Quotes from book

Beyond Order

“There is a high goal, a mountain peak, a star that shines in the darkness, beckoning above the horizon. Its mere existence gives you hope—and that is the meaning without which you cannot live.”

“Those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.”

“[T]he great genie, the granter of wishes—God, in a microcosm—is archetypally trapped in the tiny confines of a lamp and subject, as well, to the will of the lamp’s current holder. Genie—genius—is the combination of possibility and potential, and extreme constraint.”

“It has taken since time immemorial for us to organize ourselves, biologically and socially, into the functional hierarchies that both specify our perceptions and actions, and define our interactions with the natural and social world. Profound gratitude for that gift is the only proper response.”

“I think it is reasonable to posit that it is often the people who have had too easy a time—who have been pampered and elevated falsely in their self-esteem—who adopt the role of victim and the mien of resentment.”

“I have camped where the grizzly bears were plentiful. It is nice that they are on the planet and all that, but I prefer my grizzlies shy, not too hungry, and far enough away to be picturesque.”

“There are three fundamental states of social being: tyranny (you do what I want), slavery (I do what you want), or negotiation.”

“Although Christ commits many acts that might be considered revolutionary, as we discussed in Rule I, He is nonetheless explicitly portrayed in the Gospels as the master of tradition.”

“It was the bringing together of a warring multiplicity under the unifying doctrines of Christianity that civilized Europe.”

“It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing.”

“To write something long, sophisticated, and coherent means, at least in part, to become more complex, articulate, and deeper in personality.”

“If you aim at nothing, you become plagued by everything.”

“Like God, however, ideology is dead. The bloody excesses of the twentieth century killed it.”