Quotes Tagged "worship"

Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning–the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children–to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew.

The entire pre-Columbian literature of Mexico, a vast library of tens of thousands of codices, was carefully and systematically destroyed by the priests and friars who followed in the wake of the conquistadors. In November 1530, for example, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, who had shortly before been apointed 'Protector of the Indians' by the Spanish crown, proceeded to 'protect' his flock by burning at the stake a Mexican aristocrat, the lord of the city of Texcoco, whom he accused of having worshipped the rain god. In the city's marketplace Zumárraga 'had a pyramid formed of the documents of Aztec history, knowledge and literature, their paintings, manuscripts, and hieroglyphic writings, all of which he committed to the flames while the natives cried and prayed.' More than 30 years later, the holocaust of documents was still under way. In July 1562, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in the Yucatan), Bishop Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings, and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He boasted of destroying countless 'idols' and 'altars,' all of which he described as 'works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity.' Noting that the Maya 'used certain characters or letters, which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences' he informs us: 'We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously and which gave them great pain.

People take worship (bhakti) into the relative plane. They consider singing religious songs as worship. Worship [bhakti] can never be without knowledge (gnan). Worship will make one become the one who he worships.

Worship without ‘Gnan’ [True Knowledge] will give material pleasures in the world and worship accompanied by ‘Gnan’ [True Knowledge] is known as ‘Gnan’ [True Knowledge] which gives the result of moksha [ultimate liberation].

We can never have Knowledge (Gnan) without worship (bhakti). Such knowledge would be considered shushka-gnan [unproductive knowledge]. It cannot be considered True Knowledge.

I will speak of love until you go mad and join me in my mad worship of love.

Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them.

I do not need to obey your prophets to worship and praise God. Myths and the teachings of prophets are secondly to community. For me, no religion, nor prophet nor scripture will personally command me how to live my life. That is up to the dedicates of my own conscience. This attitude however does not stop me from worship at the Church, nor performing the final Prophet's prayer at the masjid. Thank you God for life.

The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty. They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty

Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.

... researchers argue that it's of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be tested experimentally. Come to think of it, many still do in twenty-first-century society.

I'm absolutely confident that the God that I worship abhors violence.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were comfortable with any number of deities and were quite open to allowing conquered nations to continue to worship in whatever ways they saw fit, as long as they didn't mind having an emperor who required taxes and tributes.

The Antichrist is often identified with the second beast in the Book of Revelation that arises from the land, the beast that tries to make everyone worship the power of evil.

The Arabs have a God, the Jews have another, and the Catholics have another! And they're all fighting to maintain that they worship the one real God. Idiots!

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

The poorer people and criminals of Mexico who are not very religious but not quite atheists, either, worship Saint Death.