Provocations

[T]he full sun of the most highly remarkable spectacle has risen — nothing holds me back. I can give myself up to the sacred frenzy, I can have the insolence to make a full confession to mortal men that I have stolen the golden vessel of the Egyptians to make from them a tabernacle for my God far from the confines of the land of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are angry, I shall bear it; I am indeed casting the die and writing the book, either for my contemporaries or for posterity to read, it matters not which: let the book await its reader for a hundred years; God himself has waited six thousand years for his work to be seen.

Johannes Kepler

[A] project as grand as the scientific-mythical construction of victory over human limitation is not something that can be programmed by science. Even more, it comes from the vital energies of masses of men sweating within the nightmare of creation – and it is not even in man’s hands to program. Who knows what form the forward momentum of life will take in the time ahead or what use it will make of our anguished searching. The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something – an object or ourselves – and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force.    

Ernest Becker

After more than five thousand years of civilization, there is still ignorance, superstition, violence, disease, intolerance, and national, ideological, racial, and religious hostilities. Knowledge has not abolished fear, nor has it made all men brothers. Modern man is confused about his place in the world. He no longer has faith in the powers of reason and science, his gods, or himself. Too often his relationships with his fellow man are impersonal. Life in the twentieth century has seen a continued rise in alienation and dehumanization.

Maxine Lewis

We need to broaden the palette of options we offer people to satisfy the psychological need for meaning and value.

Sheldon Solomon 

Grant me the strength, time and opportunity always to correct what I have acquired, always to extend its domain; for knowledge is immense and the spirit of man can extend indefinitely to enrich itself daily with new requirements. Today he can discover his errors of yesterday and tomorrow he can obtain a new light on what he thinks himself sure of today.

From the Oath of Maimonides by Markus Herz (1747–1803)

You must kill some of your family – or I will kill them all. Now, go down, Moses.

Yahweh (Exodus 32:14)