Brian Swimme Quotes & Sayings

The proper condition of the human is not bovine placidity ... the highest degree of tension that can be creatively borne. — Brian Swimme

The new cosmic story emerging into human awareness overwhelms all previous conceptions of the universe for the simple reason that it draws them all into its comprehensive fullness. Who can learn what this means and remain calm? — Brian Swimme

Embrace your death ... Cherish your awareness of death as a gift from the universe. — Brian Swimme

The creation story unfurling within the scientific enterprise provides the fundamental context, the fundamental arena of meaning, for all the peoples of the Earth. For the first time in human history, we can agree on the basic story of the galaxies, the stars, the planets, minerals, life forms, and human cultures. This story does not diminish the spiritual traditions of the classical or tribal periods of human history. Rather, the story provides the proper setting for the teachings of all traditions, showing the true magnitude of their central truths. — Brian Swimme

That is our larger destiny: to allow the Earth to organize in a new way, in a manner impossible all the billions of years prior to humanity — Brian Swimme

All professions, all work, all activity in the human world finds its essential meaning in the context of a people's cosmic story. — Brian Swimme

Humans enter this world and awaken to a simple truth: We must find our story with this great epic of being. — Brian Swimme

The earth was once molten rock and now sings operas. — Brian Swimme

The universe shivers with wonder in the depths of the human, — Brian Swimme

Four billion years ago the planet Earth was molten rock; now it sings opera! — Brian Swimme

This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans. — Brian Swimme

Each person discovers a field of allurements, the totality of which bears the unique stamp of that person's personality. Destiny unfolds in the pursuit of individual fascinations and interests ... By pursuing your allurements, you help bind the universe together. The unity of the world rests on the pursuit of passion. — Brian Swimme

Our ancestry streches back through the life forms and into the stars, back into the beginnings of the primeval fireball. This universe is a single multiform energetic unfolding of matter, mind, intelligence and life. — Brian Swimme

If you let hydrogen gas alone for 13 billion years it will become giraffes, rose bushes and humans. — Brian Swimme

I flush with heaving passion's strange delight, Yet find contentment lost in appetite. — Brian Swimme

When humans find themselves surrounded by nothing but objects, the response is always one of loneliness. — Brian Swimme

The universe is an inexhaustible celebration of ultimate mystery! — Brian Swimme

The human being is that space in which the comprehensive compassion that pervades the universe from the very beginning now begins to surface
within consciousness. (As compared with the natural displays of compassion by other creatures that is not necessarily 'within consciousness. ') That's the only difference. We didn't create compassion, but it's flowing through us-or it could. The phase change that we're in seems, to me, to depend upon that comprehensive compassion unfurling in the human species. — Brian Swimme

Each being in the universe yearns for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence resists extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun. — Brian Swimme

A tree is a self: it is 'unseen shaping' more than it is leaves or bark, roots or cellulose or fruit ... What this means is that we must address trees as we must address all things, confronting them in the awareness that we are in the presence of numinous mystery. — Brian Swimme