“Know thyself.” (And thy enemy.)

  

FAMOUS MAXIM OF THE GREEK SAGES: “Know thyself.” (“Gnothi seauton.”)        A saying inscribed at the Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi (4th century BC)                     This oft-quoted advice is generally attributed to “The Seven Sages of Greece,” a group of famous Greek philosophers, statesmen and politicians. It’s one of 147 pithy sayings inscribed at Delphi.                     Some of those sayings have been attributed to specific sages. For example, “Know thyself” has been credited to the philosopher Thales, the Greek statesman Solon, and several other Greek wise men.        However, it’s likely that it and many other maxims inscribed at the Temple of Delphi are proverbial sayings that predate the Seven Sages.

THE CHINESE SAGE’S VERSION: “He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.”                     One of the most-cited quotes from the Tao Te Ching (a.k.a. the  Daodejing or Dao De Jing), a fundamental text of Taoism dating back to the 6th Century BC        This quote is traditionally attributed to Lao-Tzu (a.k.a.  Lao-Tze or Laozi), the legendary, possibly mythical founder of Taoism who is generally credited with authorship of the Tao Te Ching.          Modern scholars tend to believe that text is probably a compilation of ancient Chinese wisdom, rather than the creation of one man.

THE CHINESE GENERAL’S VERSION: “Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.”         Sun-Tzu (c. 544 BC-496 BC)         Chinese general, military strategist, and philosopher                      This is one of the most popular pieces of wisdom in his famed work The Art of War (5th century BC).         Although “Know thy enemy” and the variation “Know thine enemy” sound like and are sometimes assumed to be Biblical in origin, there is no such quote in the Bible. (Check it yourself if you don’t believe me.)

“POOR RICHARD’S” OBSERVATION: “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.”        Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790)        American author, inventor, writer, publisher and statesman        A saying recorded the 1750 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack, a yearly almanac published by Franklin under the pseudonym of “Poor Richard” Saunders.

A BRIT WIT’S COUNTERQUOTE: “Only the shallow know themselves.”        Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)        Irish poet and playwright        From his collection of aphorisms “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,” first published in December 1894 in the one and only issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

A FRENCH WRITER’S COUNTERQUTE: “‘Know Thyself’ – a maxim as pernicious as it is odious. A person observing himself would arrest his own development. Any caterpillar who tried to ‘know himself’ would never become a butterfly.”        André Gide (1869-1951)        French writer and left-leaning political activist        A comment in his 1935 book Les Nouvelles Nourritures, meaning “The New Foods” in English. That rambling, part-philosophical, part-poetic, part-political work is a followup to Gide’s Les Nourritures Terrestres, or “Foods of the Earth,” (1897).

HENRY MILLER’S DARK VIEW: “The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.”        Henry Miller (1891-1980)        American writer best known for his boundary-pushing, semi-autobiographical novels                     A line from his memoir The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945), an account of a year-long trip he took across the United States in 1939 after living in Paris for nearly a decade.         After the quote above, Miller goes on to say: “All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image.” For fun, also see the video riff on “Know thyself” that I posted on YouTube.

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“Every day, in every way…”

FAMOUS PSYCHOTHERAPY MANTRA: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” (“Tous les jours, a tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.”)         Émile Coué (1857-1926)        French psychologist and pharmacist        Coué was renowned for his theories about the healing power of “conscious autosuggestion” or self-hypnosis, also called Couéism or the Coué method. This famous line was inscribed on the wall of Coué’s sanitarium in Nancy, France in 1910 and promoted in his books, such as De la suggestion et de ses application (“On Suggestion and its Applications”), published in 1915.        Coué claimed that people with mental or physical problems could be cured by saying his catchphrase to themselves 15 to 20 times every day.

