Thomas Berry Quotes - Page 4

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• There is a spiritual capacity in carbon as there is a carbon component functioning in our highest spiritual experience. If some scientists consider that all this is merely a material process, then what they call matter, I call mind, soul, spirit, or consciousness. Possibly it is a question of terminology, since scientists too on occasion use terms that express awe and mystery. Most often, perhaps, they use the expression that some of the natural forms they encounter seem to be "telling them something."

  Thomas Berry

  Spiritual, Expression, Soul

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.25, Crown

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• Our main source of psychic energy in the future will depend on our ability to understand this symbol of evolution in an acceptable context of interpretation. Only in the context of an emergent universe will the human project come to an integral understanding of itself. We must, however, come to experience the universe in its psychic as well as in its physical aspect. We need to experience the sequence of evolutionary transformations as moments of grace, and also as celebration moments in our new experience of the sacred.

  Thomas Berry

  Future, New Experiences, Psychics

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.170, Crown

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• Survival in any meaningful sense is the key issue of our time

  Thomas Berry

  Meaningful, Keys, Issues

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• Traditions cannot themselves, simply with their own powers, do what needs to be done. These earlier experiences and accomplishments were dealing with other issues, providing guidance for different worlds than the world of the early twenty-first century.

  Thomas Berry

  Issues, Accomplishment, Twenties

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• The future rests in the religious, political, economic and cultural capacity of humans to establish this larger context in which the particular traditions will find both support and fulfillment in a functional global community.

  Thomas Berry

  Religious, Peace, Support

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

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• During this period (of technological confinement / [and language]) the human mind has been placed in its narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase. Even the most primitive tribes have a larger vision of the universe, of our place and functioning within it, a vision that extends to celestial regions of space and to interior depths of the human in a manner far exceeding the parameters of our world of technological confinement.

  Thomas Berry

  Our World, Space, Mind

  6 Copy quote

• Scientists have suddenly become aware of the magic quality of the Earth and the entire universe.

  Thomas Berry

  Magic, Quality, Earth

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• Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

  Thomas Berry

  Space, Historical, Earth

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

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• We cannot discover ourselves without first discovering the universe, the earth, and the imperatives of our own being. Each of these has a creative power and a vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable.

  Thomas Berry

  Creative, Vision, Earth

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

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• The success or failure of any historical age is the extent to which those living at that time have fulfilled the special role that history has imposed upon them.

  Thomas Berry

  Success, Historical, Special

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.7, 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

  4 Copy quote

• Earth as we know it came into being through its four great components: land, water, air, and life, all interacting in the light and energy of the sun. Although there was a sequence in the formation of the land sphere, the atmosphere, the water sphere, and the life sphere, these have so interacted with one another in the shaping of the Earth that we must somehow think of these as all present to one another and interacting from the beginning.

  Thomas Berry

  Life, Thinking, Light

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.28, Crown

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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

  10 Copy quote

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