“What most impresses the people around the prophet is the personality change he has undergone.”

—  Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: What most impresses the people around the prophet is the personality change he has undergone.... when stress reaches a certain intensity in the culture, only certain individuals feel called forth to become prophets while most do not. In any event, the prophet has emerged in a new cultural role, and his personality is liberated from the stress that called his response into being in the first place. Immune to the stress under which his brethren still suffer, he must appear to them supernatural.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What most impresses the people around the prophet is the personality change he has undergone." by Peter Farb?
Peter Farb photo
Peter Farb 92
American academic and writer 1929–1980

Related quotes

Yitzhak Shamir photo

“Our image has undergone change from David fighting Goliath to being Goliath.”

Yitzhak Shamir (1915–2012) prime minister of Israel

Daily Telegraph London, (25 January, 1989).

Michael Crichton photo

“I want to mention in passing that punditry has undergone a subtle change over the years.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

"Why Speculate?" https://web.archive.org/web/20050328084634/http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote03.html - speech at the International Leadership Forum, La Jolla, California (26 April 2002)
Context: I want to mention in passing that punditry has undergone a subtle change over the years. In the old days, commentators such as Eric Sevareid spent most of their time putting events in a context, giving a point of view about what had already happened. Telling what they thought was important or irrelevant in the events that had already taken place. This is of course a legitimate function of expertise in every area of human knowledge.
But over the years the punditic thrust has shifted away from discussing what has happened, to discussing what may happen. And here the pundits have no benefit of expertise at all. Worse, they may, like the Sunday politicians, attempt to advance one or another agenda by predicting its imminent arrival or demise. This is politicking, not predicting.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan photo

“Last year, the lecture was held in [an auditorium] with a capacity for just 300 people, and half the seats were empty. “What has changed? I am still the same person doing the same science. Why are people so impressed when some academy in Sweden gives an award?”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Appreciate science for what it is: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Mani Madhava Chakyar photo

“It is not the favourable conditions, but most deprived circumstances that mould an artist”
- about the struggles that he had undergone in his life as an artist.”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Source: p. 47 Natyacharya Mani Madhava Chakyar, Attendance - The Dance Annual of India 2009 http://www.attendance-india.com/#2009

William Herschel photo

“I must freely confess that by continuing my sweeps of the heavens my opinion of the arrangement of the stars and their magnitudes, and of some other particulars, has undergone a gradual change…”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Emma Goldman photo

“The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge.”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah photo

“In this way, Allah will love the pious person because He, the Most Exalted, loves those who are pious, truthful, charitable, devout, and are sincere to Him and to His Prophet.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The mutual love between Allah and His servants http://english.bayynat.org.lb/Doctrines/Themutual1.htm

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah photo

“This Ayah indicates that the pious person should express his love to Allah by believing in His Prophet and following the Message, and through obeying the Prophet, abiding by his orders, leaving what he prohibits and obeying all what Allah has revealed to him, because that is the vivid expression of the practical love that fills his whole entity.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The mutual love between Allah and His servants http://english.bayynat.org.lb/Doctrines/Themutual1.htm

Michel De Montaigne photo

“He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III

Related topics