from the outside. Now, when you are  dying, there is no sense to keep your reputation and your prestige. 

And now onwards, until the real last hour, aspire with persistence to receive the most you can  from life that is of value, develop your intuition. Take just a few moments each hour to watch at the hour that passed, without judgment, and then tune yourself to extracting more from the following hour. 

If we look at each hour like at a separate life unit, you can try to do as much as you can to use every unit totally. Force yourself and find the way to make the next hour much more than the one before, but also be aware that you have taken care of the debts you collected till now. Increase the self-sensing and self-knowledge of yourself, and also increase the ability to master yourself, this will change the work of your machine, which is always out of your control. And these abilities can become the indication of the real changes. And it is absolutely unimportant what the machine is thinking about this. 

...To live the rest of your life rehearsing your death hour by hour—is not at all pathological. None can receive more from life than the cancer patient, who knows approximately when he will die. And since he already recognized how he wishes to spend the rest of his life, he will not have to make the total change in it, but he will be able to go somewhere, where he always wished to go, but would not do it in other circumstances. 

The man who knows that he will die soon, will try to use to the maximum every hour of the rest of his life. This is exactly what Christ meant when he said that the last days will come soon—the days before the Last Judgment. We are all standing in front of the Judge, but it is not the others who are judging us, but we ourselves do the last estimation of our life. We do not have to fail the most important examination, where the most serious judge is ourself.
- The Last Hour of Life, Gurdjieff
http://www.searchwithin.org/download/last_hour_life.pdf