Jan Potocki famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

It is not science which leads to unbelief but rather ignorance. The ignorant man thinks he understands something provided that he sees it every day. The natural philosopher walks amid enigmas, always striving to understand and always half-understanding. He learns to believe what he does not understand, and that is a step on the road to faith.
-- Jan Potocki

#Believe #Ignorance #Men
Words strike the air and the mind, they act on the senses and on the soul.
-- Jan Potocki

#Air #Soul #Mind
Thought assists memory in enabling it to order the material it has assembled. So that in a systematically ordered memory every idea is individually followed by all conclusions it entails.
-- Jan Potocki

#Memories #Order #Ideas
I study theology in the works of creation and find in it new reasons for adoring the creator.
-- Jan Potocki

#Study #Reason #Creation

The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.
I believe in instinct, not reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong.
Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine.
You can have whatever you want if you believe in yourself and keep your feet firmly planted in the ground.
I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?
The sacred is in the ordinary...it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's own backyard...travel may be a flight from confronting the scared--this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?
We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?
A devotee should be fixed in the conclusion that, the spiritual master cannot be subject to criticism and should never be considered equal to a common man.

Jan Potocki famous quotes

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