Echoes

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.

I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning.

What speaks to the soul escapes our measurements.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.

Exactitude is not truth.

Man knows much more than he understands.

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name. The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of creation. Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real. Yet mystery and reality emerge from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness born from darkness. The beginning of all understanding.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnameable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of thought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.

To give a full explanation of the mystic passages of the Bible is contrary to the law and to reason; besides, my knowledge of them is based on reasoning, not on divine inspiration [and is therefore not infallible]. ...It is... possible that my view is wrong, and that I misunderstand passages referred to. ...Those, however, for whom this treatise has been composed, will, on reflecting on it and thoroughly examining each chapter, obtain a clear insight into all that has been clear and intelligible to me. This is the utmost that can be done in treating this subject so to be useful to all without fully explaining it.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.