The brilliance of the human species lies in our ability to put collective interests ahead of our own. We have the opportunity, every day, to contribute to collective efforts and others’ lives. These contributions will live on, well beyond our brief life span here on earth.

Tom Rath, It’s Not About You: A Brief Guide to a Meaningful Life  [Amazon]

Hermetic quote Rath It's Not About You brilliance human species ability collective interests ahead opportunity contribute collective effort lives beyond our brief life span

Consider also:

  1. “Humanity has proven time and time again that it has a tendency to cross boundaries it shouldn’t.”
  2. “It is worth recalling that what is currently called realistic was itself once ‘impossible’: the slew of privatizations that took place since the 1980s would have been unthinkable only a decade earlier, and the current political-economic landscape (with unions in abeyance, utilities and railways denationalized) could scarcely have been imagined in 1975. Conversely, what was once eminently possible is now deemed unrealistic.”
  3. “If in mans’ heart of hearts there reigned this Self, come from eternity and but a pilgrim on its changeless way, could there be in his nature aught of folly or of evil, or any limit to his wisdom and his love?”
  4. “But, in the advanced degree of M.M. the answer is that he comes ‘From the East,’ for by this time the Mason is supposed to have so enlarged his knowledge as to realize that the primal source of life is not in the ‘West,’ not in this world; that existence upon this planet is but a transitory sojourn, spent in search of ‘the genuine secrets,’ the ultimate realities, of life; and that as the spirit of man must return to God who gave it, so he is now returning from this temporary world of ‘substituted secrets’ to the ‘East’ from which he originally came.”
  5. “Details of this kind are given in the supplement to M. Chabas’ translation of the Harris Magical Papyrus. The period was that of Rameses III. Compare this quotation: ‘HAI, the evil man, was a shepherd. He had said:– ‘”Oh! that I might have a book of spells that would give me resistless power.” ‘He obtained a book of the Formulas of Rameses-Meri-Amen, the Great God, his royal Master. By the Divine Powers of these, he enchanted men. He obtained a deep vault furnished with implements. He made waxen images of men, and love-charms. And then he perpetrated all the horrors that his heart conceived.'”