Philosophy Insights Quotes

It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,

Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.

It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.

Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.

Convince yourself everyday that you are worthy of a good life. Let go of stress, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.

Be brave. Be free from philosophies, prophets and holy lies. Go deep into your feelings and explore the mystery of your body, mind and soul. You will find the truth.

Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.

You start to live when you commit your life to cause higher than yourself. You must learn to depend on divine power for the fulfillment of a higher calling.

Because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine.

People are wonderful one at a time. Each one of them has an entire hologram of the universe somewhere within them.

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.

Listen with an open heart

But this wealth of information produced little or no insight.

False has many wings. Do not judge anything by its popularity.

First, anyone who seriously intends to become a philosopher must "once in his life" withdraw into himself and attempt, within himself, to overthrow and build anew all the sciences that, up to then, he has been accepting. Philosophy wisdom (sagesse) is the philosophizer's quite personal affair. It must arise as His wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tending toward universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute insights.

Spread love. Hug the people you care about and make sure they know that you care and appreciate them. Make it known to your friends and family that you love them.

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today - and even professional scientists - seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is - in my opinion - the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth. [Correspondance to Robert Thorton in 1944]

I see the life with your sight, O" the love; you're my light.

Great people stand out from others by their visions and not much by their intelligence.

He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly.

Life is a manifestation of the unified field of consciousness. Colors, beauty, pleasure and pain are its songs of creation.

Brilliant Muslim scholars applied Qur’anic insights to spark the medieval Islamic Golden Age filled with a mind-boggling outpouring of creativity in science, math, medicine, fashion, philosophy, economics, mental health therapy, architecture, art, and beyond.

Knowing God is like listening to beautiful music. His words have power. He lifts me up & soothes my soul. He makes me dance. He gives me joy.

Intuition is not a special source of ineffable insight: it is the womb of articulated understanding.

Om is that God of love. Like a loving mother Om cleans us of our clutters collected through many incarnations.

Without hope we fail to exist.

We all have problems. Or rather, everyone has at least one thing that they regard as a problem.

There is nothing better in life than commitment to personal development and lifelong learning.

I am the seeker, the act of seeking, and the one who is sought.

Unfortunately, religion often works to shrink and tame the very wild and mysterious forces that first drew our wonder. In the process of making the inexplicable safe for the masses, the possibilities for real illusion-piercing insight becomes reduced. One might say that they are only available to those who dare to ride the breaking crest of direct life-altering experience.

You can't do that, it makes too much sense.

Once you reach deeper and deeper into your reality, you approach closer and closer its surreal essence.

Use your imagination to create your beautiful life.

Whether you choose to move on from your struggles and enjoy life or waddle in your misery, life will continue.

Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came toseemtrue. Thisexercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.

The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

If I want to understand an individual human being, I must lay aside all scientific knowledge of the average man and discard all theories in order to adopt a completely new and unprejudiced attitude. I can only approach the task of understanding with a free and open mind, whereas knowledge of man, or insight into human character, presupposes all sorts of knowledge about mankind in general.

The perishableness of life...imparts value, dignity, interest to life.

A sober friend from Texas said once that the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you. I hate this insight so much.

A biblically based worldview is capable of affirming the best insights of secular philosophies without ever falling into reductionism.

Some jump down off the bridges, some sail towards the horizon… Meaning is always under construction.

He had become the sky around the sun – alive, but not really there.

Keep expecting and believing that your due season is coming. Declare that the good you have harvested in your life will manifest.

By means of the simple folk remedy of ascribing to feeling what is the millennia-long labor of reason and of its understanding, all are spared the bother of rational insight and knowledge.

We live in a highly complex, technological world – and it's not entirely obvious what's right and what's wrong in any given situation, unless you can parse the situation, deconstruct it. People just don't have the insight to be able to do that very effectively.

If you know how to be happy with the wonders of life that are already there for you to enjoy, you don't need to stress your mind and your body by striving harder and harder, and you don't need to stress this planet by purchasing more and more stuff. The Earth belongs to our children. We have already borrowed too much from it, from them; and the way things have been going, we're not sure we'll be able to give it back to them in decent shape. And who are our children, actually? They are us, because they are our own continuation. So we've been shortchanging our own selves. Much of our modern way of life is permeated by mindless overborrowing. The more we borrow, the more we loser. That's why it's critical that we wake up and see we don't need to do that anymore. What's already available in the here and now is plenty for us to be nourished, to be happy. Only that kind of insight will get us, each one of us, to stop engaging in the compulsive, self-sabotaging behaviors of our species. We need a collective awakening. One Buddha is not enough. All of us have to become Buddhas in order for our planet to have a chance. Fortunately, we have the power to wake up, to touch enlightenment from moment to moment, in our very own ordinary and, yes, busy lives. So let's start right now. Peace is your every breath.

The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps the realization that everything could have been different in our own society – that the way we live is only one among innumerable ways of life which humans have adopted. If we glance sideways and backwards, we will quickly discover that modern society, with its many possibilities and seducing offers, its dizzying complexity and its impressive technological advances, is a way of life which has not been tried out for long. Perhaps, psychologically speaking, we have just left the cave: in terms of the history of our species, we have but spent a moment in modern societies. (..) Anthropology may not provide the answer to the question of the meaning of life, but at least it can tell us that there are many ways in which to make a life meaningful.

Enlightenment is the ultimate nourishment for body, mind, and soul. It is the ultimate freedom and ecstasy of life.

The bigger the victory, the bigger the battle. Still, be the light and a change agent for healing, restoration and transformation.

Wisdom at the mountain-foot sees farther than intelligence at the mountaintop.

If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord. . . . So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

theory or have remained unaffected by them. It is true that a fact can sometimes appear to resemble an “accident,” as in the case of the apple that fell near Newton, but the accident only became a “fact” because Newton asked certain questions.

The birth of a child is a sacred phenomenon.

My duty is to pray. I know God hears my prayers.

Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative” says that individual actions are to be judged according to whether we would be pleased if everyone in society took the same action.

Until you are clear nothing will be. The moment you are clear everything will be.

My wishes before I die, to fulfill my mission on earth; The writing of my life stories to inspired present and future generations.

Sometimes the only way to hunt somebody is to pretend to be a prey.

Needs crawls. Want walks. Desire runs. Lust sprints. Love soars. Peace crawls. Pleasure walks. Excitement runs. Happiness sprints. Joy soars. Doubt crawls. Expectation walks. Hope runs. Courage sprints. Faith soars. Skill crawls. Talent walks. Excellence runs. Brilliance sprints. Genius soars. Intelligence crawls. Insight walks. Understanding runs. Wisdom sprints. Enlightenment soars.

When I met Wittgenstein, I saw that Schlick's warnings were fully justified. But his behavior was not caused by any arrogance. In general, he was of a sympathetic temperament and very kind; but he was hypersensitive and easily irritated. Whatever he said was always interesting and stimulating and the way in which he expressed it was often fascinating. His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer. When he started to formulate his view on some specific problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at that very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views dogmatically ... But the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment of analysis of it would be a profanation.

Wonder—the enthusiastic ardor for the sublimity of being, for its worthiness to be an object of knowledge—promises to become the point of departure for genuine insight only where it has reached the stage in which the subject, overwhelmed by the object, has, as it were, fused into a single point or into nothing… like the movement of hope and love toward God, which is genuine and selfless only where it has assumed the attitude of pure worship of God for his own sake.

I caught this insight on the way and quickly seized the rather poor words that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away again. And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps in them-- and I hardly know anymore when I look at it how I could ever have felt so happy when I caught this bird.

