“Most people go through life never knowing the truth about the major events of their time. They're watching a farce performed at the edge of the stage while the real drama is going on behind the curtain.”

— John Twelve Hawks , book The Traveler

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005), Ch. 31

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 27, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Most people go through life never knowing the truth about the major events of their time. They're watching a farce perf…" by John Twelve Hawks?

John Twelve Hawks 62

American writer

Related quotes

“I am going to seek a grand perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played.”

Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) major French Renaissance writer

Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.
Last words, according to the Life of Rabelais (1694) by Peter Anthony Motteux.
Variant translations:
I am going to seek the great perhaps.
I am going to search for the great perhaps.

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Introduction
The Nature of the Physical World (1928)
Context: In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the A B C of physics".
The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.