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We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert.

Thomas Berry

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Thomas Berry
Age: 94 †
Born: 1914
Born: November 9
Died: 2009
Died: June 1
Author
Cultural Historian
Environmentalist
Theologian
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
Community
Future
Nature
Perish
Desert
Sacred
Single

More quotes by Thomas Berry

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Just now one of the significant historical roles of the primal people of the world is not simply to sustain their own traditions, but call the entire civilized world back to a more authentic mode of being.
Thomas Berry
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The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing--all of this [is] the integral community in which we live.
Thomas Berry
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So long as we are under the illusion that we know best what is good for the earth and for ourselves, then we will continue our present course, with its devastating consequences on the entire Earth community... We need only listen to what the Earth is telling us... the time has come when we will listen, or we will die.
Thomas Berry
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It is false to say that humanity is the most excellent being in the universe. The most excellent being in the universe is the universe itself.
Thomas Berry
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Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.
Thomas Berry
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We see quite clearly that what happens to the nonhuman, happens to the human. What happens to the outer world, happens to the inner world.
Thomas Berry
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As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by the Earth.
Thomas Berry
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The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightening and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, ~~ all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.
Thomas Berry
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The excitement of life is in the numinous experience wherein we are given to each other in that larger celebration of existence in which all things attain their highest expression, for the universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event.
Thomas Berry
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The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components.
Thomas Berry
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Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.
Thomas Berry
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Once you adopt and communicate a quality policy, stick with it, live it, and protect it. You get only one chance!
Thomas Berry
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Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.
Thomas Berry
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The Universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically-related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time... The human is that being in whom the Universe activates, reflects upon, and celebrates itself in conscious self-awareness.
Thomas Berry
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We must now understand that our own well-being can be achieved only through the well-being of the entire natural world around us.
Thomas Berry
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If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants.
Thomas Berry
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But if a peaceful world is beyond politics it is also beyond religions as these presently exist. A change is needed in every phase of human life. This lies mainly in recognition that the micro phase, the particular or national traditions, must find their context and fulfillment in the macro phase, the global or panhuman phase of human existence.
Thomas Berry
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What does the Earth Desire? I will put it in just a few short sentences... To be admired in her loveliness, To be tasted in her delicious fruits, To be listened to in her teaching, To be endured in the severity of her discipline, To be cared for as a maternal source from whence we come, a destiny to which we return. It's very simple.
Thomas Berry
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The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends.
Thomas Berry
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Traditions cannot themselves, simply with their own powers, do what needs to be done. These earlier experiences and accomplishments were dealing with other issues, providing guidance for different worlds than the world of the early twenty-first century.
Thomas Berry