Quotes about cycle (336 quotes, page 4)

“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Context: Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to being with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.

World , Dreams , Time , Animals

“This has been going on cycle after cycle, and millions of such cycles must have passed by, and will continue to pass by, without affecting eternity in the least.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Statement before 1955, as quoted in God Speaks : The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose (1973), p. 266.
General sources
Context: Whether there have been 26 Avatars since Adam, or 124,000 Prophets, as is sometimes claimed, or whether Jesus Christ was the last and only Messiah, or Muhammad the last Prophet, is all immaterial and insignificant when eternity and reality are under consideration.
It matters very little to dispute whether there have been ten or twenty-six or a million Avatars. The truth is that the Avatar is always one and the same, and that the five Sadgurus bring about the advent of the Avatar on earth. This has been going on cycle after cycle, and millions of such cycles must have passed by, and will continue to pass by, without affecting eternity in the least.

“The distinction between ancient and modern history, therefore, is no mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chronological convenience. What is called modern history is in reality the formation of a new cycle of culture, connected at several epochs of its development with the perishing or perished civilization of the mediterranean states, as that was connected with the primitive civilization of the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like that earlier cycle, to traverse an orbit of its own. It too is destined to experience in full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, period of growth, of full vigour, and of age, the blessedness of creative effort, in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the material and intellectual acquisitions it has won, perhaps also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of contentment with the goal attained. But that goal too will only be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit, and may complete its course; but not so the human race, to which, even when it seems to have attained its goal, the old task is ever set anew with a wider range and with a deeper meaning.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1, pt. 1, translated by W.P.Dickson.
Introductory Paragraph
The History of Rome - Volume 1
Context: The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far into the great Continent, forms the largest gul of the ocean, and, alternately narrowed by islands or projections of the land and expanding to considerable breadth, at once separates and connects the three divisions of the Old World. The shores of this inland sea were in ancient times peopled by various nations, belonging in an ethno-graphical and philological point of view to different races, but constituting in their historical aspect one whole. This historic whole has been usually, but not very appropriately, entitled the history of the ancient world. It is in reality the history of the civilization among the Mediterranean nations; and as it passes before us in its successive stages, it presents four great phases of development, - the history of the Coptic or Egyptian stock dwelling on the southern shore, the history of the Aramaean or Syrian Nation, which occupied the east coast and extended into the interior of Asia as far as the Euphrates and Tigris, and the histories of the twin-peoples, the Hellenes and the Italians, who received as their heritage the countries bordering on its European shores. Each of these histories was in its earlier stages connected with other regions and with other cycles of historical evolution, but each soon entered on its own peculiar career. The surrounding nations of alien or even of kindred extraction, - the Berbers and Negroes of Africa, the Arabs and Persians, and Indians of Asia, the Celts and Germs of Europe, - came into manifold contact with the peoples inhabiting the borders of the Mediterranean, but they neither imparted unto them nor received from them any influences of really decisive effect upon their respective destinies. So far, therefore, as cycles of culture admit of demarcation at all, we may regard that cycle as a unity which has its culminating points denoted by the names Thebes, Carthage, Athens, and Rome. The four nations represented by these names, after each of them had attained in a path of its own peculiar and noble civilization, mingled with one another in the most varied relations of reciprocal intercourse, and skilfully elaborated and richly developed all the elements of human nature. At length their cycle as accomplished. New peoples who hitherto had onled laved the territories of the states of the Mediterranean, as waves lave the beach, overflowed both shores, severed the history of its south coast from that of the north, and transferred the centre of civilization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. The distinction between ancient and modern history, therefore, is no mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chronological convenience. What is called modern history is in reality the formation of a new cycle of culture, connected at several epochs of its development with the perishing or perished civilization of the mediterranean states, as that was connected with the primitive civilization of the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like that earlier cycle, to traverse an orbit of its own. It too is destined to experience in full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, period of growth, of full vigour, and of age, the blessedness of creative effort, in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the material and intellectual acquisitions it has won, perhaps also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of contentment with the goal attained. But that goal too will only be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit, and may complete its course; but not so the human race, to which, even when it seems to have attained its goal, the old task is ever set anew with a wider range and with a deeper meaning.