UPDATED PSYCHOTHERAPY QUOTE: “It seems to me that psychotherapy, perhaps like so much else in our current culture, has learned to chant a distinctly counter-Coué mantra: ‘Every day, in every way, I get worse and worse.’”        Professor Ernesto Spinelli        British psychotherapist and psychologist        In his book The Mirror and the Hammer (2004)

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY COUNTERQUOTE: “Every day, in every way, things [in America] are getting worse and worse. It wouldn’t be so bad if, while running through the darkening wood, we knew we were headed toward daylight, but we don’t know any such thing.”        William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)        Conservative political commentator and author        In his column in The National Review, July 2, 1963

SCARY MOTHER TERESA VARIATION: “We think of our own faces as ugly because of the wrinkles and lines and sagging flesh...When you look in the mirror, don't ask yourself whether you look like Marilyn Monroe. Say instead to yourself — every day in every way, I look more like Mother Teresa!”        Dr. Ronda Chervin        American theologist        In her book Seeking Christ in the Crosses & Joys of Aging (2003)

HENRY MILLER’S COSMIC VERSION: “I am living out my share of life and thus abetting the scheme of things. I further the development, the enrichment, the evolution and the devolution of the cosmos, every day in every way. I give all I have to give, voluntarily, and take as much as I can possibly ingest.”        Henry Miller (1891-1980)        American novelist, painter and social commentator        In his book The Wisdom of the Heart (1960)

TRANSFORMERS BEAST WAR VERSION: “EVERY DAY, IN EVERY WAY, I’M GETTING BADDER.”        Hydra        His motto in The Transformers Beast Wars Sourcebook (2008)

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The blind leading the blind…

THE FAMOUS ORIGINAL BIBLE VERSE: “If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”        Jesus (c. 5 B.C. - c. 30 A.D.)          As quoted in the Bible’s Book of Matthew, 15:14 (King James Version)        Chapter 15 of the Book of Matthew, which includes the famous story of the loaves and fishes, is also the source of the well-known metaphor “the blind leading the blind.” The meaning is simple. Blind men can’t see anything, so following them is foolish and risky. People typically use this metaphor — and variations of it — to poke fun at someone they view as ignorant, stupid or misguided.        Jesus used “blind leaders of the blind” to refer to the “scribes and Pharisees,” the dominant group of Jewish rabbis at the time. They favored strict adherence to traditional Jewish religious laws and traditions. In Chapter 15 of Matthew, a group of scribes and Pharisees comes to Jesus and complains that his followers were violating the tradition of the Jewish elders that required people to wash their hands before eating. Jesus tells them cleanliness of the hands is unimportant; cleanliness of the heart is the important thing. Jesus’ point was that a slavish following of religious rules was less important than following the basic moral concepts he taught. When his disciples warned him he had offended the Pharisees, Jesus replied (as given in the King James Version of the Bible):       “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”         Jesus then went to Galilee, where he miraculously turned seven loaves of bread and “a few little fishes” into a feast that fed “four thousand men, beside women and children.” The Bible doesn’t mention whether any of them washed their hands before eating.

THE FATHER KNOWS BEST VERSION: “The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; ‘they will both fall into the ditch.’ The only sure guide is he who has often gone the road which you want to go. Let me be that guide; who have gone all roads, and who can consequently point out to you the best.”        Lord Chesterfield (Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield; 1694–1773)        In one of his many didactic letters to his son, Philip Stanhope, dated November 24, 1747

THE LOVE IS BLIND VERSION: “When the blind lead the blind, no wonder they both fall into matrimony.”         George Farquhar (1678-1707)        Irish playwright        In his play Love and a Bottle (1698), Act 5, Sc. 1

HENRY MILLER’S VARIATION: “We have been educated to such a fine — or dull — point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it’s all about. We don’t trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It’s the democratic way.”         Henry Miller (1891-1980)        American writer and painter        In his essay “With Edgar Varese in the Gobi Desert” (1944)

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH’S VARIATION: “These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.”        John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)        Canadian-born American economist and social critic        In his classic socio-economic book The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 1

THE TOM CRUISE & CAMERON CROWE BASHING VARIATION: “Vanilla Sky is a case of the vain leading the bland. The vanity is provided by Tom Cruise, convincing in the role of a man in a passionate love affair with his own face, and the blandness comes from the overrated writer-director Cameron Crowe, who never met a story he couldn't explain to death at length.”        Stephen Hunter        Washington Post movie critic        In his review of the movie Vanilla Sky (2001)

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