Quotes Flashcards
Knowledge through dialogue
One learns the essence of knowledge through dialogue. from the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita.
“Vade vade jayate tattvabodhah”
ವಡೆ ವಡೆ ಜಾಯ್ತೆ ತತ್ತ್ವಬೋಧಹ್
Barnette vs WV Board of Education
- Jehovah’s witnesses refused to repeat the Pledge of Allegiance, alleging it was idolatry. Opinion written by Justice Robert H. Jackson.
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”
Occam’s razor
William of Occam, English Fransiscan friar and philosopher. d 1347.
Pluralitas non est ponenda, sine necessitate (Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.)
C.S. Lewis on God building a palace
From “Mere Christianity”
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.
Galileo on using our reason
Galileo Galilei
Died 1642
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Constant learning
Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British author)
Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
Believe in the gospel
St. Augustine of Hippo d. 430
If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
The fleeting nature of time and the inevitability of change
Ovid, from Metamorpheses
Roman poet, died ~18AD
Nothing in all the world remains unchanged. All things are in a state of flux, all shapes receive a changing nature. Time itself glides on with constant motion, ever as a flowing river. Neither river nor the fleeting hour can stop its constant course. But, as each wave drives on a wave, as each is pressed by that which follows, and must press on that before it, so the moments fly, and others follow, so they are renewed. The moment which moved on before is past, and that which was not, now exists in time, and every moment comes, goes, and is replaced.
David O. McKay on motherhood
“Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life. The mother’s image is the first that stamps itself on the unwritten page of the young child’s mind. It is her caress that first awakens a sense of security, her kiss, the first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world.”
Neal A. Maxwell on the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon is like a vast mansion, with gardens, towers, courtyards, and wings. My tour of it has never been completed. Some rooms I have yet to enter, and there are more felicitous fireplaces waiting to warm me. Even the rooms I have glimpsed contain further furnishings and rich detail yet to be savored. There are panels inlaid with incredible insights, and design and décor dating from Eden. There are even sumptuous banquet tables painstakingly prepared by predecessors which await all of us.
Yet we as church members sometimes behave like hurried tourists scarcely venturing beyond the entry hall. May we come to feel, as a whole people, beckoned beyond the entry hall. May we go inside far enough to hear clearly the whispered truths from those who have slumbered – which whisperings will awaken in us individually a life of discipleship as never before.
Neal A. Maxwell on learning from the imperfections of others.
[Sometimes we forget] the fact that the Church is “for the perfecting of the saints” (Eph. 4:12); it is not a well-provisioned rest home for the already perfected.
Likewise, unremembered by some is the reality that in the kingdom we are each other’s clinical material; the Lord allows us to practice on each other, even in our imperfections. And each of us knows what it is like to be worked on by a “student” rather than a senior surgeon. Each of us, however unintentionally, has also inflicted some pain.
Besides, if the choice is between reforming other Church members or ourselves, is there really any question about where we should begin?
[https://tinyurl.com/9bw7ek6n]
Ambrose Bierce defines Christian
Ambrose Bierce
d. ~1914
“Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.”
Tradition definition
Gustav Mahler
Composer and opera director
Died 1911
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