Justice is the gateway to peace. Education is the gateway to equality. Patience is the gateway to tolerance. Compassion is the gateway to mercy. Certainty is the gateway to assurance. Hope is the gateway to courage. Contentment is the gateway to happiness. Integrity is the gateway to virtue. Need is the gateway to want. Laughter is the gateway to health. Pleasure is the gateway to enjoyment. Love is the gateway to joy. Life is the gateway to death. Reality is the gateway to truth. Harmony is the gateway to order. Time is the gateway to eternity. Intelligence is the gateway to wisdom. Focus is the gateway to determination. Insight is the gateway to understanding. Knowledge is the gateway to enlightenment.

The miraculous wonder of this blessed day is beyond my comprehension.

The technological man is limited as his tools. The man without technologies is limitless.

Religious moderation, insofar as it represents an attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality, ethics, and the building of strong communities. Religious moderates seem to believe that what we need is not radical insight and innovation in these areas but a mere dilution of Iron Age philosophy.

Because it exists as a living sonority, music is animated by voices, and these voices do not evaporate when music confronts the insights of contemporary literary criticism, or philosophy of language.

Lying there, I thought of my own culture, of the assembly of books in the library at Alexandria; of the deliberations of Darwin and Mendel in their respective gardens; of the architectural conception of the cathedral at Chartres; of Bach's cello suites, the philosophy of Schweitzer, the insights of Planck and Dirac. Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?

Philosophy needs vision and argument… there is something disappointing about a philosophical work that contains arguments, however good, which are not inspired by some genuine vision, and something disappointing about a philosophical work that contains a vision, however inspiring, which is unsupported by arguments…Speculation about how things hang together requires… the ability to draw out conceptual distinctions and connections, and the ability to argue… But speculative views, however interesting or well supported by arguments or insightful, are not all we need. We also need what [the philosopher Myles] Burnyeat called ‘vision’ – and I take that to mean vision as to how to live our lives, and how to order our societies.

Not accomplishing your Life Plan is a tragic act of free will. It is akin to charting an elaborate vacation itinerary before arriving at your holiday destination, with all kinds of plans for outdoor adventures and intentions to go sightseeing and shopping, but then ending up spending the whole trip in your hotel room ordering from room service and watching television. In a similar fashion the unconscious soul spends a lifetime in the semi-conscious state of Divine Disconnection and then returns home mostly ‘empty-handed’.

A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger’s or Whitehead’s best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of “obligatory passage point” (Latour’s term) in the discussions that follow. Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made “fewer mistakes” than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress.

I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.

If you have days, you have riches. If you have months, you have fortune. If you have years, you have treasure. If you have decades, you have wealth. If you have time, you have affluence. If you have excitement, you have luxury. If you have pleasure, you have privilege. If you have peace, you have comfort. If you have happiness, you have prosperity. If you have joy, you have triumph. If you have knowledge, you have currency. If you have understanding, you have capital. If you have discernment, you have assets. If you have insight, you have benefits. If you have wisdom, you have profit. If you have religion, you have influence. If you have philosophy, you have muscle. If you have will, you have strength. If you have courage, you have might. If you have faith, you have power.

To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight. For if a question is absurd in itself and calls for unnecessary answers, it not only brings disgrace to the person raising it, but may prompt an incautious listener to give absurd answers, thus presenting, as the ancients said, the laughable spectacle of one person milking a he-goat, and another holding the sieve underneath.

I know some very intelligent philosophers, not at all dogmatic, who believe that “science” cannot introduce the concept of finality in the analysis and explanation of vital processes, but that “philosophy” equally cannot arrive at an adequate concept of organic life without introducing finality. It is not a question here of moral or other values, but rather of a concept peculiar to philosophical biology as opposed to biology. Indeed, one such philosopher concluded, drawing inspiration from Merleau-Ponty, that science can “never” give an adequate explanation of the concept of the “whole structure” of the organism.

