“We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.”

— Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Cosmography (1992)
Context: The dark ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear.
This Dark Ages prison has no steel bars, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by misorientation and built of misinformation. Caught up in a plethora of conditioned reflexes and driven by the human ego, both warden and prisoner attempt meagerly to compete with God. All are intractably skeptical of what they do not understand.
We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.

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Buckminster Fuller 171

American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inv… 1895–1983

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“But how can we know that dragons did not exist? We have never actually BEEN to the Dark Ages.”

Cressida Cowell (1966) British writer

Source: A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons

“We have been born into a certain Culture, at a certain phase of its organic development, we have certain gifts. These condition the earthly task which we must perform. The metaphysical task is beyond any conditioning, for it would have been the same in any age anywhere. The earthly task is merely the form of the higher task, its organic vehicle.”

Francis Parker Yockey book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics

Source: Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics (1948), Chapter titled: The Imperative of Our Age, p. 111 Noontide Press edition.

“Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Earliest source located that attributes this to Einstein is the 1975 book The Nature of Scientific Discovery: A Symposium Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Birth of Nicolaus Copernicus edited by Owen Gingerich, p. 585 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ub3gAAAAMAAJ&q=%22certainly+a+central%22#search_anchor. But long before that, the 1944 book Einstein: An Intimate Study of a Great Man by Dimitri Marianoff and Palma Wayne contains the following quote on p. 62: "But Einstein came along and took space and time out of the realm of stationary things and put them in the realm of relativity—giving the onlooker dominion over time and space, because time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live." It appears from the quote that the authors were giving their own description of Einstein's ideas, not quoting him.
Misattributed

“We are imprisoned in our small selves, thinking only of some comfortable conditions for this small self, while we destroy our large self. If we want to change the situation, we must begin by being our true selves.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

The Sun My Heart (1996)
Context: If you are a mountain climber or someone who enjoys the countryside or the forest, you know that forests are our lungs outside of our bodies. Yet we have been acting in a way that has allowed millions of square miles of land to be deforested, and we have also destroyed the air, the rivers, and parts of the ozone layer. We are imprisoned in our small selves, thinking only of some comfortable conditions for this small self, while we destroy our large self. If we want to change the situation, we must begin by being our true selves. To be our true selves means we have to be the forest, the river, and the ozone layer. If we visualize ourselves as the forest, we will experience the hopes and fears of the trees. If we don't do this, the forests will die, and we will lose our chance for peace. When we understand that we inter-are with the trees, we will know that it is up to us to make an effort to keep the trees alive.