F. David Peat Quotes

“Science proceeds by abstracting what is essential from the accidental details of matter and process.”

“In the act of simply being with another culture there comes the realization of a need for balance, the understanding that there are times when it is better to listen than to ask, better the feel than to think, more appropriate to stay with a silence than to seek answers in speech.”

“Within the indigenous world the act of coming to know something involves a personal transformation. The knower and the known are indissolubly linked and changed in a fundamental way. …it is a dynamic and living process, an aspect of the ever-changing, ever-renewing process of nature.”

“The danger arises when a culture takes its own story as the absolute truth, and seeks to impose this truth on others as the yardstick of all knowledge and belief.”

“We must ask if.. structures and organizations continue to serve the purposes for which they were first created. Are they true to the spirit that once inspired them?”

“Art and music make manifest, by bringing into conscious awareness, that which has previously been felt only tentatively and internally. Art, in its widest sense, is a form of play that lies at the origin of all making, of language, and of the mind's awareness of its place within the world. Art, in all its forms, makes manifest the spiritual dimension of the cosmos, and expresses our relationship to the natural world. This may have been the cause of that natural light which first illuminated the preconscious minds of early hominids.”

“Each one of our thoughts changes the world in a tiny but subtle way. Multiply this by… the billions in the world, and human thought has an enormous impact.”

“Is there an objective aspect that remains constant through time? Or are we more like open systems or processes within the constant flow of life?”

“Quantum theory stresses the irreducible link between observer and observed and the basic holism of all phenomena. Indigenous science also holds that there is no separation between the individual and society, between matter and spirit, between each one of us and the whole of nature.”

“Several leading-edge thinkers in physics suggest that nature is… a flux of processes. The whole notion of flux and process is fundamental to the Indigenous sciences of… Algonkian-speaking peoples… all share a strongly verb-based family of languages that reflects this direct experience.”

“In modern physics the essential stuff of the universe… exists as relationships and fluctuations… Indigenous science teaches that all that exists is an expression of relationships, alliances, and balances between what… we call energies, powers, or spirits.”