There are patterns in everything, in the whole of Nature, from the way the stars turn in the heavens to the whorl of a shell or the petals of a flower and the way leaves arrange themselves about a twig. There are forces, hidden forces. If I can discover what they are, how they operate, I will have my hands upon the levers of creation and can work them myself.

If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord. . . . So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being.

The first is to embrace—as a matter of philosophy and public policy—the insights of science, in particular the fields that descend from the great Darwinian revolution that began only a matter of years after Snow’s death: genetics, evolutionary theory, environmental science. Our safety depends on being able to predict the evolutionary path that viruses and bacteria will take in the coming decades, just as safety in Snow’s day depended on the rational application of the scientific method to public-health matters. Superstition, then and now, is not just a threat to the truth. It’s also a threat to national security.

Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

Prizing elegance, sweet emotions, and fantasy more than morals and truth; wallowing in fleeting romance rather than trying to give meaning to life, when who knows what's going to happen to you anyway; ignoring virtue and conventions to cherish only the pleasures you are definitely experiencing now: this is the Cocoro of Rococo. No matter how much deep thought, hard work, and agonizing effort went into coaxing out some insight, if that insight is boring, or not beautiful, it doesn't matter. And even if something is made just for laughs, if you find it pleasing, it has value. Other people's opinions and labor do not figure into your assessment; choosing things with your own personal sense of "I like this, I don't like that" is the ultimate individualism that sustains the very foundation of Rococo. Rococo, therefore, embodies the spirit of punk rock and anarchism more than any philosophy. Only in Rococo—elegant yet in bad taste, extravagant yet defiant and lawless—can I discover the meaning of life.

Michel Foucault talked of the ancient genre of hupomnemata (notes to oneself). He called the journal a “weapon for spiritual combat,” a way to practice philosophy and purge the mind of agitation and foolishness and to overcome difficulty. To silence the barking dogs in your head. To prepare for the day ahead. To reflect on the day that has passed. Take note of insights you’ve heard. Take the time to feel wisdom flow through your fingertips and onto the page.

THOSE who start with the pagan philosophy of sex must face life as a descent. Associated with a growing old, there is a loss of physical energy and the horrible perspective of death. The Christian philosophy of love, on the contrary, implies an ascension. The body may grow older, but the Spirit grows younger, and love often becomes more intense.

None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings — the endless possibilities that living offers — and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay.

OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Intellect is intelligent, intuition is wise. Awareness is intelligent, discernment is wise. Truth is intelligent, knowledge is wise. Speech is intelligent, silence is wise. Curiosity is intelligent, insight is wise. Caution is intelligent, prudence is wise. Knowledge is intelligent, commonsense is wise. Perception is intelligent, understanding is wise. Theory is intelligent, experience is wise. Virtue is intelligent, love is wise. Scholars are intelligent, saints are wise. Students are intelligent, teachers are wise. Professors are intelligent, gurus are wise. The past is intelligent, the future is wise. Time is intelligent, eternity is wise. Chance is intelligent, fate is wise. The mind is intelligent, the soul is wise. The eye is intelligent, the ear is wise. The world is intelligent, the universe is wise. Nature is intelligent, God is wise.

When we say that this definition of good and evil is objective, what we mean is that it is as objective as we can be at this time, and to the best of our knowledge about the universe. This definition is based on what we know about how the universe works. It is not based on the revealed wisdom of any one faith or political movement. It is common to the best principles of all of them, but it is based on what we know rather than what we believe. In that sense, it is objective. Of course, what we know about the universe, and our place in it, is constantly changing as we add more information and gain new insights. We are never perfectly objective about anything, that is true, but we can be less objective, or we can be more objective.

Such is the strange situation in which modern philosophy finds itself. No former age was ever in such a favourable position with regard to the sources of our knowledge of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have become sharper and more penetrating. We appear, nonetheless, not yet to have found a method for the mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own abundance the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all conceptual unity.

his understanding of transference in the therapeutic relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He is commonly referred to as "the father of psychoanalysis" and his work has been highly influential-—popularizing such notions as the unconscious, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips and dream symbolism — while also making a long-lasting impact on fields as diverse as literature (Kafka), film, Marxist and feminist theories, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychology. However, his theories remain controversial and widely disputed. Source: Wikipedia

We have seen, therefore, that I am not allowed even to *assume*, for the sake of the necessary practical use of my reason *God, freedom, immortality*, unless at the same time *I deprive* speculative reason of its pretensions to transcendent insights. Reason, namely, in order to arrive at these, must employ principles which extend only to objects of possible experience, and which, if in spite of this they are applied also to what cannot be an object of experience, actually always change this into an appearance, thus rendering all practical *expansion* of pure reason impossible. Hence I had to suspend *knowledge* in order to make room for *belief*. For the dogmatism of metaphysics without a preceding critique of pure reason, is the source of all that disbelief which opposes morality and which is always very dogmatic.

If you have a million fans and no talent, you’re still not a success. a million students and no lesson, you’re still not a teacher. a million sermons and no compassion, you’re still not a priest. a million children and no affection, you’re still not a father. a million anniversaries and no devotion, you’re still not a husband. If you have a million sheep and no courage, you’re still not a shepherd. a million seeds and no harvest, you’re still not a farmer. a million titles and no integrity, you’re still not a champion. a million thoughts and no insights, you’re still not a philosopher. a million predictions and no prophecy, you’re still not a prophet. If you have a million soldiers and no unity, you’re still not an army. a million monks and no camaraderie, you’re still not a monastery. a million cities and no borders, you’re still not a country. a million musicians and no harmony, you’re still not an orchestra. a million armies and no strategy, you’re still not a general. If you have a million titles, and no influence, you’re still not a leader; a million ideas and no creations, you’re still not an artist. a million theories, and no facts, you’re still not a scholar; a million books, and no wisdom, you’re still not a sage; a million virtues, and no love, you’re still not a saint.

Intelligence is a tenant in the house of wisdom. Knowledge is a tenant in the house of nature. Insight is a tenant in the house of understanding. Wealth is a tenant in the house of risk. Mastery is a tenant in the house of discipline. Patience is a tenant in the house of virtue. Tolerance is a tenant in the house of freedom. Awareness is a tenant in the house of experience. Rest is a tenant in the house of sleep. Laughter is a tenant in the house of joy. Hope is a tenant in the house of faith. Contentment is a tenant in the house of peace. Kindness is a tenant in the house of love. Harmony is a tenant in the house of order. Humility is a tenant in the house of honor. Caution is a tenant in the house of prudence. Speech is a tenant in the house of silence. Certainty is a tenant in the house of conviction. Expectation is a tenant in the house of desire. Need is a tenant in the house of want. Truth is a tenant in the house of reality. Chance is a tenant in the house of fate. Time is a tenant in the house of eternity. Life is a tenant in the house of death. Nature is a tenant in the house of God.

