Albert Pike Quotes
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Albert Pike was an attorney, soldier, writer, and Freemason.

✵ 29. December 1809 – 2. April 1891
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Albert Pike: 88   quotes 10   likes

Albert Pike Quotes

“All religious expression is symbolism”

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 62
Context: All religious expression is symbolism; since we can describe only what we see, and the true objects of religion are The Seen. The earliest instruments of education were symbols; and they and all other religious forms differed and still differ according to external circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and mental cultivation. All language is symbolic, so far as it is applied to mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All words have, primarily, a material sense, howsoever they may afterward get, for the ignorant, a spiritual non-sense. To "retract," for example, is to draw back, and when applied to a statement, is symbolic, as much so as a picture of an arm drawn back, to express the same thing, would he. The very word " spirit" means " breath," from the Latin verb spiro, breathe.

“A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze.”

Diogenes of Sinope, as quoted in Pearls of Thought (1882), edited by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 22
Misattributed

“Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.”

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. I : Apprentice, The Twelve-Inch Rule and Common Gavel, p. 1

“War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.”

This is more commonly attributed to Georges Clemenceau, and the earliest published attribution to Pike is in 2008, without citation of sources.
Misattributed

“We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice.”

Peace Pilgrim, as quoted in Liquid Crystals : Frontiers In Biomedical Applications (2007) by Scott J. Woltman, Gregory Philip Crawford, p. 149
Misattributed

“One man is equivalent to all Creation. One man is a World in miniature.”

Avot of Rabbi Natan (c. 700 – 900)
Misattributed

“Hypocrisy is the homage that vice and wrong pay to virtue and justice.”

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 73