Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes

What seems impossible today, may half a century hence have become commonplace.

If the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set. The monarchy is mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go. There is so much else in the world that is more interesting.

Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.

Don’t accept the habitual as a natural thing. In times of disorder, of organized confusion, of de-humanized humanity, nothing should seem natural. Nothing should seem impossible to change.

We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders.

Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage... I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.

Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about.

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.

A mind that is interested in changing...is interested precisely in the things that are at extremes. I'm certainly like that. Unless we go to extremes, we won't get anywhere.

Women are rising slowly but steadily into full partnership with men all over the world. This is going to change everything. When the rich mind- style of women is available - with an emphasis on process, rather than on end-product, and on making things cohere, grow and interlink - - then it changes the way we educate, it changes the way we govern, it changes the way we worship.

The definition of a revolution: it destroys the perfect and enables the impossible.

No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it

All human advances occur in the outlaw area.

I think we do need radicals. We need extremists, because that's how change happens.

All the good pictures that came so easily now make the next set of pictures virtually impossible in your mind.

The popularisation of scientific doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of society as the material applications of science are effecting in its outward life. Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase.

By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.

I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do-a Work, if you like, with a great W; a Purpose to fulfil; ... a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy.

I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.

An 'I' without a body is a possibility. But a body without an 'I' is utterly impossible.

Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged.

But if it ever occurs to people to value the honor of the mind equally with the honor of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort — and very different from the kind that is being made at the moment.

Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.

Reforming the social structures which perpetuate poverty and the exclusion of the poor first requires a conversion of mind and heart.

What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell them.