One could not pluck a flower without troubling a star.
Loren EiseleyRead
The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the need for gentleness and tolerance rather than mere intelligence or strength.
Loren Eiseley suggests that humanity's survival depends not solely on intellectual advancements or physical prowess but rather on a fundamental shift towards compassion and understanding. He reflects on the historical reliance on brute force and blind adherence to tradition, warning that to overcome the challenges of the present, society must cultivate more empathetic qualities and break away from destructive habits rooted in the past.
Themes
CompassionToleranceHumanityIntelligenceTradition
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about fostering a more inclusive society, this quote could illustrate the importance of empathy.
More from Loren Eiseley
All quotes →Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.
Loren EiseleyRead
Some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the loneliness of the process.
Loren EiseleyRead
After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.
Loren EiseleyRead
Of all the unexpected qualities of an unexpected universe, the sheer organizing power of animal and plant metabolism is one of the most remarkable. . . . Where it reaches its highest development, in the human mind, we forget it completely. . . . So important does nature regard this unseen combustion . . . that a starving man's brain will be protected to the last while his body is steadily consumed.
Loren EiseleyRead
God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course.
Loren EiseleyRead
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