Among this bewildering multiplicity of ideals which shall we choose? The answer is that we shall choose none. For it is clear that each one of these contradictory ideals is the fruit of particular social circumstances. To some extent, of course, this is true of every thought and aspiration that has ever been formulated. Some thoughts and aspirations, however, are manifestly less dependent on particular social circumstances than others. And here a significant fact emerges: all the ideals of human behaviour formulated by those who have been most successful in freeing themselves from the prejudices of their time and place are singularly alike. Liberation from prevailing conventions of thought, feeling and behaviour is accomplished most effectively by the practice of disinterested virtues and through direct insight into the real nature of ultimate reality. (Such insight is a gift, inherent in the individual; but, though inherent, it cannot manifest itself completely except where certain conditions are fulfilled. The principal pre-condition of insight is, precisely, the practice of disinterested virtues.) To some extent critical intellect is also a liberating force. But the way in which intellect is used depends upon the will. Where the will is not disinterested, the intellect tends to be used (outside the non-human fields of technology, science or pure mathematics) merely as an instrument for the rationalization of passion and prejudice, the justification of self-interest. That is why so few even of die acutest philosophers have succeeded in liberating themselves completely from the narrow prison of their age and country. It is seldom indeed that they achieve as much freedom as the mystics and the founders of religion. The most nearly free men have always been those who combined virtue with insight. Now, among these freest of human beings there has been, for the last eighty or ninety generations, substantial agreement in regard to the ideal individual. The enslaved have held up for admiration now this model of a man, now that; but at all times and in all places, the free have spoken with only one voice. It is difficult to find a single word that will adequately describe the ideal man of the free philosophers, the mystics, the founders of religions. 'Non-attached* is perhaps the best. The ideal man is the non-attached man. Non-attached to his bodily sensations and lusts. Non-attached to his craving for power and possessions. Non-attached to the objects of these various desires. Non-attached to his anger and hatred; non-attached to his exclusive loves. Non-attached to wealth, fame, social position. Non-attached even to science, art, speculation, philanthropy. Yes, non-attached even to these. For, like patriotism, in Nurse Cavel's phrase, 'they are not enough, Non-attachment to self and to what are called 'the things of this world' has always been associated in the teachings of the philosophers and the founders of religions with attachment to an ultimate reality greater and more significant than the self. Greater and more significant than even the best things that this world has to offer. Of the nature of this ultimate reality I shall speak in the last chapters of this book. All that I need do in this place is to point out that the ethic of non-attachment has always been correlated with cosmologies that affirm the existence of a spiritual reality underlying the phenomenal world and imparting to it whatever value or significance it possesses.

There is a theory of space and time embedded in the way we use words. There is a theory of matter and a theory of causality, too. Our language has a model of sex in it (actually, two models), and conceptions of intimacy and power and fairness. Divinity, degradation, and danger are also ingrained in our mother tongue, together with a conception of well-being and a philosophy of free will. These conceptions vary in their details from language to language, but their overall logic is the same. They add up to a distinctively human model of reality, which differs in major ways from the objective understanding of reality eked out by our best science and logic. Though these ideas are woven into language, their roots are deeper than language itself. They lay out the ground rules for how we understand our surroundings, how we assign credit and blame to our fellows, and how we negotiate our relationships with them. A close look at our speech-our conversations, our jokes, our curses, our legal disputes, the names we give our babies-can therefore give us insight into who we are.

As Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, that is to say, not only converting people spiritually, but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. If the church loses the intellectual battle in one generation, then evangelism will become immeasurably more difficult in the next. The war is not yet lost, and it is one which we must not lose: souls of men and women hang in the balance. For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. Thinking about your faith is indeed a virtue, for it helps you to better understand and defend your faith. But thinking about your faith is not equivalent to doubting your faith. Doubt is never a purely intellectual problem. There is a spiritual dimension to the problem that must be recognized. Never lose sight of the fact that you are involved in spiritual warfare and there is an enemy of your soul who hates you intensely, whose goal is your destruction, and who will stop at nothing to destroy you. Reason can be used to defend our faith by formulating arguments for the existence of God or by refuting objections. But though the arguments so developed serve to confirm the truth of our faith, they are not properly the basis of our faith, for that is supplied by the witness of the Holy Spirit Himself. Even if there were no arguments in defense of the faith, our faith would still have its firm foundation. The more I learn, the more desperately ignorant I feel. Further study only serves to open up to one's consciousness all the endless vistas of knowledge, even in one's own field, about which one knows absolutely nothing. Don't let your doubts just sit there: pursue them and keep after them until you drive them into the ground. We should be cautious, indeed, about thinking that we have come upon the decisive disproof of our faith. It is pretty unlikely that we have found the irrefutable objection. The history of philosophy is littered with the wrecks of such objections. Given the confidence that the Holy Spirit inspires, we should esteem lightly the arguments and objections that generate our doubts. These, then, are some of the obstacles to answered prayer: sin in our lives, wrong motives, lack of faith, lack of earnestness, lack of perseverance, lack of accordance with God’s will. If any of those obstacles hinders our prayers, then we cannot claim with confidence Jesus’ promise, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it”. And so I was led to what was for me a radical new insight into the will of God, namely, that God’s will for our lives can include failure. In other words, God’s will may be that you fail, and He may lead you into failure! For there are things that God has to teach you through failure that He could never teach you through success. So many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is and always will be the true priority for every human being — that is, learning to know God in Christ. My greatest fear is that I should some day stand before the Lord and see all my works go up in smoke like so much “wood, hay, and stubble”. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but knowledge of God. People tend naturally to assume that if God exists, then His purpose for human life is happiness in this life. God’s role is to provide a comfortable environment for His human pets. But on the Christian view, this is false. We are not God’s pets, and the goal of human life is not happiness per se, but the knowledge of God—which in the end will bring true and everlasting human fulfilment. Many evils occur in life which may be utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing human happiness; but they may not be pointless with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God.