Age , Religion , Art , History

“The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.”

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

Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

Idea , Knowledge , Silence

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Last paragraph of the first edition (1859). Only use of the term "evolve" or "evolution" in the first edition.
In the second http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F376&viewtype=image (1860) through sixth (1872) editions, Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" to read:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XIV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 489-90 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F373&viewtype=image

Singing , Clothes , Dependency , Law

“I’m bringing it up because it’s just an arbitrary example of a cycle that it seems like our culture repeats about once a week: somebody makes a joke, some people are offended by the joke, and other people are indignant about the fact that those people are offended. The cycle usually gets framed as a battle in a culture war that’s supposedly going on between generation snowflake, easily triggered, humorless PC cucks, and badass, edgy, nothing-off-limits free-speech truth tellers. Now if this really is a culture war between two sides, then I am a double agent, because I’m a generation snowflake PC cuck who loves dank edgy memes, and I’ve found myself on both sides of this type of conflict many, many times. So on the one hand, when I see the internet roasting a comedian for some shitty trans joke my inner snowflake wants to watch the bastard burn. But my inner edgelady knows how it feels to be dragged across Twitter over a joke. And as someone who basically writes jokes about controversial topics for a living, I appreciate how difficult it is to maintain the mildly sadomasochistic character of comedy while also keeping your moral compass from getting too jittery.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), The Darkness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtj7LDYaufM (2019)

Time , War , People , Truth

“In the Patanjali Yoga, five fundamental impurities are mentioned: avidya (nescience), asmita (ego), raga (attachement), dvesha (aversion), and abhinivesa (gross worldliness, craving).... They are klesas, very inadequately defined as defilements.... All that we have desired and thought have gone into making them. They are woven into the fabric of our emotions, desires, thoughts. They keep us bound down to a particular life-cycle. They are built up of samskaras, impressions accumulated over repeated births.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Source: Meditations. Yogas, Gods, Religions (2000), p. 31

Life , Birth , Making love

“These great sages or masters have never been discouraged in their work for humanity by the fact that the body of truths which at cyclical intervals they promulgate anew would have to undergo periods of degeneration. Directed by spiritual beings even greater than they, they do this sublime work and without intermission throughout the whirling cycles of time.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 22

Truth , Time

“Concerning the nature of the cyclical times when the great teachers either appear personally in the world of men or send a messenger, it may be stated that the greatest teachers come at the opening or close of the longest cyclical periods; the messengers or envoys are sent forth at the opening or closing of the short cycles, and the teachers or messengers of intermediate power come at the beginnings or endings of time-periods of intermediate length.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 22

Time , Personality , Nature , Teachers

“As a writer, my primary responsibility to readers is to write a story that is entertaining, and authentic. I wanted to write about characters who felt true to life, while also providing a way for readers to laugh at the foibles of others. Some of my characters are foolish, some are wise and kind, others are shallow and misguided. That’s how regular people behave too, and in fact we all cycle between many different ways of being…”

Uzma Jalaluddin (1980)

On writing characters in “Interviews with authors at EMWF: Uzma Jalaluddin” https://theontarion.com/2018/09/13/interviews-with-authors-at-emwf-uzma-jalaluddin/ in The Ontarion (2018 Sep 13)

Way , Life , People

“The dates of this battle and of the beginning of the New Epoch, or Cycle, can also be found in the most precise calculations of both the Egyptians and the Hindus.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

30 March 1936
Armageddon

“For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated…”

Michelle Alexander (1967) American lawyer, civil rights activist and writer

On the effect mass incarceration has on children in “Schools and the New Jim Crow: An Interview With Michelle Alexander” https://truthout.org/articles/schools-and-the-new-jim-crow-an-interview-with-michelle-alexander/ in Truthout (2013 Jun 4)

