THE BIG PICTURE

AT FIRST, THIS SMALL FINAL SECTION was meant as a catchall, a miscellany to hold the quotes that didn't belong anywhere else or couldn't be shoehorned into another section. Then I noticed that there is a theme, although it's hard to label. Maybe it's the big picture. All of these thoughts encompass the world, either in an abstract way—as in human existence, our collective lives on this planet, the march of history—or in a more literal way: the physical planet itself.

All the political, social, and economic improvements, all the technical progress cannot have any regenerating significance, so long as our inner life remains as it is at present. The more the intelligence unveils and violates the secrets of Nature, the more the danger increases and the heart shrinks.

—Nikos Kazantzakis

Actually, there are countless ways to live upon this tremorous sphere in mirth and good health, and probably only one way—the industrialized, urbanized, herding way—to live here stupidly, and man has hit upon that one wrong way.

—Tom Robbins

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.

—E. F. Schumacher

No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker.

—Michael Bakunin

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

—Aldous Huxley

All really great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways.

—Leo Tolstoy

Image

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

—Galileo Galilei

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

—Marshall McLuhan

My work is loving the world.

—Mary Oliver