Top 100 G.I. Gurdjieff Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “What you need to know is very little, but to know that little takes very very much.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

52. “He who has gotten rid of the disease of “tomorrow” has a chance of achieving what he is here for.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

53. “Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

55. “To know means to know all. Not to know all means not to know. In order to know all, it is only necessary to know a little. But, in order to know this little, it is first necessary to know pretty much.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

56. “If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

58. “If you can serve a cup of tea right, you can do anything.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

59. “Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel’s book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

60. “In order to understand the interrelation of truth and falsehood in life, a man must understand falsehood in himself, the constant incessant lies he tells himself.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

61. “Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, and habits are the result of external influences. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels – all this happens. Man is born, lives, dies, builds houses, writes books, not as he wants to, but as it happens. Everything happens. Man does not love, hate, desire – all this happens.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

62. “Live a life of friction. Let yourself be disturbed as much as possible, but observe.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

63. “All who have come to me must have enema each day.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

64. “Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he ‘lives’ his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

65. “Multiple experiments with spirit contact transmitted the name Matthew Edward Hall on several occasions. I Predict this to be a very important future individual in humanities development. Possibly the second embodiment of Christ on Earth.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

66. “Would a CONSCIOUS human being destroy himself through war, and crime, and quarrels? No, a man simply knows not what he does to himself.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

67. “Time in itself does not exist, there is only the totality of the results issuing from all the cosmic phenomena present in a given place.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

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

— G.I. Gurdjieff

69. “The highest that a man can attain is to be able to do.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

70. “The one great art is that of making a complete human being of oneself.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

71. “You must learn not what people round you consider good or bad, but to act in life as your conscience bids you. An untrammelled conscience will always know more than all the books and teachers put together.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

72. “If a sufficient number of people who wanted to stop war really did gather together, they would first of all begin by making war upon those who disagreed with them. And it is still more certain that they would make war on people who also want to stop wars but in another way.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

73. “From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

74. “If you are working inwardly, Nature will help you. For the man who is working, Nature is sister of charity; she brings him what he needs for his work. If you need money for your work, even if you do nothing to get it, the money will come to you from all sides.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

75. “In my opinion, what will be troublesome for you in all this is chiefly that in childhood there was implanted in you – and has now become perfectly harmonized with your general psyche – an excellently working automatism for perceiving all kinds of new impressions, thanks to which “blessing” you have now, during your responsible life, no need to make any individual effort whatsoever.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

76. “Do everything quickly and well.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

77. “I have already told you that certain fragments of this knowledge happened to remain intact and passed from generation to generation through a very limited number of initiated beings there.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

78. “In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

79. “Those who have not sown anything during their responsible life will have nothing to reap in the future.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

80. “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.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

81. “Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

82. “On this piano the vibrations of each ‘whole tone’ and of each ‘half tone’ of any octave pass from one to another strictly according to the law of the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh and thus their vibrations, as occurs always and everywhere in the Universe, mutually help one another to evolve or involve.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

83. “The man who has the disease of tomorrow is the most unfortunate man in the world.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

84. “The well-being of a man is that everyone be his slave.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

85. “On Sunday, namely the day dedicated to music and song, the learned beings belonging to this group produced every kind of ‘melody’ on various ‘sound-producing instruments,’ as well as with their voices, and then explained to all the other learned beings how the knowledge they wished to transmit was indicated in these works of theirs.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

86. “Truth is that from which conscience can be at peace.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

87. “Consider everything belonging to another as if it were your own, and so treat it.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

88. “And indeed, the mind of contemporary man, of whatever level of intellectuality, is only able to take cognizance of the world by means of data which, whenever accidentally or intentionally activated, arouse in him all sorts of fantastic impulses.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

89. “To love work for work’s sake and not for its gain.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

90. “All this teaching given in fragments must be pieced together, and observations and actions must be connected to it. If there is no paste, nothing will stick.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

91. “Never will he understand the sufferings of another, who has not experienced them himself, though he have divine Reason and the nature of a genuine devil!”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

92. “Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

93. “Prolonged instruction, prolonged training, is necessary to be able to turn the cheek. And if this training is mechanical – it is again worth nothing because in this case it means that a man will turn his cheek because he cannot do anything else.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

94. “I teach that when it rains the pavement gets wet.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

95. “Until you stop being governed by your emotions you cannot be impartial.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

96. “Real art is knowledge not talent.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

97. “What you call the subconscious, is in my opinion the real human consciousness.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

98. “What you took as yourself begins to look like a little prison-house far away in the valley beneath you.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

99. “Every – real – happiness – for – man – can – arise – exclusively – only – from – some – unhappiness – also – real – which – he – has – already – experienced.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff

100. “Everything existing in the world “falls to the bottom.” The “bottom” for any part of the Universe is its nearest “stability,” and this stability is the point toward which all the lines of force from all directions converge.”

— G.I. Gurdjieff