Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact _x000D_ come to know anything.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that true understanding comes with an open mind rather than preconceived notions.
Thomas Merton's quote emphasizes the importance of humility in knowledge acquisition. It highlights that individuals who believe they already possess all the answers close themselves off to new insights and learning experiences. The quest for knowledge requires a willingness to question and reconsider what we think we know.
In practice
In a discussion about lifelong learning, this quote can remind us to stay open-minded.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
However, optimism is highly valued, socially and in the market; people and firms reward the providers of dangerously misleading information more than they reward truth tellers. One of the lessons of the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession is that there are periods in which competition, among experts and among organizations, creates powerful forces that favor a collective blindness to risk and uncertainty.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Agency is a divine gift to you. You are free to choose what you will be and what you will do.
By Allah, whenever I endure any adversity I gain four blessings of Allah in exchange. The first of them is, when the adversity is not caused by my sin (virtue is earned). The second, when the adversity is not greater than my sin (virtue is earned). The third, when I am not deprived of contentment (virtue is earned). And the fourth, I hope for virtues thereby.
It took me forty years of dealing with buddhism to finally realize that actually Buddha's discovery was happiness and bliss.
When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.
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