the human mind experiences from counting
without being aware that it is counting.
Music is unconscious arithmetic.
-Gottfried Leibniz
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons
in and out of your head.
-Carl Sandburg
Mathematics is the language of universal relationship.
-Michael D. Robbins
Our aim as scientists is objective truth;
more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth.
-Karl Popper
Scientific discovery is akin to explanatory story telling,
to myth making, and to the poetic imagination.
-Karl Popper
Nature is relationships in space.
Geometry defines relationships in space.
Art creates relationships in space.
-Martha Boles and Rochelle Newman
Literature is an art of word;
philosophy is an art of thought.
-Ilkin Santak
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of man.
The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
-Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain"
The immense appetite we have for biography
comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.
-Charles Baudelaire
Until the lions have their own historians,
the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
-Chinua Achebe, paraphrasing an African proverb
You have to look at history
as an evolution of society.
-Jean Chretien
He who cannot see himself within the context
of at least a 2000 year expanse of history
is all his life shackled to days and weeks.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
We see now that the abyss of history
is deep enough to hold us all.
-Paul Valery
Once you get into this great stream of history,
you can't get out.
-Richard Nixon
It may be that universal history
is a history of a handful of metaphors.
-Jorge Luis Borges
Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego;
it is a dynamic subjectivism.
Religion is the coercion of the ego by gods and spirits
who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.
-Richard Chase
Mythology is an expression of the collective unconscious.
-Joseph Campbell
As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply
because as between the reality of fact and the reality of myth, I chose myth...
Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth.
-Kathleen Raine
Myth is the nothing that is all.
-Fernando Pessoa
Philosophy, like poetry,
is a work of integration and synthesis,
or else is merely pseudo-philosophical integration.
-Miguel de Unamuno
A great scholar
is seldom a great philosopher.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Music is a higher revelation that philosophy or science.
-Ludwig van Beethoven
Art shows how it loves,
philosophy what it loves;
mysticism knows only that it loves.
-Constantin Brunner
Our aim as scientists is objective truth;
more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth.
-Karl Popper
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful.
All the rest is literature.
-Paul Valery
Scientific discovery is akin to explanatory story telling,
to myth making, and to the poetic imagination.
-Karl Popper
Nature is relationships in space.
Geometry defines relationships in space.
Art creates relationships in space.
-Martha Boles and Rochelle Newman
Literature is an art of word;
philosophy is an art of thought.
-Ilkin Santak
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of man.
The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
-Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain"
The immense appetite we have for biography
comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.
-Charles Baudelaire
History is not another name for the past, as many people imply.
It is the name for stories about the past.
-A. J. P. Taylor
Until the lions have their own historians,
the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
-Chinua Achebe, paraphrasing an African proverb
History justifies whatever we want it to.
It teaches absolutely nothing,
for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.
-Paul Valery
History is the science of what never happens twice.
-Paul Valery
I turn to history not for lessons
but to confront my experience with the experience of others
and to win for myself a sense of responsibility
for the state of the human conscience.
-Zbigniew Herbert
You have to look at history
as an evolution of society.
-Jean Chretien
He who cannot see himself within the context
of at least a 2000 year expanse of history
is all his life shackled to days and weeks.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
We see now that the abyss of history
is deep enough to hold us all.
-Paul Valery
Once you get into this great stream of history,
you can't get out.
-Richard Nixon
It may be that universal history
is a history of a handful of metaphors.
-Jorge Luis Borges
Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego;
it is a dynamic subjectivism.
Religion is the coercion of the ego by gods and spirits
who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.
-Richard Chase
Mythology is an expression of the collective unconscious.
-Joseph Campbell
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage
between unconscious and conscious recognition.
-Carl Jung
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private dreams.
-Jospeh Campbell
between unconscious and conscious recognition.
-Carl Jung
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private dreams.
-Jospeh Campbell
Myths do not tell us how,
they simply give us the invisible background
which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper.
-James Hillman
It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite
to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward....
-Joseph Campbell
Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends
are so foreign to a student's experience
that he cannot believe them to be true.
-Robert Graves
are so foreign to a student's experience
that he cannot believe them to be true.
-Robert Graves
Myths are things that never happened, but always are.
-Carl Sagan quoting Sallustious
As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply
because as between the reality of fact and the reality of myth, I chose myth...
Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth.
-Kathleen Raine
Myth is the nothing that is all.
-Fernando Pessoa
Philosophy, like poetry,
is a work of integration and synthesis,
or else is merely pseudo-philosophical integration.
-Miguel de Unamuno
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.
-John Keats
It is not the purpose of the study of philosophy
to learn what others have thought
but to learn the truth of things.
-Thomas Aquinas
All philosophies are mental fabrication.
There has never been a single doctrine
by which on could enter the essence of things.
-Nagarjuna
There has never been a single doctrine
by which on could enter the essence of things.
