118 Intriguing Gurdjieff Quotes To Awaken Your Consciousness
Last updated on May 3rd, 2024 at 09:38 am
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1877-1949) was known for his unique approach to spiritual teaching, and his ability to amalgamate teachings from diverse sources, such as Christianity, Sufism etc.
These handpicked quotes from Gurdjieff are sure to inspire everyone to live a life filled with meaning, purpose, and spiritual growth.
A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. – Gurdjieff
Begin with the possible; begin with one step. – Gurdjieff
The greatest untold story is the evolution of God. – Gurdjieff
All energy spent on conscious work is an investment; that spent mechanically is lost forever. – Gurdjieff
Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness. – Gurdjieff
He who can love can be; he who can be can do; he who can do is. – Gurdjieff
If you can serve a cup of tea right, you can do anything. – Gurdjieff
I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself. – Gurdjieff
Laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. Laughter is the antidote. – Gurdjieff
Man must use what he has, not hope for what is not. – Gurdjieff
If you meditate and the Devil comes, make the Devil meditate. – Gurdjieff
Live a life of friction. Let yourself be disturbed as much as possible, but observe. – Gurdjieff
No energy is ever lost in the cosmic scheme. – Gurdjieff
The highest that a man can attain is to be able to do. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Those who have not sown anything during their responsible life will have nothing to reap in the future. – Gurdjieff
To love work for work’s sake and not for its gain. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Until you stop being governed by your emotions you cannot be impartial. – Gurdjieff
We have good and bad angels. The good angels work by way of our voluntary, active nature and the bad through our passive nature. – Gurdjieff
A ‘sin’ is something which is not necessary. – Gurdjieff
A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows. – Gurdjieff
A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws, but rather represents laws which are incomprehensible to us. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
He who has gotten rid of the disease of tomorrow has a chance of achieving what he is here for. – Gurdjieff
Here there are neither English nor Russians, Jews nor Christians, but only those following one aim, to be able to be. - Gurdjieff
Humanity is the earth’s nerve-endings through which planetary vibrations are received for transmission. – Gurdjieff
If we do what we like doing, we are immediately rewarded by the pleasure of doing it. If we do what we don’t like doing the reward must come later. It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Man is a symbol of the laws of creation; in him there is evolution, involution, struggle, progress and retrogression, struggle between positive and negative, active and passive, yes and no, good and evil. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Mr. Self-love and Madame Vanity are the two chief agents of the devil. – Gurdjieff
My way is to develop the hidden potentialities of man; a way that is against Nature and against God. - Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
What you need to know is very little, but to know that little takes very very much. – Gurdjieff
You should forget about morality. Conversations about morality are simply empty talk. Your aim is inner morality. – Gurdjieff
You should understand, and establish it as a firm rule, not to pay attention to other people’s opinions. You must be free of people surrounding you, and when you are free inside you will be free of them. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
All who have come to me must have enema each day. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Better to die than live in sleep. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Life is real only then, when I am. – Gurdjieff
The degree of consciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed of vibrations. The denser the matter, the less conscious it is. – Gurdjieff
The first reason for people’s slavery is our ignorance, and above all, our ignorance of ourselves. – Gurdjieff
Never think of results, just do! – Gurdjieff
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! – Gurdjieff
Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering. - Gurdjieff
One of the strongest motives for wishing to work on yourself is the realization that you may die at any moment – only you must first realize this. – Gurdjieff
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake. – Gurdjieff
As long as our ideas are the same, we will never be apart. – Gurdjieff
One twentieth of all our energy goes to emotional and instinctive centres. Self-remembering is a lamp which must be kept alight by energy from these two centres. Our thinking centre is not really a centre, but an apparatus for collecting impressions. – Gurdjieff
Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not now where to go. – Gurdjieff
What you took as yourself begins to look like a little prison-house far away in the valley beneath you. – Gurdjieff
Wish’ is the most powerful thing in the world. Higher than God. – Gurdjieff
By teaching others, you will learn yourself. – Gurdjieff
Do everything quickly and well. – Gurdjieff
Do not be affected by externals. In themselves they are harmless; it is we who allow ourselves to be hurt by them. – Gurdjieff
Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false. – Gurdjieff
Only he who can take care of the property of others can have his own. – Gurdjieff
Only super-efforts count. – Gurdjieff
Patience is the mother of will. – Gurdjieff
Common aim is stronger than blood. – Gurdjieff
Practice love first on animals, they are more sensitive. - Gurdjieff
Consider everything belonging to another as if it were your own, and so treat it. – Gurdjieff
The only type of sexual relations possible are those with someone who is as advanced and capable as oneself. – Gurdjieff
The well-being of a man is that everyone be his slave. – Gurdjieff
There is only one kind of magic and this is ‘doing.’ – Gurdjieff
Time began when you were born. It will end when you die. – Gurdjieff
To be just at the moment of action is a hundred times more valuable than to be just afterwards. – Gurdjieff
To bear the manifestation of others is a big thing. The last thing for a man. – Gurdjieff
To gain anything real, long practice is necessary. Try to accomplish very small things first. – Gurdjieff
To love one must first forget all about love. Make it your aim and look for direction. As we are we cannot possibly love. – Gurdjieff
Truth is that from which conscience can be at peace. – Gurdjieff
Two things in life are infinite; the stupidity of man and the mercy of God. – Gurdjieff
There are two kinds of doing—automatic and doing what you ‘wish.’ Take a small thing which you ‘wish’ to do and cannot do and make this your God. Let nothing interfere. If you ‘wish,’ you can. Without wishing you never ‘can.’ ‘Wish’ is the most powerful thing in the world. – Gurdjieff
There is a cosmic law which says that every satisfaction must be paid for with a dissatisfaction. – Gurdjieff
Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo. – Gurdjieff
Every real happiness for man can arise exclusively only from some unhappiness also real which he has already experienced. – Gurdjieff
Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all. - Gurdjieff
For some people religion is useful but for others it is only a policeman. – Gurdjieff
Formatory apparatus resembles a hired typist who works for a firm and has a large number of stereotyped replies for external impressions. She sends printed replies to other centres who are the ‘directors’ of the firm and who are strangers to each other. Wrong replies are often sent, as the typist is asleep or lazy. – Gurdjieff
Free will is the function of the Master within us. Our ‘will’ is the supremacy of one desire over another. – Gurdjieff
Real love is a cosmic force which goes through us. If we crystallize it, it becomes the greatest power in the world. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Everything in the universe has a place in a scale. – Gurdjieff
External morality is different everywhere. – Gurdjieff
We never reach the limits of our strength. – Gurdjieff
What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses. – Gurdjieff
A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour. – Gurdjieff
Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself – only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity. – Gurdjieff
Remember yourself always and everywhere. – Gurdjieff
Sincerity is the key to self-knowledge and to be sincere with oneself brings great suffering. – Gurdjieff
Sleep is very comfortable, but waking is very bitter. – Gurdjieff
That which is easy is bad for your inner life. – Gurdjieff
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. - Gurdjieff
The man who has the disease of tomorrow is the most unfortunate man in the world. – Gurdjieff
The one great art is that of making a complete human being of oneself. – Gurdjieff
With thorns in the inner world there will always be roses in the outer world, in law-able compensation. – Gurdjieff
Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine. – Gurdjieff
Would a CONSCIOUS human being destroy himself through war, and crime, and quarrels? No, a man simply knows not what he does to himself. – Gurdjieff
You can never awaken using the same system that put you to sleep in the first place. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest. – Gurdjieff
In deep sleep all communication between centres is closed. Our sleep is bad because we do not cut off lines of communication. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
In the river of life suffering is not intentional. In conscious life suffering is intentional and of great value. – Gurdjieff
It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our bodies that the ‘I Am,’ our real presence, can awaken. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Love without knowledge is demonic. – Gurdjieff
Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West and then seek. – Gurdjieff
In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. – Gurdjieff
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. – Gurdjieff
Until a man uncovers himself he cannot see. – Gurdjieff
We are sheep kept to provide wool for our masters who feed us and keep us as slaves of illusion. But we have a chance of escape and our masters are anxious to help us, but we like being sheep. It is comfortable. – Gurdjieff
We attract forces according to our being. – Gurdjieff
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. - Gurdjieff
We must destroy our buffers. Children have none; therefore we must become like little children. – Gurdjieff
The essence of Gurdjieff’s quotes is to encourage individuals to understand their true nature, recognize unconscious patterns, and cultivate inner stillness. – Gurdjieff