Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 134
Context: A religious belief… is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating — these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers.
“We are trying to persuade people that no human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities.”
"The Devout Donor" by Jessi Hempel in Business Week (28 November 2005) http://www.templetonpress.org/sirjohn/articles_details.asp
Context: We are trying to persuade people that no human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities. So we are encouraging people to start using the same methods of science that have been so productive in other areas, in order to discover spiritual realities.
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John Marks Templeton 22
stock investor, businessman and philanthropist 1912–2008Related quotes
“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.”
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 21, June 28, 1941.
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
"A Note To The Reader".
The Way of Chuang-Tzŭ (1965)
Context: I simply like Chuang Tzu because he is what he is and I feel no need to justify this liking to myself or to anyone else. He is far too great to need any apologies from me. … His philosophical temper is, I believe, profoundly original and sane. It can of course be misunderstood. But it is basically simple and direct. It seeks, as does all the greatest philosophical thought, to go immediately to the heart of things.
Chuang Tzu is not concerned with words and formulas about reality, but with the direct existential grasp of reality in itself. Such a grasp is necessarily obscure and does not lend itself to abstract analysis. It can be presented in a parable, a fable, or a funny story about a conversation between two philosophers.
2010s, Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary (March 2018)