Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Berry
Age: 94 †
Born: 1914
Born: November 9
Died: 2009
Died: June 1
Author
Cultural Historian
Environmentalist
Theologian
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
Excellent
False
Humanity
Universe

More quotes by Thomas Berry

Image
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
Image
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
Image
The real skill is to raise the sails and to catch the power of the wind as it passes by.
Thomas Berry
Image
Our fulfillment is not in our isolated human grandeur, but in our intimacy with the larger earth community, for this is also the larger dimension of our being.
Thomas Berry
Image
Of one thing we can be sure: our own future is inseparable from the larger community that brought us into being and which sustains us in every expression of our human quality of life, in our aesthetic and emotional sensitivities, our intellectual perceptions, our sense of the divine, as well as in our physical nourishment and bodily healing.
Thomas Berry
Image
Once you adopt and communicate a quality policy, stick with it, live it, and protect it. You get only one chance!
Thomas Berry
Image
The reduction of the earth to an object simply for human's use/ possession is unthinkable in most traditional cultures... the earth belongs to itself and to all the component members of the community.
Thomas Berry
Image
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
Image
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
Image
What is clear is that the earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation...Our task at this critical moment is to awaken the energies needed to create the new world and to evoke a universal communion of all parts of life.
Thomas Berry
Image
All human activities, professions, programs, and institutions must henceforth be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship.
Thomas Berry
Image
If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced.
Thomas Berry
Image
We cannot discover ourselves without first discovering the universe, the earth, and the imperatives of our own being. Each of these has a creative power and a vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable.
Thomas Berry
Image
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
Image
The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
Thomas Berry
Image
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
Image
The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.
Thomas Berry
Image
We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies, the song of the birds, if we can't see the stars at night.
Thomas Berry
Image
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
Image
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