Home , Family , Children , Parent

“Malcolm X had a special meaning for black convicts. A former prisoner himself, he had risen from the lowest depths to great heights. For this reason he was a stmbol of hope, a model for thousands of black convicts who found themselves trapped in the vicious PPP cycle: prison-parole-prison.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

"Initial Reactions on the Assassination of Malcolm X"
1960s, Soul on Ice (1968)

Hope

“We are entering a new era, a new cosmic cycle. We call it the Age of Aquarius because of the particular relationship now being formed in space between our solar system and the constellation of Aquarius. In its cyclic movement around the heavens, our solar system has come into a definite energetic alignment with that constellation, which will continue for the next 2,350 years, more or less. This alignment causes the Earth to become saturated with the cosmic energies of Aquarius. Every civilization, beginning roughly every 2,000 years, is the result of this changing cosmic relationship.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Age , Change

“Many years of work as an evangelist and as a teacher in the field of Christian principles, and a difficult cycle in which I faced the problem of my own relation to Christ and to Christianity, have brought me to two definitely clear and clean-cut recognitions: first, a recognition of the reality of the Individuality of Christ and of His Mission; and secondly, a recognition that the development of the Christ Consciousness and the Christ Nature in individual man, and in the race as a whole, carries with it the solution of our world problem.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Forward
From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937)

Nature , Teachers , Problem , Reality

“I do not think that for the future of humanity, and for our country to continue to prosper, that we cannot have another presidential cycle where climate change is not being asked about at almost every debate, and that includes the role of fossil fuel, fossil fuel industries, and that includes the role of a broad spectrum of issues.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her First Weeks In Washington, The Intercept https://theintercept.com/2019/01/28/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-podcast/ (28 January 2019)
Quotes (2019)

Future , Thinking , Change , Country

“Professor writes about the brain in a very approachable way, and from what he writes, the conviction that man is free is born. The message of his books influenced, among others, the emergence of several of my painting cycles. For me he is an authority, and I do not have many of them.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Iwona Siwek-Front, painter, friend of Vetulani in an interview Artystka, to jak glebogryzarka http://www.bloge12.pl/artystka-to-jak-glebogryzarka/ (in Polish), Mazowiecki Instytut Kultury, 2014.

Way , Books , Painting

“Any graduate of the ___ Business School should be able to beat an index fund over the course of a market cycle.”

William F. Sharpe (1934) American economist

Statements such as these are made with alarming frequency by investment professionals. In some cases, subtle and sophisticated reasoning may be involved. More often (alas), the conclusions can only be justified by assuming that the laws of arithmetic have been suspended for the convenience of those who choose to pursue careers as active managers.
William F Sharpe, "The arithmetic of active management." Financial Analysts Journal 47.1 (1991): 7-9.

School , Business

“Stop the life cycle-I want to get off!”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

“Life-cycle Concept Considered Harmful.”
“The waterfall model is dead.”
“No, it isn’t, but it should be.”
These statements exemplify the current debate about software life-cycle process models. The topic has recently received a great deal of attention.
Source: A spiral model of software development and enhancement. (1988), p. 61

Life

“Sometimes the changes that are generated in a revolutionary period are rather trivial and do not last past the cycle. But sometimes, from a strong crisis, a revolution forges something new that lasts for centuries and represents progress toward values that are more rational and empathetic. In seeing this historical pattern, we must recognize what seems to be an overall human spirit that transcends any particular time and that keeps us evolving. If for any reason the cycle stopped, we would be doomed.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 17 : Seize the Historical Moment
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Strong , Time , Past , Change

“Since the industrial revolution, we have been plagued with periodic recessions and depressions, described as the "lows" of the business cycle. It should be made perfectly clear that these recessions, unlike famines, are not Acts of God, but simply attributable to the folly and inflexibility of man.”

