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P. D. Ouspensky

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In naming his book Tertium Organum Ouspensky reveals at a stroke that astounding audacity which characterizes his thought throughout — an audacity which we are accustomed to associate with the Russian mind in all its phases. Such a title says, in effect: "Here is a book which will reorganize all knowledge. The Organon of Aristotle formulated the laws under which the subject thinks; the Novum Organum of Bacon, the laws under which the object may be known; but The Third Canon of Thought existed before these two, and ignorance of its laws does not justify their violation. Tertium Organum shall guide and govern human thought henceforth." How passing strange, in this era of negative thinking, of timid philosophizing, does such a challenge sound!
--
Claude Fayette Bragdon, in the Translator's introduction to Tertium Organum (1922)

 
P. D. Ouspensky

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The most precise and complete formulation of the law of higher logic I find in the writing of Plotinus, in his On Intelligible Beauty. I shall quote this passage in the succeeding chapter.
I have called this system of higher logic Tertium Organum because for us it is the third canon — third instrument — of thought after those of Aristotle and Bacon. The first was Organon, the second, Novum Organum. But the third existed earlier than the first.
Man, master of this instrument, of this key, may open the door of the world of causes without fear.

 
P. D. Ouspensky
 

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize at one effort the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own — the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple — a few plain words — "My Heart Laid Bare." But — this little book must be true to its title.

 
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"Our sight constitutes an unconscious, automatic transformation process, through which the negative image - like a photographic negative - (i.e. the effect), is transformed into a positive one, like a diapositive color slide. Our thinking, however, is really a purely individual, conscious process and therefore learnable. If our thinking is to attain the same perfection as our seeing, then we must change our way of thinking and learn to see reality, not as an action, but as a reaction. Perfect thought lies in the apprehension of the correct reaction, for before the eye can show us the positive, it must first transform the negative and in a certain manner must break up what it records. What we see therefore, is the turning inside out of what we receive. What our mind grasps in this way must be re-formed and re-thought if we wish to attain what we strive for."

 
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The concept of absolute, hence (or whence) springs, in the moral field, the moral laws or norms, represent, in the field of knowledge, the principle of identity, which is the fundamental law of the thought; norms of logic springs from it, that govern the thought (or mind) in the field of science." ("Le concept de l'absolu, d'o? découlent, dans le domaine moral, les lois ou normes morales, constitue, le principe d'identité, qui est la loi fondamentale de la pensée; il en découle les normes logiques qui régissent la pensée dans le domaine de la science.")

 
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Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of course, the same isolation which belonged to his original thinking and living detached him from the social religious forms. This is neither to be censured nor regretted. Aristotle long ago explained it, when he said, "One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself."
Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the convictions of prophets in the ethical laws by his holy living. It was an affirmative experience which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable of the most deep and strict conversation; a physician to the wounds of any soul; a friend, knowing not only the secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those few persons who resorted to him as their confessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of his mind and great heart. He thought that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished: and he thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this in mind.

 
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