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“I hate quotes. Tell me what you know.” |
Major Educators
| Quotations Celebrating Unity |
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| Written by Dan Hall | |
| Wednesday, 15 November 2006 | |
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NB I will add individual quotations via Roger's Ruminations (SECTION K) and from time to time update this document as a whole. In adding them to Roger's Ruminations I will prefix each quotation with OQ - consequently all additions can be found by looking at the Roger's Ruminations section of the SiteMap. Section O) Quotations Celebrating Unity Alternative heading: Eating from one table, drinking from one well a collection of inspiring quotations from the diversity of our one world’s great wisdom traditions enabling us to celebrate our oneness Becoming a Better Teacher on the Spirit of Holistic Education site can be thought of as three concentric circles of interest. The outermost circle is very broad and includes any and all topics concerned with becoming a better teacher, or helping others become better teachers. The next circle, inside that first outermost circle, concerns any and all such issues within a holistic or integral studies perspective. The third circle, inside the other two, concerns the spiritual dimension of Holistic Education. This spiritual core includes what might be called a meta-religious world-view - including perennial philosophy, inter-faith understanding and universalism. This Section O) of the site is devoted to quotations that can be included in celebrating a universalist perspective, as individual and personal inspiration, or for use in programmes of group celebration. Of overwhelming concern in today’s world is the disease of violent animosity between belief systems and sects. Understanding, celebrating and living our oneness is the antidote. The negative mis-use of religion is almost always what we see. For example in the media so much to do with Islam is negative. There seems to me to be a crying need for celebrating the gifts of the great world religions and for showing some of their wonderful insights and gifts to humanity. Trying to do this at the level of theology would for the general public be a non-starter – and if successful would only involve a few. All of the treasures of the world’s great wisdom traditions are for everyone. Only ignorance and the lust for power by men has covered up their universality. There is also the matter of failing to recognize that the Western way isn’t the only way. We wouldn’t be in quite so big a mess if Bush and Blair had spent 10% of their military budgets on inter-faith understanding, and inter-community dialogue, including raising a generation of Arab/Islamic scholars etc. But here we will collect quotations from which to make series of celebrations, for use First Schools to universities, faith groups to personal meditations. More challenging programmes could also be used in Colleges of Education, more story-based ones for schools for Assemblies. Perhaps such programmes could be related to a national programme of celebrating the Golden Rule along with other cultural ways of celebrating ‘unity in diversity’. In addition to electronic distribution we could make leaflets, make brochures, make bookmarks, make books, videos, animations or any cultural objects that can take some quotations and carry the spirit of universality. Please send your suggestions for additional quotations. There was previously a site of sheer genius by a woman called Deb Platt. Does anyone have a copy since it has disappeared? I wonder if she was nobbled by fundamentalism – unless she died in the physical sense. Had I the chance I would go on my knees to beg her to restore it. It will take some time for me to put up even the quotations that I have collected so far. I will not put them in programmes but I will suggest one or more themes that seem implicit in each quotation. What would be a way to arrange them? I suggest that the inner course of mystical-spiritual experience evidenced, more or less, in all of the great wisdom traditions can provide such a framework. Here is that framework again as suggested by Ken Wilber and by Deb Platt on her late lamented glorious website. The seven major points of the perennial philosophy – two views a) by Ken Wilber and b) by Deb Platt Here is how Ken Wilber summarizes the seven major points of the perennial philosophy, in his book Grace and Grit: 1. Spirit exists. 2. Spirit is found within. 3. Most of us don't realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, and duality--that is, we are living in a fallen or illusory state. 4. There is a way out of this fallen state of sin and illusion, there is a Path to our liberation. 5. If we follow this path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within, a Supreme Liberation, which-- 6 marks the end of sin and suffering, and which-- 7 issues in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings. Using Deb Platt's model we could group quotations from world religions using these stages of the generalized model of reality and spiritual progress. Those stages are; • There's a reality beyond the material world: • Which is uncreated. • It pervades everything, • but remains beyond the reach of human knowledge and understanding. • You approach that reality by: • Distinguishing ego from true self • Understanding the nature of desire • Becoming unattached • Forgetting about preferences • Not working for personal gain • Letting go of thoughts • Redirecting your attention • Being devoted • Being humble • Invoking that reality • Surrendering • That reality approaches you through: • Grace • The teacher • You're transformed so that you embody that reality by: • Dying and being reborn On my current web site I have the simplest of invitations to experience the contemplative - http://spiritofholisticeducation.org.uk/overture.html For now I am placing quotations here, without suggested themes & without relating them to the ‘perennial philosophy framework’ or any other framework e.g. alphabetical listing. Quotations to be sorted and edited Though we travel the world in search of the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not - Ralph Waldo Emerson ”The full fruition of life lies in active participation in the boundless joy of creation." - Haridas Chaundhuri Philosopher Quotations Saint Anselm "Therefore something than which greater cannot be thought undoubtedly exists both in thought and in reality... And you, Lord God, are this being." [Proslogion] Thomas Aquinas "Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a prime mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God." [Summa Theologica] A. J. Ayer "Theism is so confused and the sentences in which 'God' appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible." [Language, Truth and Logic] Francis Bacon "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." [Essays, Of Atheism] Francis Bacon "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore, God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." [Of Atheism] Michael Bakunin "All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties." [God and the State] Michael Bakunin "The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth." [God and the State] Edmund Burke "Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts." [Reflections on the Revolution in France] Cicero "What could be more clear or obvious when we look up to the sky and contemplate the heavens, than that there is some divinity of superior intelligence? (Lucilius)" [De Natural Decorum] Benedetto Croce "Philosophy removes from religion all reason for existing...As the science of the spirit, it looks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic condition that can be surpassed." [Esthetic] Richard Dawkins "I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum – you can’t understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns." [The Independent, 23/12/1998] Daniel Dennett "I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is." [Darwin's Dangerous Idea] Daniel Dennett "The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight - that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether." [Darwin's Dangerous Idea] Denis Diderot "Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' The stranger is a theologian." [Addition aux pensees philosophiques] Albert Einstein "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." [New York Times Magazine, 09/11/1930] Albert Einstein "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." [The World As I See It] Ludwig Feuerbach "Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his own image, and after this God consciously and voluntarily creates man in his own image" [The Essence of Christianity] David Hume "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish." [Of Miracles] David Hume "One may safely affirm that all popular theology as a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction.... while their gloomy apprehensions make them ascribe to Him measures of conduct which in human creatures would be blamed, they must still affect to praise and admire that conduct in the object of their devotional addresses." [The Natural History of Religion] David Hume "Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a-quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy." [The Natural History of Religion] David Hume "The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding] Niccolo Machiavelli "God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us." [The Prince, ch. 26] Karl Marx "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." [A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right] Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu "If triangles had a god, he would have three sides." [Lettres Persanes, no 59] Michel de Montaigne "Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen." [Essays, bk II, ch. 12] Thomas Paine "The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most destructive to the peace of man since man began to exist." [The Age of Reason] Blaise Pascal "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." [Pensees] Blaise Pascal "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy he did his best to dispense with God. But he could not avoid making Him set the world in motion with a flip of His thumb; after that he had no more use for God." [Pensees] Bertrand Russell "I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." [Why I Am Not A Christian] George Santayana "It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods." [Pathetic Notions of God] George Santayana "Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace." [Dialogues in Limbo] Benedict Spinoza "God and all the attributes of God are eternal." [Ethics, pt. I, proposition 19] Voltaire "Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men." [Philosophical Dictionary] Voltaire "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." [Letters] Xenopohanes "Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed, Thracians red-haired and with blue eyes; so also they conceive the spirits of the gods to be like themselves." [Attributed] 21st Nov 2006 |
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