Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)
“Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”
Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History
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Mark Twain637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes
“If gold rusts, what then can iron do?”
Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales
Source: The Canterbury Tales
“Whom none could overcome with iron or gold.”
Quem nemo ferro potuit superare nec auro.
Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer
As quoted by Cicero in De Re Publica, Book III, Chapter IV
Iron is a metonym for sword/warfare, and gold for money/bribery.
Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) Arab historiographer and historian
As quoted in Muḥammad Ramaḍān al-Ramaḍānī, ' The Delusion of Portraying the Aḥadīth as Being Contradictory to the Intellect and Sense Perception https://www.academia.edu/41143364/The_Delusion_of_Portraying_the_A%E1%B8%A5ad%C4%ABth_as_Being_Contradictory_to_the_Intellect_and_Sense_Perception_by_Mu%E1%B8%A5ammad_Rama%E1%B8%8D%C4%81n_al-Rama%E1%B8%8D%C4%81n%C4%AB?fbclid=IwAR2ADVWT4gR0yhH0NVxpUj7ME1qU9nQu1QnCcy8zmrfb5rXkJlatb24aCrw'
Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion
Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 23 “One Door Closes...” (p. 174)
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer
Tolstoy's Diaries (1985) edited and translated by R. F. Christian. London: Athlone Press, Vol 2, p. 512
Context: People usually think that progress consists in the increase of knowledge, in the improvement of life, but that isn't so. Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. The truth is always accessible to a man. It can't be otherwise, because a man's soul is a divine spark, the truth itself. It's only a matter of removing from this divine spark (the truth) everything that obscures it. Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold.
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher
As quoted in Hindu Psychology : Its Meaning for the West (1946) by Swami Akhilananda, p. 204
Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books
De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: There are books that have devastated continents, destroyed thousands. What war hasn’t been a war of fiction? All the religious wars certainly, or the fiction of communism versus the fiction of capitalism – ideas, fictions, shit that people make. They have made a vast impression on the real world. It is the real world. Are thoughts not real? I believe it was Wittgenstein who said a thought is a real event in space and time. I don’t quite agree about the space and time bit, Ludwig, but certainly a real event. It’s only science that cannot consider thought as a real event, and science is not reality. It’s a map of reality, and not a very good one. It’s good, it’s useful, but it has its limits. We have to realise that the map has its edges. One thing that is past the edge is any personal experience. That is why magic is a broader map to me, it includes science. It’s the kind of map we need if we are to survive psychologically in the age that is to come, whatever that is. We need a bigger map because the old one is based on an old universe where not many of us live anymore. We have to understand what we are dealing with here because it is dangerous. It kills people. Art kills.
