“The very possibility that there may exist timeless truths is a reproach to the life of laxness and indifference which modern egotism encourages. … Ideas which have their reference to the periphery or individuum, to the particular in space and time, are false and stand in the way of integration.”

— Richard M. Weaver

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 68.

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Richard M. Weaver 110

American scholar 1910–1963

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“The Parthenon stands as a reproach to the rest of the world. May not this be because the rest of the world has forgotten, or never knew, the principles which made the Parthenon possible and of which harmony of proportion… was one?”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

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“Neither is it accidental that the Upanishads contain no internal evidence as to when, where or by whom they were composed. Their very thesis is that we dwell in the midst of a timeless eternity. With everything so indissolubly united that particular areas or places are of no concern. Who might be the author of an idea or a way of communicating it must be of no importance whatsoever, since truth is truth.”

Robert T. Oliver (1909–2000) American academic

Communication and Culture In Ancient India & China (1971)

“Calcutta, for me, was a particular idea of the modern city, and I found it in many forms, works, and genres. … by ‘modernity’ I have in mind something that was never new. True modernity was born with the aura of inherited decay and life. … if you look at paintings and photographs, and see old films of the city, you notice that these walls and buildings were never new – that Calcutta was born to look more or less as I saw it as a child. I’m not referring here to an air of timelessness; the patina that gave to Calcutta’s alleys, doorways, and houses their continuity and disposition is very different from the eternity that defines mausoleums and monuments. It’s this quality I’m trying to get at when I speak of modernity. … modernity in the nineteenth century is indistinguishable from nature; perhaps it is nature – in some ways, the culvert, which has emerged from the rock, seems more of its place than the mountain itself.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

citation needed
On Modernity

“It seems significant that according to quantum physics the indestructibility of energy on one hand — which expresses its timeless existence — and the appearance of energy in space and time on the other hand correspond to two contradictory (complementary) aspects of reality.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

"Modern Examples of Background Physics" ["Moderne Beispiele zur Hintergrundsphysik"] (1948) as translated by David Roscoe in Atom and Archetype (1992) edited by Carl Alfred Meier
Context: It seems significant that according to quantum physics the indestructibility of energy on one hand — which expresses its timeless existence — and the appearance of energy in space and time on the other hand correspond to two contradictory (complementary) aspects of reality. In fact, both are always present, but in individual cases the one or the other may be more pronounced.

“It is only by intuition that the infinite can be apprehended. But why is this? Why cannot the infinite be apprehended by concepts? To see this we must understand that the word "infinite," in the religious sense, has nothing at all to do with that sense of the word in which it is applied to space, time, and the number series. We may call this latter the mathematical infinite to distinguish it from the religious infinite. And it is the confusion between these two which misled us into the false trail of supposing that the infinity of God's mind refers to the amount of His knowledge and that the finitude of man's mind refers to his ignorance. The religious infinite, or in other words the infinity of God, means that than 'which there is no other. In this sense neither space nor time could be infinite, since space is an "other" to time, and time is an "other" to space.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 46-47.

“A theology which has as its points of reference only "truths" which have been established once and for all—and not the Truth which is also the Way—can only be static and, in the long run, sterile.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

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“Theory consists in referring particular operations to the principles, or general laws, under which they are comprehended; or in referring particular effects to the causes from which they proceed.”

Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) Scottish philosopher and historian

Introduction, Section IV, Of Theory, p. 7.
Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769)

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

First introduction to The Twilight Zone television series; first episode (2 October 1959).
The Twilight Zone
Context: There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.

“But perhaps you may ask, whether Time was not before the World was created? And if Time does not flow in the Extramundane Space, where nothing is: A mere Vacuum? I answer, that since there was Space before the World was created, and that there now is an Extramundane, infinite Space, (where God is present)… Time existed before the World began, and does exist together with the World in the Extramundane Space, because 'tis possible that some Thing might have existed long before the World was made; and there may now be something in the Extramundane Space, capable of such a Continuance: Some Sun might have given Light long before; and at present this, or some other like it, may diffuse Light thro' Imaginary Spaces. Time therefore does not imply an actual Existence, but only the Capacity or Possibility of the Continuance of Existence; just as Space expresses the Capacity of a Magnitude contain'd in it.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

p, 125
Geometrical Lectures (1735)

“In the modern systems approach, the concept "system" is used not to refer to things in the world but to a particular way of organising our thoughts about the world.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Source: Creative Problem Solving (1991), p. 2.

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Richard M. Weaver 110

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