Quote

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

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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
Possession
Use
Traditional
Culture
Object
Component
Earth
Members
Unthinkable
Human
Objects
Reduction
Humans
Simply
Components
Animal
Cultures
Belongs
Community

More quotes by Thomas Berry

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The child awakens to a universe. The mind of the child to a world of meaning. Imagination to a world of beauty. Emotions to a world of intimacy. It takes a universe to make a child both in outer form and inner spirit. It takes a universe to educate a child. A universe to fulfill a child.
Thomas Berry
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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
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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
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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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The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
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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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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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
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The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.
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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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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The universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communication.
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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Yet we can be sure that whatever fictions exist in Wall Street bookkeeping, the earth is a faithful scribe, a faultless calculator, a superb bookkeeper we will be held responsible for every bit of our economic folly.
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 Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.
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
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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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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
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The real skill is to raise the sails and to catch the power of the wind as it passes by.
Thomas Berry