“We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 4
Context: The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
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Carl Sagan365
American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996Related quotes
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet
30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: The relation of thought to action filled my mind on waking, and I found myself carried toward a bizarre formula, which seems to have something of the night still clinging about it: Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious. It seemed to me that our most trifling actions, of eating, walking, and sleeping, were the condensation of a multitude of truths and thoughts, and that the wealth of ideas involved was in direct proportion to the commonness of the action (as our dreams are the more active, the deeper our sleep). We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries are contained in what we see and do every day. In all spontaneity the work of creation is reproduced in analogy. When the spontaneity is unconscious, you have simple action; when it is conscious, intelligent and moral action.
“We cannot know the mystery of the future.”
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Variant: We cannot ignore our gift of the future.
Source: Just Peace: A Message of Hope
“The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 102
Context: When Christianity becomes conscious of its innermost nature, it realizes that it is godliness rising our of inward constraint. The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery. Neither knowledge nor hope for the future can be the pivot of our life or determine its direction. It is intended to be solely determined by our allowing ourselves to be gripped by the ethical God, who reveals Himself in us, and by our yielding our will to His.
“… we all know mysteries are very fascinating things.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)
Huston Smith book The World's Religions
Part of this quote may actually be by Ralph Washington Sockman.
The World's Religions (1991)
Source: Beyond the Post-Modern Mind: The Place of Meaning in a Global Civilization
Context: In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.
