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 CHARDINDeep down, there is in the substance of the cosmos a primordial disposition, sui generis, for self-arrangement and self-involution.
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
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From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
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.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‘renouncing’ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ in the usual meaning of the words.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Purity, in spite of outward appearances, is essentially an active virtue, because it concentrates God in us and on those who are subject to our influence.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, with creative goodness and creative power, will always remain one of the most disturbing mysteries of the universe for both our hearts and our minds.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
For ideas to prevail, many of their defenders have to die in obscurity. Their anonymous influence makes itself felt.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
We shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
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.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
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.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN






