Edward T. Hall Quotes

I find the training of the mind that Zen puts people through is by far to me, the most interesting, one of the most interesting disciplines.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Much of Indian science seems intuitive and not bound by the rigid thinking of classical scientists.

I admire the linear and decisive way a certain kind of man thinks, to my curlicue boundless overthinking.

My intuition comes up with better stuff than my head, I think.

The truths which are represented in England and Western countries generally, are those which refer to force of character, earnestness of purpose, conscientious strictness, noble charity, practical duty, whilst the truths which I find peculiarly developed in India - developed to a greater extent than anywhere else, - and in the Eastern countries generally, are those which have reference to sweetness of communion, sweetness of temper, meekness and resignation unto God.

In the East, they contemplate the forest; in the West, they count the trees.

Those who of old were good practicers of Tao did not use it to make people bright, but rather used it to make them simple.

If the East loves infinity, the West delights in boundaries.

I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.

'Studying the Way' is just a figure of speech, a method of arousing people's interest in the early stages of their development. In fact, the Way is not something which can be studied. Study leads to the retention of concepts, and so the Way is entirely misunderstood

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

Safety is the most unsafe spiritual path you can take. Safety keeps you numb and dead. People are caught by surprise when it is time to die. They have allowed themselves to live so little.

We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us. A loving universe makes sure that we go through those things too.

The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up.

Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.

People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.

Without reverence we [people] will gradually descend into ecocide. In the degree that the imperatives of the market - the temple of the Mall - govern our lives, we are in escalating danger of destroying the commonwealth of all sentient beings - bugs and bees and buntings - on which we depend for a luxurious life on planet earth.

It's in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests.

To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

God cannot catch us. Unless we stay in the unconscious room. Of our hearts.

Suffering provides the gym equipment on which my faith can be exercised.

I think that it is true that for me as I observe it, that the Western World tends to be more of , tends to encompass more of, the masculine energy of the planet itself, the planet's population. Whereas the Eastern part of the world tends to encompass more of the planet's population's feminine aspects. And for those reasons the East and the West tend to approach God very much as men and women do. So the differences between East and West are the differences between men and women, largely.

Someone once said, if you scratch a cynic, and you'll find a disappointed idealist. That really rang a bell with me - because I recognized that, within me, there is this flame, of wishing it were better, wishing people had better lives, that there was more of an authentic sharing and harmony with nature.

I've never believed unemployment numbers because the way that they calculate unemployment makes no sense whatsoever. It's not how many people are unemployed. It's how many people are actively looking for a job.