The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: What is the essence of our God? The struggle for freedom. In the indestructible darkness a flaming line ascends and emblazons the march of the Invisible. What is our duty? To ascend with this blood-drenched line.
Whatever rushes upward and helps God to ascend is good. Whatever drags downward and impedes God from ascending is evil.
All virtues and all evils take on a new value. They are freed from the moment and from earth, they exist completely within man, before and after man, eternally.
For the essence of our ethic is not the salvation of man, who varies within time and space, but the salvation of God, who within a wide variety of flowing human forms and adventures is always the same, the indestructible rhythm which battles for freedom.
We, as human beings, are all miserable persons, heartless, small, insignificant. But within us a superior essence drives us ruthlessly upward.
From within this human mire divine songs have welled up, great ideas, violent loves, an unsleeping assault full of mystery, without beginning or end, without purpose, beyond every purpose.
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Pain is not the only essence of our God, nor is hope in a future life or a life on this earth, neither joy nor victory. Every religion that holds up to worship one of these primordial aspects of God narrows our hearts and our minds.
The essence of our God is STRUGGLE. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor within this struggle, world without end.
Source: As quoted in Women Know Everything!: 3,241 Quips, Quotes, & Brilliant Remarks (2007) by Karen Weekes, p. 173
Quote, This time the struggle is for our freedom (1971)
“The essence of our God is obscure.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity.
Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility.
The Value of Science (1955)
Context: The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.
Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102777
Leader of the Opposition
“The essence of mathematics lies entirely in its freedom.”
Variant translation: The essence of mathematics is in its freedom.
From Kant to Hilbert (1996)
Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 604 (1940).
