“Family, clan, country, union of nations—each unit strives toward peace, toward betterment of life. Each unit of cooperation and communal life needs perfecting. No one can fix the limits of evolution. By this line of reasoning a worker becomes a creator.Let us not be frightened by the problems of creativeness. Let us find for science unencumbered paths. Thus, thought about perfectionment will be a sign of joy.”

— Helena Roerich

New Era Community (1926)

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Helena Roerich 58

Russian philosopher 1879–1955

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“Family, clan, country, union of nations — each unit strives toward peace, toward betterment of life. Each unit of cooperation and communal life needs perfecting. No one can fix the limits of evolution. By this line of reasoning a worker becomes a creator. Let us not be frightened by the problems of creativeness. Let us find for science unencumbered paths. Thus, thought about perfectionment will be a sign of joy.”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 1
New Era Community (1926)

“Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation. Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (2012)
Context: The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. It may be questioned whether all negative forces could ever be removed. The simple answer is: “No!” It is in human nature to contain both the positive and the negative. However, it is also within human capability to work to reinforce the positive and to minimize or neutralize the negative. Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation. Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.

“The Greeks never thought to unite all Greek speakers in one political union. Because each Greek gloried in his singular excellence—and each Greek clan gloried similarly—it was hard enough to unite a city. Each city or polis—from which come our words politics, politician, metropolis—thought itself unrivaled in some essential quality and reveled in its reputation.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.IV The Politician and the Playwright: How to Rule

“In the name of Indian national life, in the name of religion, I appeal to all in each of the two countries who hold position…let them begin each in their own community to work untiringly towards this end: boldly to repudiate feelings of hatred and intolerance, actively to condemn and suppress acts of violence and aggression, earnestly to strive to exorcise suspicions…I appeal in the name of national life because communal tension is eating into it as a canker…I appeal in the name of religion because I can appeal to nothing nobler, and because religion is the language of the soul, and it is a change of soul that India needs today.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech as Viceroy of India (1926), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, 1965), pp. 223-234
Viceroy of India

“As long as algebra and geometry proceeded along separate paths, their advance was slow and their applications limited. But when these sciences joined company, they drew from each other fresh vitality and thenceforward marched on at a rapid pace toward perfection.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist

Dans Les Leçons Élémentaires sur les Mathématiques (1795) Leçon cinquiéme,Tr. McCormack, cited in Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book (1914) Ch. V The teaching of mathematics, p. 81. https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/80/mode/2up

“An international system consists of a group of interacting behavior units called "nations" or "countries," to which may sometimes be added certain supra-national organizations, such as the United Nations. Each of the behavior units in the system can be described in terms of a set of "relevant variables." Just what is relevant and what is not is a matter of judgment of the system-builder, but we think of such things as states of war or peace, degrees of hostility or friendliness, alliance or enmity, arms budgets, geographic extent, friendly or hostile communications, and so on. Having defined our variables, we can then proceed to postulate certain relationships between them, sufficient to define a path for all the variables through time. Thus we might suppose, with Lewis Richardson that the rate of change of hostility of one nation toward a second depends on the level of hostility in the second and that the rate of change of hostility of the second toward the first depends on the level of hostility of the first. Then, if we start from given levels of hostility in each nation, these equations are sufficient to spell out what happens to these levels in succeeding time periods.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, National images and international systems, 1959, p. 120-121

“The communal life has long been a sign of cooperation and of mutual respect. So too each workshop can be a cell of a community in which everybody contributes his skill. Altruism is a requisite if one is to devote one’s talent to the common work.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

New Era Community (1926)

“There is within each of us a "life-instinct," which is forever working toward health, happiness, and all that makes for more life for the individual.”

Maxwell Maltz book Psycho-Cybernetics

Source: Psycho-Cybernetics (1960), p. 12

“Freedom and determinism are only the obverse and the reverse of the two-faced fact of rational self-activity. Freedom is the thought-action of the self, defining its specific identity, and determinism means nothing but the definite character which the rational nature of the action involves. Thus freedom, far from disjoining and isolating each self from other selves, especially the Supreme Self, or God, in fact defines the inner life of each, in its determining whole, in harmony with theirs, and so, instead of concealing, opens it to their knowledge — to God, with absolute completeness eternally, in virtue of his perfect vision into all possible emergencies, all possible alternatives; to the others, with an increasing fulness, more or less retarded, but advancing toward completeness as the Rational Ideal guiding each advances in its work of bringing the phenomenal or natural life into accord with it. For our freedom, in its most significant aspect, means just our secure possession, each in virtue of his self-defining act, of this common Ideal, whose intimate nature it is to unite us, not to divide us; to unite us while it preserves us each in his own identity, harmonising each with all by harmonising all with God, but quenching none in any extinguishing Unit. Freedom, in short, means first our self-direction by this eternal Ideal and toward it, and then our power, from this eternal choice, to bring our temporal life into conformity with it, step by step, more and more.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.375-6

“The love between brothers is a strong support through life, that is an old truth, let us look for that support, may experience strengthen the bond between us, and let us be true and outspoken toward each other, let there he no secrets — as it is now.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in a letter of Vincent to brother Theo van Gogh, from Etten (Netherlands), Spring, 1877; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 90), p. 7
1870s

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