-Nagarjuna
The intellect can as easily reach
His deepest Essence,
As a piece of floating wreckage
can reach to the depth of the sea.
-Sina'i
His deepest Essence,
As a piece of floating wreckage
can reach to the depth of the sea.
-Sina'i
What sort of philosophy one chooses
depends on what sort of person one is.
-Johann Gottlieb Fichte
A great scholar
is seldom a great philosopher.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That's why I like philosophy;
no one wins.
-Shunryu Suzuki
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way.
An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
-Charles Bukowski
Music is a higher revelation that philosophy or science.
-Ludwig van Beethoven
Art shows how it loves,
philosophy what it loves;
mysticism knows only that it loves.
-Constantin Brunner
The philosophy one has shows what kind of person one is.
-J. G. Fichte
The greatest danger to philosophy
is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
-Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy...
the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.
-T. S. Eliot
When do we have true philosophy?
When there is no difference
between the philosophy and the philosopher.
-Vernon Howard
Spirituality is
Applied Poetry.
Metaphysics in
Applied Metaphor.
-Deng Ming-Dao
Metaphysics is an attempt of the mind
to rise above the mind.
-Thomas Carlyle
Occultism is the knowledge
of the subtle forces functioning in us.
-Mahendra Nath Sarkar
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.
-Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism is an experiential awareness of Spirit.
Robert Chaney
True mystics simply open their souls
to the oncoming wave.
-Henri Bergson
Poetry and mysticism both derive from a common source,
the ground or depth of the soul
where the mystery of Being is experience.
But the poet is always driven to "symbolize" his experience,
to express it in worlds or in paint or in music.
The mystic seeks the experience in itself,
beyond worlds of sounds or images.
-Bede Griffiths
The visionary is a mystic when his vision mediates to him
an actuality beyond the reach of the senses.
The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond thought
to the pure apprehension of truth.
The active man is a mystic
when he knows his actions to be part of a greater activity.
-Evelyn Underhill
What does mysticism really mean?
It means the way to attain knowledge.
It's close to philosophy,
except in philosophy you go horizontally
while in mysticism you go vertically.
-Elie Wiesel
In mysticism that love of truth
which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy
leaves the merely intellectual sphere,
and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion.
Where the philosopher guesses and argues,
the mystic lives and looks;
and speaks, consequently,
the disconcerting language of first-hand experience,
not the neat dialectic of the schools.
Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram -
impersonal and unattainable -
the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.
-Evelyn Underhill
The mysticism of any particular mystic is really the whole pattern of his life.
The rare and wonderful 'peaks' of experience are part of that pattern,
but only a part,
and their real value lies only in their relation to the other parts,
to his thought, his moral values, his conduct towards others,
his character and personality, etc.
-Robert Gimello
Mysticism witnesses nothing but love;
mysticism is nothing but love.
-Constantin Brunner
The greatest danger to philosophy
is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
-Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy...
the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.
-T. S. Eliot
When do we have true philosophy?
When there is no difference
between the philosophy and the philosopher.
-Vernon Howard
Spirituality is
Applied Poetry.
Metaphysics in
Applied Metaphor.
-Deng Ming-Dao
Metaphysics is an attempt of the mind
to rise above the mind.
-Thomas Carlyle
Occultism is the knowledge
of the subtle forces functioning in us.
-Mahendra Nath Sarkar
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.
-Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism is an experiential awareness of Spirit.
Robert Chaney
True mystics simply open their souls
to the oncoming wave.
-Henri Bergson
Poetry and mysticism both derive from a common source,
the ground or depth of the soul
where the mystery of Being is experience.
But the poet is always driven to "symbolize" his experience,
to express it in worlds or in paint or in music.
The mystic seeks the experience in itself,
beyond worlds of sounds or images.
-Bede Griffiths
The visionary is a mystic when his vision mediates to him
an actuality beyond the reach of the senses.
The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond thought
to the pure apprehension of truth.
The active man is a mystic
when he knows his actions to be part of a greater activity.
-Evelyn Underhill
What does mysticism really mean?
It means the way to attain knowledge.
It's close to philosophy,
except in philosophy you go horizontally
while in mysticism you go vertically.
-Elie Wiesel
which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy
leaves the merely intellectual sphere,
and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion.
Where the philosopher guesses and argues,
the mystic lives and looks;
and speaks, consequently,
the disconcerting language of first-hand experience,
not the neat dialectic of the schools.
Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram -
impersonal and unattainable -
the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.
-Evelyn Underhill
The mysticism of any particular mystic is really the whole pattern of his life.
The rare and wonderful 'peaks' of experience are part of that pattern,
but only a part,
and their real value lies only in their relation to the other parts,
to his thought, his moral values, his conduct towards others,
his character and personality, etc.
-Robert Gimello
Mysticism witnesses nothing but love;
mysticism is nothing but love.
-Constantin Brunner
