Jean Houston Quotes

My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts.

If we don't change, if the egoic consciousness continues, I don't believe that humanity as a species can survive, or at least human civilization can survive, for another hundred years.

In fact, the 20th century I think was the most fascinating century and the whole of man civilization because so much happened.

The evolutionary impulse is towards disidentification from thinking and the arising of awareness or presence, but the gravitational pull of the old consciousness, or rather unconsciousness, is still quite heavy. It's been around for thousands of years.

If humankind would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become creatively engaged in the process of evolution, consciously as well as unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age could be born.

If form follows function, as we know it does in this Universe, then consciousness will adapt to whatever form it requires in order to function. Hopefully, it will also develop its fundamental function; what that is may be debatable within many schools of thought, but it is indisputable that evolved thinking recognizes the universality of Life.

Insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat.

You've no idea how wonderful toilet paper is until it's taken away from you by an unfeeling universe. I think it's the defining characteristic of human civilization, the ability to manufacture something decent to wipe your ass on.

Man's great power of thinking, remembering, and communicating are responsible for the evolution of civilization.

Yes, it's vital to make lifestyle choices to mitigate damage caused by being a member of industrialized civilization, but to assign primary responsibility to oneself, and to focus primarily on making oneself better, is an immense copout, an abrogation of responsibility.

The "environmental movement" is becoming an economic movement, is joining the social justice movement, is becoming a sustainability movement. It's leaving behind the "People's Needs versus Nature's Needs" conflict in favor of making the case for environmental health as the essential underpinning of prosperous and stable human civilization.

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

If we get away from the lazy and fuzzy thinking that is like a poison in our society - if we get away from all the bad television that we tend to watch - and begin to take up serious meditation and other sacred exercises, we will have a real revolution of consciousness. If that happens, the world will change by itself.

It is a fine line, in all of us, between civilization and savagery. To any who think they would never cross it, I can only say, if you have never known what it is to be utterly betrayed and abandoned, you cannot know how close it is.

If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.

British establishment uses "the royal we," as in, "We think this." You hear a lot of that these days. It erroneously suggests that those who are making the decisions to bomb countries, to devastate economies, to take part in acts of international piracy involve all of us.

To think that humans evolved from lower species BUT the evolutionary process somehow came to a halt and we all arrived at the finish line simultaneously is to embrace a fiction possibly more implausible than Christianity.

I make intelligence cool. I make spirituality cool. If we can make one's devotion to God cool, then I think I did a great thing. I can rest in peace.

I think nobody would claim that random genetic drift is capable of producing adaptation, that is to say the illusion of design. Random genetic drift can't produce wings that are good at flying, or eyes that are good at seeing, or legs that are good at running. But random genetic drift probably is very important in driving evolution at the molecular genetic level.

The greatest threat to civility - and ultimately civilization - is an excess of certitude. The world is much menaced just now by people who think that the world and their duties in it are clear and simple. They are certain that they know what - who - created the universe and what this creator wants them to do to make our little speck in the universe perfect, even if extreme measures - even violence - are required.

Our world and our lives have become increasingly interdependent, so when our neighbour is harmed, it affects us too. Therefore we have to abandon outdated notions of 'them' and 'us' and think of our world much more in terms of a great 'US', a greater human family.

These days, because women are so active on social media, it is important to be active on the sites of social media that represent the right value system. If you are a student on campus, be part of action groups that exist on campus. The worst thing that can happen to a young person is to be young and not be part of anything that is bigger than you. I think that it's such a missed opportunity, because the future depends on those who walk an extra mile in order to make sure that the world will be better because they have lived in it.

The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built.

If human civilization is going to invade the waters of the earth, then let it be first of all to carry a message of respect.

The demands of unbounded individualism need to be weighed in the light of inherent social constraints which can only change their form but cannot be eliminated without eliminating civilization.