The Backwards Law Quotes
The Backwards Law is the idea that the harder you try to get something, the harder it becomes to get it. Many philosophers and thinkers have talked about this. In this article, we’ll share quotes from different people that explain this idea. Whether it’s about happiness, success, or personal growth, these quotes show that sometimes letting go and accepting things as they are can work better than always trying so hard.
The Backwards Law
1. The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.
– Alan Watts
2. When you become aware of the silence, you also realize that you are not trying to get anywhere or achieve anything.
– Jiddu Krishnamurti
3. The path of least resistance is following your highest excitement to the best of your ability with no insistence on a particular outcome.
– Bashar
4. To live a life of harmony, one must let go of the need to control and accept the flow of existence as it is.
– David Bohm
5. Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand – relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.
– Osho
6. The desire to find the self will surely be fulfilled provided you want nothing else. But if you want everything, you will get nothing.
– Nisargadatta Maharaj
7. Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target it a target, the more you are going to miss it.
– Victor Frankl
8. By letting it go, it all gets done. The world is won by those by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond winning.
– Lao Tzu
9. Let go or be dragged.
– Zen Proverb
10. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
– Henry David Thoreau
The Backwards Law
These quotes reflect Schopenhauer’s view on the nature of will and desire, highlighting the paradoxical and often futile pursuit of our deepest wants and needs, which ties into the backward law’s principle.
11. Man can indeed do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants.
12. The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.
13. The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority, have always done just the opposite.
14. Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.
15. The more clearly we understand our wants, the less we shall be frustrated by them.
Alan Watts had a deep understanding of the paradoxes of life and often spoke in ways that align with the backward law.
16. When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. This is the principle of letting go.
17. Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
18. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim, you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax and float.
19. You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket.
20. The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to stay on the crest of the wave, the more elusive it becomes.
Also read: Letting Go Quotes