Paul Hellyer (1923–2021) engineer, politician, writer

Inflation vs. Unemployment, An Address by the Honourable Paul T. Hellyer, Curran Hall Limited, Toronto, February 20th, 1958

Business , God

“The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition... oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever... When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable. As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again. In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change. The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.”

Robert B. Reich (1946) American political economist

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-system-is-rigged-but-we-can-fix-it/, Alternet, 24 March 2020

Understanding , Country , Bad luck , People

“History echoes. We mustn't ignore the past, because we're constantly reliving it. Just like the seasons that these farm workers organize their lives around, it's all a big cycle.”

Luis Valdez (1940) American film director

On the cyclical nature of American history in “A Japanese Family Relies on Mexican Neighbors in Luis Valdez's Valley of the Heart” https://www.theatermania.com/los-angeles-theater/news/a-japanese-family-relies-on-mexican-neighbors-to-s_86969.html in Theater Mania (2018 Nov 7)

Season , Past , History

“The task of unveiling the hidden truth demands some knowledge of Cosmogenesis, of the emanation of the Universe from the Absolute, the finite from the Infinite, and of the successive cycles, major and minor, of involution and evolution. In addition, both knowledge of the Symbolical Language, its purposes, methods and classical symbols, and the faculty of analysing and interpreting historical metaphors, are necessary to open the casket containing the treasures of concealed wisdom—the Holy Bible itself.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Source: The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963)

Success , Knowledge , Truth , Universe

“The Mystery Schools are the schools in which the training and disciplines for initiation are received. Colleges will be created from which those seen as ready for initiation will be drawn. The Mystery Schools themselves will be of two categories: preparatory and advanced. The aim is that all humanity should have taken at least the first initiation (and thus enter the Spiritual Hierarchy) in this coming Aquarian cycle. There will be a preparatory school in Japan, an advanced one in China; a preparatory one in Scotland, an advanced one in Ireland; a preparatory one in the American Midwest, an advanced one in California; a preparatory one in New Zealand, and advanced one in Australia; a preparatory one in Greece, an advanced one in Egypt; a preparatory one in Sweden, an advanced one in Russia; a preparatory one in France, an advanced one in Italy. Thus, the world as a whole will be covered to give precise teaching to those disciples who are ready for preparation for initiation.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993), p. 181

Training , World , School

“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong
And I am Marie of Roumania.”

Marie of Edinburgh, Queen of Romania (1875–1938) last Queen consort of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I

Dorothy Parker, "Comment"

Love , Life

“He said the giant was a deity that offered salvation from a meaningless cycle of birth and rebirth, and perhaps the cracked stonework still possessed a lingering divinity.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"An Orison of Sonmi~451", p. 329
Cloud Atlas (2004), An Orison of Sonmi~451 (Part 2)

Birth

“Charity should be self-sustainable. That is, it should create more wealth rather than perpetuating the cycle of poverty and dependence. In this sense, the best form of charity would be providing quality education for children and more importantly, building a good character in them.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

Interview with Forbes Magazine (2009)

Dependency , Children , Education , Wealth

“There is always a chance for a person to break out of the cycle, but there is no such chance for an animal unless it incarnates as a human and develops "I" consciousness.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Fire without Fuel - The Aphorisms of Baba Hari Dass (1986), Ch.III: Mind - Its Functions and Its Fantasies, p.36-7

Personality , Chance , Animals

“I was stuck in their cycle of poverty under their failed policies and I busted out, and glory to God, I am never going back and taking the same message of freedom to everybody.”

Lauren Boebert (1986) American politician

Source: Lauren Boebert: 2020 Election Is a Choice Between ‘Freedom’ and ‘Government Control’ https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020/08/14/lauren-boebert-2020-election-is-choice-between-freedom-government-control/ (14 August 2020)

God , Freedom

“The crust and mantle churn together on both the yearly scale of incremental plate motions and the epochs of supercontinental cycling.”

Shawna Vogel science writer

Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)