"We are here to see and contemplate the great spectacle."

John Burroughs Science See all quotes by John Burroughs →

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“Every day is a Sabbath to me. All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a celestial abode.”

“In us or through us the Primal Mind will have contemplated and enjoyed its own works and will continue to do so as long as human life endures on this planet.”

“Man’s craving for the supernatural is as natural as our discounting of the present moment... The natural becomes trite and commonplace to us and we take refuge in an imaginary world above and beyond it.”

“Science has done more for the development of Western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred.”

“Science, in the broadest sense, is simply that which may be verified; but how much of that which theology accepts and goes upon is verifiable by human reason or experience?”

“The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted."

— Robert Benchley

Journalism1889–1945

#writing

"A great deal of her obscurity and cant, Tenar had begun to realize, was mere ineptness with words and ideas. Nobody had ever taught her to think consecutively. Nobody had ever listened to what she sai…"

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Literature1929–2018

#mind

"Already the elections of the year 1929 brought us a great influx from the Marxist camp. In Berlin alone, we managed in the municipal elections in November 1929 to snatch from the Reds of both colors n…"

— Joseph Goebbels

Politics1897–1945

#politics

"The next great fact, necessary and taken for granted, may be put into a single phrase of your own Scriptures: "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. It is the law of causation, the law of a…"

— Annie Besant

Politics1847–1933

#justice