Thomas Berry Quotes - Page 2

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• We are not lacking in the dynamic forces needed to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all comprehension.

  Thomas Berry

  Inspirational, Future, Sea

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.175, Crown

  67 Copy quote

• Our difficulty is that we have become autistic. We no longer listen to what the Earth, its landscape, its atmospheric phenomena and all its living forms, its mountains and valleys, the rain, the wind, and all the flora and fauna of the planet are telling us.

  Thomas Berry

  Rain, Wind, Listening

  25 Copy quote

• If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants.

  Thomas Berry

  Kindness, Empathy, Doe

  31 Copy quote

• It is false to say that humanity is the most excellent being in the universe. The most excellent being in the universe is the universe itself.

  Thomas Berry

  Humanity, Excellent, Universe

  "Thomas Berry obituary" by Walter Schwarz, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing--all of this [is] the integral community in which we live.

  Thomas Berry

  Nature, Sunset, Sunshine

  47 Copy quote

• Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.

  Thomas Berry

  Simple, Diversity, Perfection

  34 Copy quote

• In our totality we are born of the Earth. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived... If there is no spirituality in the earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves

  Thomas Berry

  Earth, Spirituality, Born

  15 Copy quote

• To attain peace among the nations in any dynamic or enduring form requires not simply political negotiation but a new mode of consciousness. The magnitude of this change is in the order of religious conversion or of spiritual rebirth rather than of treaty processes or even of inter-cultural understanding. Simply to recognize the basic nature and dimension of the issues we face is already an advance.

  Thomas Berry

  Spiritual, Religious, Peace

  4 Copy quote

• The Great Work - the work of ensuring a just, healthy, beautiful, and sustainably life-giving world for future generations of all species.

  Thomas Berry

  Beautiful, Giving, Justice

  17 Copy quote

• Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence.

  Thomas Berry

  Life, Order, Religion

  5 Copy quote

• Vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being and spiritual integrity.

  Thomas Berry

  Spiritual, Integrity, Moving

  "Food for the Spirit: Vegetarianism and the World Religions". Book by Steven Rosen ("Critics praise" section), 1987.

  19 Copy quote

• Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself.

  Thomas Berry

  Integrity, Mean, Charity

  8 Copy quote

• Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.

  Thomas Berry

  Issues, Earth, Relation

  5 Copy quote

• Wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence comes the instinctive activities that enable all living beings to obtain their food, to find shelter, to bring forth their young: to sing and dance and fly through the air and swim through the depths of the sea. This is the same inner tendency that evokes the insight of the poet, the skill of the artist and the power of the shaman.

  Thomas Berry

  Life, Creativity, Artist

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.51, Crown

  54 Copy quote

• Our fulfillment is not in our isolated human grandeur, but in our intimacy with the larger earth community, for this is also the larger dimension of our being.

  Thomas Berry

  Community, Earth, Dimensions

  42 Copy quote

• For the emergent process, as noted by the geneticist Theodore Dobzhansky, is neither random nor determined but creative. Just as in human order, creativity is neither a rational deductive process nor the irrational wandering of the undisciplined mind but the emergence of beauty as mysterious as the blossoming of a field of daisies out of the dark Earth.

  Thomas Berry

  Beauty, Creativity, Dark

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.31, Crown

  14 Copy quote

• The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.

  Thomas Berry

  Moving, Transition, Would Be

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.3, Crown

  53 Copy quote

• We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert.

  Thomas Berry

  Nature, Community, Desert

  26 Copy quote

• All human activities, professions, programs, and institutions must henceforth be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship.

  Thomas Berry

  Earth, Program, Institutions

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• Our present urgency is to recover a sense of the primacy of the Universe as our fundamental context, and the primacy of the Earth as the matrix from which life has emerged and on which life depends. Recovering this sense is essential to establishing the framework for mutually enhancing human-Earth relations for the flourishing of life on the planet.

  Thomas Berry

  Life, Earth, Essentials

  Thomas Berry (2010). “Evening Thoughts”, p.86, Counterpoint

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• In relation to the earth we have been autistic for centuries. Only now have we begun to listen with some attention and with a willingness to respond to the earth's demands that we cease our industrial assault, that we abandon our inner rage against the conditions of our earthly existence, that we renew our human participation in the grand liturgy of the universe.

  Thomas Berry

  Environmental, Attention, Demand

  Thomas Berry, Thomas Mary Berry (1996). “Creative Energy: Bearing Witness for the Earth”, Random House (NY)

  7 Copy quote

• The earth will solve its problems, and possibly our own, if we will let the earth function in its own ways. We need only listen to what the earth is telling us.

  Thomas Berry

  Needs, Earth, Way

  Thomas Berry, Thomas Mary Berry (1996). “Creative Energy: Bearing Witness for the Earth”, Random House (NY)

  4 Copy quote

• The excitement of life is in the numinous experience wherein we are given to each other in that larger celebration of existence in which all things attain their highest expression, for the universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event.

  Thomas Berry

  Life, Expression, Definitions

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and finance is celebration, planetary celebration. This is what moves the stars through the heavens and the earth through its seasons. The final norm of judgment concerning the success or failure of our technologies is the extent to which they enable us to participate more fully in this grand festival.

  Thomas Berry

  Life, Stars, Moving

  14 Copy quote

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