
“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
7th Public Discussion, Saanen, Switzerland (10 August 1971)
1970s
“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Iowa straw poll speech, August 14, 1999. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/99_08_14strawpoll.htm.
1999
“One must manifest discipline of spirit; without it one cannot become free.”
Introduction
Leaves Of Morya's Garden (1924 - 1925), Book II : Illumination (1925)
Context: One must manifest discipline of spirit; without it one cannot become free. To the slave discipline of spirit will be a prison; to the liberated one it will be a wondrous healing garden. So long as the discipline of spirit is as fetters the doors are closed, for in fetters one cannot ascend the steps.
One may understand the discipline of spirit as wings.
“Intention without discipline is useless.”
Source: Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul
“The thought process can never be complete without articulation.”
Source: The Stand
Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 1 : In Praise of Diversity
Context: Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features. They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual — these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion.
Six Precepts of Tilopa, quoted in A.S. Kline's Like Water or Clouds - The T’ang Dynasty and the Tao (1947)
“Without discipline, Religion would be impossible”
Source: Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart
“A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.”
A: Quod est enim maius argumentum nihil eam prodesse quam quosdam perfectos philosophos turpiter vivere?
M: Nullum vero id quidem argumentum est. Nam ut agri non omnes frugiferi sunt qui coluntur [...] sic animi non omnes culti fructum ferunt. Atque, ut in eodem simili verser, ut ager quamvis fertilis sine cultura fructuosus esse non potest, sic sine doctrina animus; ita est utraque res sine altera debilis. Cultura autem animi philosophia est; haec extrahit vitia radicitus et praeparat animos ad satus accipiendos eaque mandat eis et, ut ita dicam, serit, quae adulta fructus uberrimos ferant.
Book II, Chapter V; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)
Context: A: For what stronger proof can there be of its [philosophy's] uselessness than that some accomplished philosophers lead disgraceful lives?
M: It is no proof at all; for as all cultivated fields are not harvest-yielding [... ] so all cultivated minds do not bear fruit. To continue the figure – as a field, though fertile, cannot yield a harvest without cultivation, no more can the mind without learning; thus each is feeble without the other. But philosophy is the cultivation of the soul. It draws out vices by the root, prepares the mind to receive seed, and commits to it, and, so to speak, sows in it what, when grown, may bear the most abundant fruit.