More Classic Quotes of
The Great Story
NOTE: If you have come to this page before viewing or downloading the PDF file of CLASSIC QUOTATIONS on the Great Story (by Aldo Leopold, Charles Darwin, Julian Huxley, Carl Sagan, Teilhard de Chardin, Maria Montessori, Loren Eiseley, Ursula Goodenough, Philip Hefner, and many more) then you have skipped the central text. That compilation is beautifully formatted, as it was published in the first issue of the Epic of Evolution. It is an excellent foundation for finding readings and "scriptural" material to support a host of efforts in the New Cosmology.
"Our bodies are made of stardust; our souls are made of stories." — Rev. Thomas Rhodes, Unitarian Universalist minister, 2007
"It takes an entire universe to make an apple pie!" — Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980
"We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been human. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality." — Loren Eiseley, "Starthrower" in Unexpected Universe, 1969
"The reassuring aspect of the portrait of the universe we now see drawn across the sky lies in its reconciliation of humanity with the material world. That we are part of the galaxy is literally true. The atoms of which we are formed were gathered together in the toilings of a galaxy; their fantastical assembly into living creatures was nourished by the warmth of a star in a galaxy; we look at the galaxies with a galaxy's eyes. To understand this is to give voice to the silent stars. Stand under the stars and say what you like to them. Praise or blame them, question them, pray to them, wish upon them. The universe will not answer. But it will have spoken." — Timothy Ferris, Galaxies, 1982
"Nature is narrative to the core." — John Haught, 2002
"Only after we had absorbed Darwin and recalculated the age of the universe, after the vision of static forms of life had been replaced by a vision of fluid processes flexing across vast tracts of time, only then could we dare to guess the immensity of the symphony we are part of." — Christopher Bache, 2003
"From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust." — William James, Pluralistic Universe 1901
"The religious conservatives have an important point when they oppose presenting the subject [of evolution] in a manner that suggests it has been proved to be entirely determined by random, mechanistic events, but they are wrong to oppose the teaching of evolution itself. Its occurrence, on Earth and in the Universe, is by now indisputable. Not so its processes, however. In this, there is need for a nuanced approach, with evidence of creative ordering presented as intrinsic both to what we call matter and to the unfolding story, which includes randomness and natural selection." — Mary Coelho, Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood, 2002 (p. 184)
"There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide." — Rachel Carson
"Life spirals laboriously upward to higher and even higher levels, paying for every step. Death was the price of the multicellular condition; pain the price of nervous integration; anxiety the price of consciousness." — Ludwig von Bertlanffy
"My portion of the great work, like that of any other person, creates its own synergy. My job is to be vigilant to the fact that the world creates neither coincidence nor accident — only opportunity. I need only have the courage to ask for what I need and the valor to accept it once it appears." — Ed Collins, pers. comm., 2003
"Our true ancestry is the emergent creativity of the universe. Our forebears were the great inventors who 'learned' how to coalesce hydrogen and helium into stars, to form planets, to sustain life first from mineral nutrients in the sea and later to capture delicious photons, to exploit oxygen for energy rather than be exterminated by it, to diversify via sexual reproduction, to form social groups for greater security and protection of offspring. We are the beneficiaries (and, admittedly, also the victims) of this narrative of emergence. Our 'companions' — abstract as this must sound to the uninitiated — are all of these progenitors. Indeed they are more than companions; they are family. From them we have inherited our corporeal shapes and movements, our body chemistry, and even some of our behavioral agendas." — John Brewer, pers. comm., 2004
"We humans are truly marvelous, adaptable creatures, products of an exciting and inspiring — even though often dangerous — evolutionary story, a story to be celebrated with conviction and enthusiasm even as we move on to new challenges." — Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria, Driven, 2002
"The dust of many crumbled cities settles over us like a forgetful doze, but we are older than those cities. We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again. That's how a young person turns toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans toward the breast, without knowing the secret of its desire, yet turning instinctively. Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are." — Rumi, "The Dream That Must Be Interpreted"
"We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring." — Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980
"A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot 1994
"When you awaken to what I call the Authentic Self, which is the spiritual or evolutionary impulse, what begins to emerge is the dawning recognition of the fact that each one of us, at our highest level, is that Authentic Self, which is actually the same energy and intelligence that originally inspired the entire creative process. You begin to intuit and feel directly connected to the very impulse that initiated the whole event fourteen billion years ago and is driving it right now." — Andrew Cohen, 2006. (Click here for more Andrew Cohen quotes from his website. This quote is drawn from his "The Outer Reaches of the Big Bang.")
"It is my belief that we need a new transnational sustaining 'myth' that can impart value and respect. It is my further belief that we are coming to see our universe and life as creative, without a directing agency. Meaning emerges with life. If this view becomes widespread, it has the promise to become the sustaining myth we need to sustain in turn an emerging global civilization." — Stuart Kauffman, 2006
"Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. The value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age." — Richard Feynman
"One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures. Because of this ceaseless creativity, we typically do not and cannot know what will happen. We live our lives forward, as Kierkegaard said. We live as if we knew, as Nietzsche said. We live our lives forward into mystery, and do so with faith and courage, for that is the mandate of life itself. But the fact that we must live our lives forward into a ceaseless creativity that we cannot fully understand means that reason alone is an insufficient guide to living our lives. Reason, the center of the Enlightenment, is but one of the evolved, fully human means we use to live our lives. Reason itself has finally led us to see the inadequacy of reason. We must therefore reunite our full humanity. We must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world we can never fully know. We must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world we can never fully know." — Stuart Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred, 2007
POEM: "All My Life"
All my life I've wanted to believe in God,
gone to church, followed every spiritual teacher in town,
meditated and prayed, attended 12-step programs,
but still I felt abandoned and alone in the universe.
All my life I've wanted to see the face of God.
Is he really just a mean old man in the sky?
Perhaps God is a chubby Buddha,
or maybe the Dalai Lama, always laughing.
Or is She a woman, the green Tara, weeping pearl tears,
the Virgin of Guadalupe, crowned with roses?
All my life I've tried to solve that old mystery,
Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here?
Then one day I saw the pictures
sent back by the Hubble Telescope:
Hot blue stars born out of the red glow of galaxies,
a pulsating firestorm of fluorescent clouds,
the obsidian sky of deep space.
Spirals of comets, like swirling diamond necklaces.
Black holes, exploding supernovas,
a hundred thousand light-years away,
endless, unimaginable, eternal.
And I knew that finally I had seen the face of God.
— Joyce Keller
POEM: Life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.
— Langdon Smith (1858-1908)
POEM: "The Rope" by Loren Eiseley
(click for a PDF version of "The Rope")
This 9 minute YouTube video of Neil deGrasse Tyson is a gem. Click to be inspired by his personal story of how how he became a scientist and his peak spiritual experiences in doing science. (posted June 2008)
Home
| About
The Great Story | About
Us | Traveling
Ministry and Events
What Others Say | Programs
and Presentations | Metareligious
Essays | Writings/Rituals
Great Story Beads |
Online Bookstore
| Parables
| Sacred
Sites
Highlights
of Our Travels | Favorite Links & Resources
| Join
Us! | WHAT's NEW?