Thomas Berry Quotes - Page 3

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• The planet Earth in its present mode of florescence is being devastated. This devastation is being fostered and protected by legal, political and economic establishments that exalt the human community while offering no protection to the non-human modes of being. There is an urgent need for a Jurisprudence (system of governance) that recognizes that the well-being of the integral world community is primary, and that human well-being is derivative - an Earth Jurisprudence.

  Thomas Berry

  Offering, Community, Political

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• The reduction of the earth to an object simply for human's use/ possession is unthinkable in most traditional cultures... the earth belongs to itself and to all the component members of the community.

  Thomas Berry

  Animal, Community, Culture

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• The child awakens to a universe. The mind of the child to a world of meaning. Imagination to a world of beauty. Emotions to a world of intimacy. It takes a universe to make a child both in outer form and inner spirit. It takes a universe to educate a child. A universe to fulfill a child.

  Thomas Berry

  Children, Imagination, Mind

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• Every being has its own interior, its self, its mystery, its numinous aspect. To deprive any being of this sacred quality is to disrupt the total order of the universe. Reverence will be total or it will not be at all. The universe does not come to us in pieces any more than a human individual stands before us with some part of his/her being.

  Thomas Berry

  Integrity, Self, Order

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• We see quite clearly that what happens to the nonhuman, happens to the human. What happens to the outer world, happens to the inner world.

  Thomas Berry

  World, Humans, Happens

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.200, Crown

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• The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components.

  Thomas Berry

  Thinking, Community, Earth

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.105, Crown

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• The real skill is to raise the sails and to catch the power of the wind as it passes by.

  Thomas Berry

  Real, Wind, Skills

  Thomas Berry (2010). “Evening Thoughts”, p.136, Counterpoint

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• The universe, the solar system, and planet earth in themselves and in their evolutionary emergence constitute for the human community the primary revelation of that ultimate mystery whence all things emerge into being.

  Thomas Berry

  Community, Earth, Mystery

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• If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced.

  Thomas Berry

  Spiritual, Song, Religious

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• Yet we can be sure that whatever fictions exist in Wall Street bookkeeping, the earth is a faithful scribe, a faultless calculator, a superb bookkeeper; we will be held responsible for every bit of our economic folly.

  Thomas Berry

  Wall, Integrity, Faithful

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• But if a peaceful world is beyond politics it is also beyond religions as these presently exist. A change is needed in every phase of human life. This lies mainly in recognition that the micro phase, the particular or national traditions, must find their context and fulfillment in the macro phase, the global or panhuman phase of human existence.

  Thomas Berry

  Peace, Lying, World

  Thomas Berry, Thomas Mary Berry (2006). “Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community”, Counterpoint LLC

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• All human professions, institutions, and activities must be integral with the earth as the primary self-nourishing , self-governing and self-fulfilling community. To integrate our human activities within this context is our way into the future.

  Thomas Berry

  Self, Community, Earth

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• Of one thing we can be sure: our own future is inseparable from the larger community that brought us into being and which sustains us in every expression of our human quality of life, in our aesthetic and emotional sensitivities, our intellectual perceptions, our sense of the divine, as well as in our physical nourishment and bodily healing.

  Thomas Berry

  Healing, Emotional, Expression

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.162, Crown

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• The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the human—at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.

  Thomas Berry

  Dream, Mean, Reflection

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.159, Crown

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• The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.

  Thomas Berry

  Kids, Diversity, Perfection

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• What is happening now is of a geological and biological order of magnitude. We are upsetting the entire earth system that, over some billions of years and through an endless sequence of groping, of trials and errors, has produced such a magnificent array of living forms, forms capable of seasonal self-renewal over vast periods of time.

  Thomas Berry

  Nature, Animal, Errors

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• The Universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically-related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time... The human is that being in whom the Universe activates, reflects upon, and celebrates itself in conscious self-awareness.

  Thomas Berry

  Self, Space, Community

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• We come here because we too feel a responsibility for the human community. To preserve and develop a human quality of life is the common responsibility of us all. It is not fitting that those concerned with the various aspects of the human be alienated from each other. Both you and ourselves represent forces too profound and aim at objectives too significant for either of us to succeed completely without the assistance of the other. The urgency of our work impels us to get on with our common task lest a new period of disaster erupt over the Earth.

  Thomas Berry

  Responsibility, Profound, Community

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• We need merely understand that the evolutionary process is neither random nor determined but creative. It follows the general pattern of all creativity. While there is no way of fully understanding the origin moment of the universe we can appreciate the direction of evolution in its larger arc of development as moving from lesser to great complexity in structure and from lesser to greater modes of consciousness. We can also understand the governing principles of evolution in terms of its three movements toward differentiation, inner spontaneity, and comprehensive bonding.

  Thomas Berry

  Moving, Creativity, Appreciate

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• Just now one of the significant historical roles of the primal people of the world is not simply to sustain their own traditions, but call the entire civilized world back to a more authentic mode of being.

  Thomas Berry

  People, Historical, Roles

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• From a large planet of overwhelming magnitude, unlimited resources and endless mystery, the Earth has suddenly become a small planet, thoroughly explored, limited in resources, and reduced in mystery.

  Thomas Berry

  Earth, Mystery, Endless

  Thomas Berry, Thomas Mary Berry (2006). “Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community”, Counterpoint LLC

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• We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide and even genocide, but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the killing of the life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself.

  Thomas Berry

  Suicide, Environmental, Earth

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.104, Crown

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• We have indeed been out in space, but some are under the illusion that we have been off Earth. In reality humans have never been off Earth. We have always been on a piece of Earth in space. We survive only as long as we can breathe the air of Earth, drink its waters, and be nourished by its foods. There is no indication that as humans we will ever live anywhere else in the universe. Place, too, is continuously being transformed but only within its own possibilities.

  Thomas Berry

  Reality, Air, Space

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.92, Crown

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• There is an ultimate wildness in all this, for the universe, as existence itself, is a terrifying as well as a benign mode of being. If it grants us amazing powers over much of its functioning we must always remember that any arrogance on our part will ultimately be called to account. The beginning of wisdom in any human activity is a certain reverence before the primordial mystery of existence, for the world about us is a fearsome mode of being. We do not judge the universe.

  Thomas Berry

  Judging, Arrogance, World

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.50, Crown

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• Because of this erotic bond, the earth becomes luxuriant in its every aspect.

  Thomas Berry

  Erotic, Earth, Aspect

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