“In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.”
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author
Source: New Seeds of Contemplation
Woźniak, Olga; Vetulani, Jerzy (24 December 2011): Stań się dobrym. To się opłaca, interview. Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish).
“In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.”
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author
Source: New Seeds of Contemplation
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves. <br class="br">Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775); Jefferson composed the first draft of this document, but the final work was done by John Dickinson, working with his original draft. Full text online http://www.nationalcenter.org/1775DeclarationofArms.html <br class="br">1770s
“What bothers me about television is that it takes our minds off our minds.”
Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer
Tom Waller (March 13, 1991) "Neighbors Grapevine", Wisconsin State Journal, p. 1.
Attributed
Marvin Minsky book Society of Mind
Source: The Society of Mind (1987), Ch.2
Context: Questions about arts, traits, and styles of life are actually quite technical. They ask us to explain what happens among the agents of our minds. But this is a subject about which we have never learned very much... Such questions will be answered in time. But it will just prolong the wait if we keep using pseudo-explanation words like "holistic" and "gestalt." …It's harmful, when naming leads the mind to think that names alone bring meaning close.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Introduction <br class="br">1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836)
Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist
Source: I.D. Magazine Interview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.D._(magazine)
“By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
The Enemies of Reason, "The Irrational Health Service" [1.02], 20 August 2007, timecode 00:13:05"ff"
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variant: We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch04.htm (1886)
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
Section 1.9 <!-- p. 28 -->
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: My husband is my most ruthless critic. … Sometimes he will say, "It's been said better before." Of course. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anyone else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it in our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.