Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“At the extreme temperature occurring in the stars, matter can only survive in its most dissociated states. Only simple bodies exist on these incandescent stars.”

“Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life - I don't mean the ironic and disillusioned smile of my grandfather, but the triumphant smile of the person who knows that he will survive, or that at least he will be saved by what seems to be destroying him.”

“To be Catholic is the only way of being fully and utterly Christian.”

“Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.”

“Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.”

“It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway.”

“Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.”

“Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples, the paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, and of unity with multitude - all these are called Utopian, and yet they are biologically necessary.”

“To say that Christ is the term and motive force of evolution, to say that he manifests himself as 'evolver,' is implicitly to recognize that he becomes attainable in and through the whole process of evolution.”

“For ideas to prevail, many of their defenders have to die in obscurity. Their anonymous influence makes itself felt.”

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”

“I would like to express the thoughts of a man who, having finally penetrated the partitions and ceilings of little countries, little coteries, little sects, rises above all these categories and finds himself a child and citizen of the Earth.”

“He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.”

“For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of 'passive action,' the action that functions simply by the transmission through us of divine energy. Purity, in spite of outward appearances, is essentially an active virtue, because it concentrates God in us and on those who are subject to our influence.”

“Religion, born of the earth's need for the disclosing of a god, is related to and co-extensive with not the individual man, but the whole of mankind.”

“There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”

“At the heart of every being lies creation's dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.”

“We have but one permanent home: heaven - that's still the old truth that we always have to re-learn - and it's only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.”

“We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.”

“Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.”