The chaos of the present time

The present age is more than any other age demanding the one thing people least want to have: understanding based on the science of the spirit. Strange as it may sound to the people of today — order will not be created from the chaos of the present time until a sufficiently large number of people are prepared to recognize the truths of that science. Such will be the karma of world history.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 177 – Fall of the Spirits of Darkness : Lecture 1: The Driving Force Behind Europe’s War – Dornach, 29 September 1917

These questions about all possible sorts of things made me as a boy very lonely

Toward Wiener-Neustadt and farther on toward Styria, the mountains fall away to a level country. Through this level country the Laytha River winds its way. On the slope of the mountains there was a cloister of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. I often met the monks on my walks. I still remember how glad I should have been if they had spoken to me. They never did. And so I carried away from these meetings an undefined but solemn feeling which remained constantly with me for a long time. It was in my ninth year that the idea became fixed in me that there must be weighty matters in connection with the duties of these monks which I ought to learn to understand. There again I was filled with questions which I had to carry around unanswered. Indeed, these questions about all possible sorts of things made me as a boy very lonely.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 28 – The Story of My Life – Chapter I

Contemporary form of inquisition

If anyone upholds something which contradicts the belief of those who, in their arrogance, suppose they have reached the summit of earthly wisdom, he is looked on as a visionary, a dreamer, if nothing worse. That is the contemporary form of inquisition in our parts of the world.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 58 – Metamorphoses of the Soul – Paths of Experience Vol. 1 – Lecture II – Munich, 5th December 1909

Translated by Charles Davy and Christian von Arnim

Words and reality

This will be so infinitely necessary to the future of mankind; that men accustom themselves to enter into reality. People think almost exclusively in words today; they do not think in real terms.

Source: GA 293 – The Study of Man Lecture VII – Stuttgart, 28th August 1919

Previously posted on September 30, 2013.

Not what you do, but also what you are

You can only become good teachers and educators if you pay attention not merely to what you do, but also to what you are. It is really for this reason that we have Spiritual Science with its anthroposophical outlook: to perceive the significance of the fact that man is effective in the world not only through what he does, but above all through what he is. 

Source: GA 293 – The Study of Man Lecture I – Stuttgart, 21 August 1919

Previously posted on 29th September 2013.