The earth was probably born by accident; but, in accordance with one of the most general laws of evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was immediately made use of and recast into something naturally directed.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDINReligion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge .
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
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How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.
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The only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.
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We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.
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It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a . We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.
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Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action – faithful action, for the world, and in God.
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I would like to express the thoughts of a man who, having finally penetrated the partitions and ceilings of little countries, little coteries, little sects, rises above all these categories and finds himself a child and citizen of the Earth.
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Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the ‘human stratum’ may not be homogeneous.
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There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter.
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Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life.
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The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.
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Truly, there is a Christian note which makes the whole World vibrate, like an immense gong, in the divine Christ. This note is unique and universal, and in it alone consists the Gospel.
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To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?
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At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‘feeling’ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.
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The paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, and of unity with multitude – all these are called Utopian, and yet they are biologically necessary.
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We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power..
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.
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By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of the Cross.
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Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked on the heart of the element by the psychical convergence of the universe upon itself.
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We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
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It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.
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The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.
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The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.
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Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN