We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the self-imposed limitations and conflicts in human society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti's quote highlights how humans create a metaphorical cage through societal constructs, filled with conflict, political struggles, and manipulative figures. It invites introspection on how these self-imposed boundaries limit our true potential and understanding of freedom, urging us to recognize and transcend them.
In practice
In a discussion about societal norms and personal freedom.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones; few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket.
It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.
She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.
A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.
The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.
I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain in relief; they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation, which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared. What had caused this condition?
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