Carlos Castaneda Quotes

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

No mortal man, moreover is wise at all moments.

I recognize that I'm human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are.

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

Man's freedom is finite and fallible

I have spent seventy years finding out that I am not God.

Unfortunately I am a human being and not a robot.

in this short life that only lasts ah hour how much-how little-is within our power.

Oh what idiots we have all been, this is just as it must be

Men are but men; we did not make ourselves.

We have in fact only two certainties in this world - that we are not everything and that we will die.

Man tends to think that he is a creator, that he is like God. This is especially true of intellectuals, and in the last century, intellectuals tended to forget that they were like everyone else. Writing this book was a description of man going from a state of God back to a state of man, back to being a normal person.

Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything so he tries, without craving, all of everything.

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being.

No man may be completely invulnerable.

Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.

If you knew the immensity of what it means to be human, you would not talk about God or Heaven.

But death we are, and death we've always been.

Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.

Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.

To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.

You spend your entire life becoming God and then you die.

I learned life were no dream I learned truth deceived Man is not God Life is a century Death an instant

This body is not a home, but an inn; and that only for a short time.

We are graced with a godlike ability to transcend time and space in our minds but are chained to death.