Those who think to win the world by doing something to it, I see them come to grief. For the world is a sacred object. Nothing is to be done to it. To do anything to it is to damage it. To seize it is to lose it.
Ursula K Le Guin, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
There’s always been disaster and war, ups and downs, dark ages and golden eras. It’s not the first time that something’s wiped out a big chunk of life on the planet, either. But each time that happens and the world recovers, some species don’t make it. This time it just might be us.
Karen Traviss, The Best of Us [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library]
“Look,” Phillip said, “the world can be described as a war between two sides. The problem is that everybody has a different idea of what those two sides are.”
Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library]
Run the country by doing what’s expected. Win the war by doing the unexpected. Control the world by doing nothing.
Ursula K Le Guin, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
To live in the sense of these great cosmogonies means to work for the attainment of personal spiritual perfection. Only by so doing can man become a servant of the world and of humanity. Self-perfection is by no means self-seeking, for the imperfect man is an imperfect servant of the world and of humanity. The more perfect a man is, the better does he serve the world. “If the rose adorns itself, it adorns the garden.”
Rudolf Steiner, How to Know Higher Worlds [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
You perfect yourself only by contributing to your fellow human beings and the world around.
Edward De Bono, H+ (Plus) A New Religion? [Amazon, Local Library]
They rendered visible the invisible, and were concerned with possessing the world.
Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
