Quotes about creationism
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Jodi Picoult photo
Meg Rosoff photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Charlie Chaplin photo
Walter Benjamin photo

“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Salon.com Letters http://www.salon.com/books/letters/2003/08/26/chuck/index.html. Response by Palahniuk to Laura Miller's review. (2003-08-26)

Ayn Rand photo

“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's individual value-judgments.”

Source: The Romantic Manifesto (1969), Chapter 1 ("The Psycho-Epistemology of Art")
Source: The Fountainhead

Douglas Adams photo
John Muir photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Marguerite Duras photo
Thomas Merton photo
Sigmund Freud photo

“The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Variant: One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be "happy" is not included in the plan of "Creation."
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2, as translated by James Strachey, p.53

Dallas Willard photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Maya Angelou photo
Francis Bacon photo
Knut Hamsun photo
Bill Hicks photo
Emily Dickinson photo

“Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.”

Love, p. 167
Collected Poems (1993)
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

James Joyce photo
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo
John Muir photo

“One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made. That this is still the morning of creation. That mountains, long conceived, are now being born, brought to light by the glaciers, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"Alaska Glaciers: Graphic Description of the Yosemite of the Far Northwest", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 5 of 11 part series "Notes of a Naturalist") dated 7 September 1879, published 27 September 1879; reprinted as "Baird Glacier" in Letters from Alaska, edited by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pages 28-32 (at page 31); modified slightly and reprinted in Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 5, A Cruise in the Cassiar
First lines of the documentary film series " The National Parks: America's Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" by Ken Burns.
1910s

V. Vale photo

“A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition.”

V. Vale (1942) American writer

Source: Modern Primitives: An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual

Cassandra Clare photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Wendell Berry photo
Annie Dillard photo

“We are here to witness the creation and to abet it.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Noam Chomsky photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo
Rudolf Steiner photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Garth Ennis photo

“But it is my creation…! It's outgrown you.”

Garth Ennis (1970) Irish comics writer

Source: Preacher, Volume 9: Alamo

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

Brian Greene photo

“Cosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it’s no wonder. We’re storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Source: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

Marilynne Robinson photo
Wendell Berry photo
Cheryl Strayed photo
Donald Barthelme photo

“The aim of literature… is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

"Florence Green is 81".
Source: Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)
Context: His examiner... said severely: "Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature." "The aim of literature," Baskerville replied grandly, "is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart."

John Wesley photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

October 18, 1936 Fire
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Thomas Merton photo

“In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: New Seeds of Contemplation

Sam Harris photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“the price of creation
is never
too high.

the price of living
with other people
always
is.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Albert Einstein photo
Gertrude Stein photo

“If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Ezra Pound photo
J.M. Coetzee photo

“The opposite of war isn't peace… It's creation!”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Rent (1996)

Chuck Palahniuk photo
LeVar Burton photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Meister Eckhart photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Bill Hicks photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo

“I'm a toxic waste byproduct of God's creation.”

Source: Fight Club

Ray Comfort photo

“Communism further alleges that religion is not of divine origin but is simply a man-made tool used by the dominant class to suppress the exploited class. Marx and Engels described religion as the opiate of the people which is designed to lull them into humble submission and an acceptance of the prevailing mode of production which the dominant class desires to perpetuate. Any student of history would agree that there have been times in history when unscrupulous individuals and even misdirected religious organizations have abused the power of religion, just as all other institutions of society have been abused at various times. But it was not the abuse of religion which Marx and Engels deplored as much as the very existence of religion. They considered it a creation of the dominant class, a tool and a weapon in the hands of the oppressors. They pointed out the three-fold function of religion from their point of view: first, it teaches respect for property rights; second, it teaches the poor their duties towards the property and prerogatives of the ruling class; and third, it instills a spirit of acquiescence among the exploited poor so as to destroy their revolutionary spirit. The fallacy of these allegations is obvious to any student of Judaic-Christian teachings. The Biblical teaching of respect for property applies to rich and poor alike; it admonishes the rich to give the laborer his proper wages and to share their riches with the needy.”

The Naked Communist (1958)

Kent Hovind photo
Luis Miguel photo

“I have that weakness. I think women are one of the most beautiful creations that could be given by nature, by God.”

Luis Miguel (1970) Puerto Rican singer; music producer

Interview in Mexico, 1995

Van Jones photo
C. A. R. Hoare photo
Henry Moore photo

“The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1970 and later
Source: Eric Maisel, ‎Ann Maisel (2010) Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions. p. 95

Gideon Mantell photo
Hans von Seeckt photo

“The Weimar Constitution is for me not a noli me tangere; I did not participate in its creation, and it is in its basic principles contrary to my political thinking…I believed that a change of the constitution was approaching, and that I could help towards this by methods which were not unnecessarily to lead through civil war. So far as concerns my attitude towards the international Social Democracy, I have to confess that at the outset I believed in the possibility to winning over part of it to national co-operation; but I have revised this opinion long ago, a long time before our conversation, in so far as the Social Democratic Party is concerned, not the German working class as such…I see clearly that a collaboration with the Social Democratic Party is impossible because it repudiates the idea of military preparedness…I do not consider a Stresemann cabinet viable, not even after its transformation. This lack of confidence I have expressed to the chancellor himself as well as to the president, and I have told them that in the long run I could not guarantee the attitude of the Reichswehr to a government in which it had no confidence…A Stresemann government cannot last without the support of the Reichswehr and of the forces standing behind it.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to von Kahr (2 November 1923), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 117.

Jan Smuts photo

“The free creativeness of mind is possible because, […] the world ultimately exists, not of material stuff, but of patterns, of organization, the evolution of which involves no absolute creation of an alien world of material from nothing. The purely structural character of reality thus helps to render possible and intelligible the free creativeness of life and mind, … The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures … Life and mind thus appear as products of the cosmic decline, … Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable running down of the solar system. Life and mind, […] are thus reduced to a very casual and inferior status in the cosmic order […] – a transient and embarrassed phantom in an alien, if not hostile universe. […] The human spirit is not a pathetic, wandering phantom of the universe, […] but meets with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts expounding a confrontation of opposites in his presidential address to the British Association in September 1931, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 232-234

Johann Gottfried Herder photo
Ursula Goodenough photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Melanie Joy photo
John Calvin photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“The soul of Man must quicken to creation.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Ellsworth Kelly photo
Jane Roberts photo
Kent Hovind photo
El Lissitsky photo
Walter Bagehot photo
David Cronenberg photo

“I'm always working on the same thing, the creation of an identity. It's mysterious: We think identity is genetically given, but I believe there is creative will involved with the decision of who we are going to be. All my movies are concerned with this.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

Cronenberg: An intellectual with ominous powers http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/arts/19iht-dupont.html (May 19, 2006)

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Charles Lyell photo
William Lloyd Garrison photo

“Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Vol. I, p. 268
William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879 (1885)

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The logos of creation, 'And God Said…' formed the basis of Christian interpretation of the 'Book of Nature.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 217

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Edward Young photo

“Final Ruin fiercely drives
Her plowshare o'er creation.”

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IX, Line 167. Compare Robert Burns, To a Mountain Daisy: "Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate / Full on thy bloom".

Kent Hovind photo

“Similarities in the DNA code simply prove the same designer wrote the code. This is not evidence for evolution, it is actually proof for creation!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: Are you being brainwashed?: Propaganda in science textbooks (2007), p. 24

Charles Lyell photo
Khandro Rinpoche photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo