Esoteric Quotes
More Esoteric Quotes
To a degree which is difficult to determine, the esoteric impulse in twentieth-century music, literature and the arts reflects calculation. It looks to the flattery of academic and hermeneutic notice. Reciprocally, the academy turns towards that which appears to require its exegetic, cryptographic skills.
George Steiner— Real Presences, I: A Secondary City, Chapter 6 (1989, p. 38)
At the opposite pole to this nature of shadows, madness fascinates because it is knowledge. It is knowledge, first, because all these absurd figures are in reality elements of a difficult, hermetic, esoteric learning.
— Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
Sociology is a new science concerning itself not with esoteric matters outside the comprehension of the layman, as the older sciences do, but with the ordinary affairs of ordinary people. This seems to engender in those who write about it a feeling that the lack of anyabstruseness in their subject matter demands a compensatoryabstruseness in their language. 365
Sir Ernest Arthur Gowers— 1965 'Sociologese', in H F Fowler A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (2nd rev edn).
These esoteric poses of philosophy and even the paper theories of behaviorists are mere subterfuges to avoid the material we are talking about.
julian jaynes— Introduction, p. 16
The process that we go through in recording with Tool is very organic, but at the same time it is very thought out. There is a very left-brain process of dissecting what we're doing and drawing from source material; it's very research oriented and esoteric.
maynard james keenan— Neil Strauss (March 29, 2000) "A brain comes full circle: Rock musician Maynard James Keenan, of the bands Tool and A Perfect Circle", The New York Times, p. B3.
... [I] would certainly like to work with Dennehy again. When he was presented with the script he didn't know me from Adam, and why should he, small-time eccentric, esoteric Englishman that I am?
Peter Greenaway— In an interview in Sight and Sound, Summer 1987
Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.
georg wilhelm friedrich hegel— Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 56
No word in our language not even "Socialism" has been employed more loosely than " Mysticism ." … The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut…
william ralph inge— Christian Mysticism (1899), Preface
What strikes one here above all is the crudely empirical conception of profit derived from the outlook of the ordinary capitalist, which wholly contradicts the better esoteric understanding of Adam Smith.
karl marx— Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 202
A spurious democracy has influenced both our research methods (I am sometimes tempted to define “validity” as part of the context of an experiment demanding so little in the way of esoteric gift that any number can play at it, provided they have taken a certain number of courses) and our research subjects (it would be deemed snobbish to investigate only the best people).
david riesman— “Clinical and Cultural Aspects of the Aging Process,” p. 485
To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate... If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative.
leo strauss— p. 26 (Natural Right and History (1953))
At the opposite pole to this nature of shadows, madness fascinates because it is knowledge. It is knowledge, first, because all these absurd figures are in reality elements of a difficult, hermetic, esoteric learning.
— Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
Systems thinking plays a dominant role in a wide range of fields from industrial enterprise and armaments to esoteric topics of pure science. Innumerable publications, conferences, symposia and courses are devoted to it. Professions and jobs have appeared in recent years which, unknown a short while ago, go under names such as systems design, systems analysis, systems engineering and others.
— Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory, p. 3
The Bhagavadg?t? is more a religious classic than a philosophical treatise. It is not an esoteric work designed for and understood by the specially initiated but a popular poem which helps even those 'who wander in the region of the many and variable'.
— Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, "The Bhagavadgita", HarperCollins, 1948, Introductory Essay
Systems thinking plays a dominant role in a wide range of fields from industrial enterprise and armaments to esoteric topics of pure science. Innumerable publications, conferences, symposia and courses are devoted to it. Professions and jobs have appeared in recent years which, unknown a short while ago, go under names such as systems design, systems analysis, systems engineering and others.
— Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory, p. 3
Film-making is not an esoteric thing to me. I consider film-making – to start with – a personal thing. If a person does not have a vision of his own, he cannot create.
— Ghatak, Ritwik (1987). Cinema and I. Ritwik Memorial Trust. pp. 65.
Mantra Upanishad: These teachings center on esoteric interpretations of specific sounds and syllables and place those interpretations into Yogic as well as Saiva , Vaishnava , and Durga theistic contexts. Typical of these works are Tarasara, Kalisantarana, and Narayana Upansihad.
— In "Encyclopaedia of Oriental Philosophy and Religion: Hinduism : S-Z", p.885
Manly Hall's great work is a classic in the world's literature. It will guide historians, philosophers, and lay seekers of esoteric wisdom for centuries.
manly palmer hall— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo Astronaut, on The Secret Teachings of All Ages