Knowledge is a student, truth is its master; you are no higher than what you know. Perception is a student, understanding is its master; you are no higher than what you grasp. Curiosity is a student, truth is its master; you are no higher than what you desire. Intelligence is a student, wisdom is its master; you are no higher than what you understand. Happiness is a student, joy is its master; you are no higher than what you appreciate. Tolerance is a student, understanding is its master; you are no higher than what you bear. Desire is a student, contentment is its master; you are no higher than what you experience. Truth is a student, virtue is its master; you are no higher than what you practise. Hope is a student, faith is its master; you are no higher than what you believe. Want is a student, need is its master; you are no higher than what you seek. Peace is a student, contentment is its master; you are no higher than what you enjoy. Passion is a student, love is its master; you are no higher than what you share. Insight is a student, discernment is its master; you are no higher than what you perceive. Humanity is a student, nature is its master; you are no higher than what you cherish. Science is a student, creation is its master; you are no higher than what you conceive. Art is a student, ingenuity is its master; you are no higher than what you create. Life is a student, God is its master; you are no higher than what you esteem. The world is a student, the universe is its master; you are no higher than what you comprehend. Character is a student, destiny is its master; you are no higher than what you become.

There is genius in plants, look how they make herbs. There is genius in flowers, look how they make scents. There is genius in trees, look how they make fruits. There is genius in seeds, look how they make forests. There is genius in bees, look how they make honey. There is genius in birds, look how they make nests. There is genius in spiders, look how they make webs. There is genius in ants, look how they make colonies. There is genius in clouds, look how they make rain. There is genius in storms, look how they make rainbows. There is genius in stars, look how they make light. There is genius in galaxies, look how they make planets. There is genius in order, look how it makes structure. There is genius in space, look how it makes distance. There is genius in momentum, look how it makes force. There is genius in stillness, look how it makes silence. There is genius in time, look how it makes fate. There is genius in sound, look how it makes music. There is genius in movement, look how it makes energy. There is genius in nature, look how it makes life. There is genius in intelligence, look how it makes reason. There is genius in understanding, look how it makes insights. There is genius in intuition, look how they make choices. There is genius in wisdom, look how it makes judgments. There is genius in minds, look how they make thoughts. There is genius in hearts, look how they make desires. There is genius in souls, look how they make experiences. There is genius in cells, look how they make bodies. There is genius in children, look how they make tales. There is genius in youth, look how they make questions. There is genius in adults, look how they make answers. There is genius in elders, look how they make proverbs. There is genius in the past, look how it makes memories. There is genius in the present, look how it makes reality. There is genius in the future, look how it makes destinies. There is genius in life, look how it makes existence.