Over 1500 quotes from the work of the great visionary, thinker and reformer Rudolf Steiner
Someone who speaks of the ideal of race and nation and of tribal membership today is speaking of impulses which are part of the decline of humanity. If anyone now considers them to be progressive ideals to present to humanity, this is an untruth. Nothing is more designed to take humanity into its decline than the propagation of ideals of race, nation and blood. Nothing is more likely to prevent human progress than proclamations of national ideals belonging to earlier centuries […]. The true ideal must arise from what we find in the world of the spirit, not in the blood.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 177 – THE FALL OF THE SPIRITS OF DARKNESS: 12. The Spirits of Light and the Spirits of Darkness – Dornach, 26 October 1917
See also: The most unchristian impulse
What matters to-day is not merely to believe in the spirit, but to be so filled with the spirit that through us the spirit is carried directly into material existence. It is useless to-day to say. Believe in the spirit … what is necessary is to speak of a spirit which is in truth able to master external reality […].
For the cause of the unspiritual character of the present day is not that men do not believe in the spirit, but that they cannot reach such a relationship with the spirit as would enable the spirit to seize hold of matter in real life. All this gives us further warning not to think merely of belief in the spirit, but to try above all to make such an encounter with the spirit that it gives us strength to see through the reality of the material, external world. Then indeed people will stop using the word spirit, spirit, spirit… in every sentence. […]
This is what matters to-day: that people should see things in the light of the spirit, and not keep on talking about the spirit.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 193 – INNER ASPECT OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION: Lecture III – Zurich, 9 March 1919
MARIE VON SIVERS AND RUDOLF STEINER
What is unwell in a mentally ill person? In the case of someone who is mentally ill it is the body that actually is sick; the body is unable to use the soul and the spirit in the right way. In the case of someone of whom it is said that he is mentally ill, it is always the physical body that in reality is ill; when the brain is not able to function in the right way it is understood that the person concerned will not be able to think normally. In the same way the feelings of a person with a sick liver cannot function in the normal way.
And so to call someone “spiritually ill” (in German it is called Geisteskrank) is actually the most incorrect expression to use. Someone, of whom it is said that he is mentally ill, actually suffers from a bodily ailment. The body is so ill, that the spirit, which is never ill, cannot be utilised in the right way.
Above all, you must clearly understand that the spirit is always healthy. Only the body can get sick in such a way that it cannot take hold of the spirit in the right way. If someone has an ailing brain it is the same as when someone uses a hammer that keeps on breaking when he uses it. If I call someone who does not have a hammer lazy and tells him he is incapable to function as a woodworker, it goes without saying that I am talking nonsense. He might be able to function as a woodworker if he had a hammer at his disposal. In the same way it is utter nonsense to say that someone is mentally ill. The spirit is perfectly healthy, but his body, his tool, lets him down.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 350 – VORTRÄGE FÜR DIE ARBEITER AM GOETHEANUMBAU – Dornach, 28th June 1923 (page 144-145)
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger
Previously posted on February 11, 2018
We must, however, be clear that all that makes itself visible to our eyes derives from the spirit. There is no material thing that does not have a spiritual basis.
Now for a more frequently-used analogy. A child shows us some ice. We say, “This is water in another form.” The child will then say, “You say that it is water but yet it is ice.” Whereupon we will say, “You do not know how water becomes ice.” So it is for him who does not know that matter is condensed spirit.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 56 – Illusory Illness – Munich, December 3, 1907
The great Rudolf Steiner Quotes Site 