Top 100 G.I. Gurdjieff Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Life is real only then, when “I am”.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

2. “Remember yourself always and everywhere.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

4. “If you meditate and the Devil comes, make the Devil meditate.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

5. “Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

6. “Only super-efforts count.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

7. “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.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

8. “Better to die than live in sleep.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

9. “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.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

11. “Begin with the possible; begin with one step.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

12. “It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our bodies that the ‘I Am,’ our real presence, can awaken.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

14. “Real love is a cosmic force which goes through us. If we crystallize it, it becomes the greatest power in the world.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

15. “By teaching others you will learn yourself.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

16. “Never think of results, just do!”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

18. “The degree of consciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed of vibrations. The denser the matter, the less conscious it is.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

19. “My way is to develop the hidden potentialities of man; a way that is against Nature and against God.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

20. “The first reason for people’s slavery is our ignorance, and above all, our ignorance of ourselves.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

21. “Love without knowledge is demonic.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

22. “The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness, and ‘consciousness’ cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and ‘will’ cannot evolve involuntarily.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

23. “Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself – only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

24. “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.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

25. “Sincerity is the key which will open the door through which you will see your separate parts, and you will see something quite new. You must go on trying to be sincere. Each day you put on a mask, and you must take it off little by little.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

26. “That which is easy is bad for your inner life.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

27. “Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West-and then seek.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

28. “It is very difficult also to sacrifice one’s suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

29. “A ‘sin’ is something which is not necessary.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

30. “Patience is the mother of will.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

32. “Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

33. “One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

34. “What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

36. “Consciousness is a state in which a man knows all at once everything that he in general knows and in which he can see how little he does know and how many contradictions there are in what he knows.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

37. “The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

39. “Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

40. “The crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

41. “There is a cosmic law which says that every satisfaction must be paid for with a dissatisfaction.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

42. “Time began when you were born. It will end when you die.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

43. “Practice love first on animals, they are more sensitive.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

44. “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.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

45. “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.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

46. “With thorns in the inner world there will always be roses in the outer world, in law-able compensation.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

47. “Try to understand what I am saying: everything is dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

48. “Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

49. “Man must use what he has, not hope for what is not.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

50. “Common aim is stronger than blood.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff