“Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.”

― Michael Ellner

“Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they spring from their actions, are bound to their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, good or bad, of those they shall be heirs.”

― Bhikkhu Bodhi

“What I hate is ignorance, smallness of imagination, the eye that sees no farther than its own lashes. All things are possible.. Who you are is limited only by who you think you are.”

― Egyptian book of the dead

“Modern man, in pursuit of his aim to dominate the world, has become its slave”

― Nikolai Berdyaev, The Meaning of History

“I will be sick, I will grow old, I will die, I will be separated from those I love, my relations and so forth. In such manner, the fully ripened effect of my actions will come to me and to no one else, and I am therefore not above depending on what I did in former lives.”

To think like this again and again is the antidote to such things as arrogance. Make every effort not to become arrogant by meditating on this antidote.

~ Kangyur Rinpoche

Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart.

"To get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human – however imperfectly – and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on." Marcus Aurelius

How to prepare for difficulty like a Stoic: - Practice Negative Visualization: What’s the worst that could happen? - Practice Misfortune: Ask yourself “Is this what I so feared?” - Practice Amor Fati: Don’t just accept your circumstances, learn to love them.

I bow to the holy intercourse
Of the cosmic male and female
Parents of all that is, all who are
So vested are they in their creation
They they are it, and those who inhabit it
And nothing too, being beyond
Far, far, far beyond such things
Gone, gone from being
Gone, gone from doing
Yet all that does be
All that be doing

They are entwined in all things,
The great stars, nebulae and void
Ornaments of the cosmos
To the smallest particles
Which are not really particles at all
Not even waves
Nor are the waves different than the sea
Being totally empty, one with all
Everything that is or ever was
And always will be, unshackled from time
By the razor of non-attachment
An alchemy of completion
Indistinguishable from emptiness

In so many patterns, in so many guises
They come together, having always been so
Two primal forces, one being, emanations without count
Two mouths speak but one word, expression without limit

It cannot be said that they do not exist
Yet neither do they exist as such
They are beyond our petty semantics and conjecture
Existence and non-existence they wear as we do clothes
Casting off both raiments to be with one another
Even duality and nonduality are adornments
Of their adoration
Their desire for one another is quenched
In unquenchability, being not a desire at all
But oneness

The average student of buddhism may at the beginning develop a materialistic mentality that collecting knowledge and wisdom that would slowly get himself closer to achieving enlightment. Advancing on it's studies, he'll discover that this is a misconception. There's nothing to "achieve" and the mentality of progress is a wrong view.
People attempt to "achieve" enlightment as if they were attempting to learn to play an instrument or be good at an sport.
"I'll achieve Nirvana and then maybe learn some sick floating skills"
This is still samsara and couldn't be further from the buddhist view.
There's nothing to obtain. The endless search for wisdom and knowledge in attempt to "conquer" by "turning" into something is just more desire, and that's not the point of Buddha's teachings.
At least that's what i understood that is the topic adressed here.