A Quote by Thomas B. Macaulay

Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Quote Topics

Abstract Esoteric Every Fables Forms Imposing Political School Symbols Visible Vulgar

Quote Author

Thomas B. Macaulay
British - Politician
October 25, 1800 - December 28, 1859

Most teachers of self-discovery have two types of students. They have students they deal with in a more exoteric way than the esoteric students. Esoteric truths are presented to usually a smaller group of students.

Frederick Lenz

A time comes when it isn't enough to read about Buddha, we wish to have that happen to ourselves. That's when we move from the exoteric to the esoteric, from religion to mysticism.

Frederick Lenz

When the symbols are 'public' they usually act in an oblique manner, revealing themselves as archetypal symbols, which though familiar, have their central meanings obscured as is usual in esoteric imagery.

Kenneth Coutts-Smith

Those who would be employed in propagating the Gospel should be familiar with the doctrines he is to combat and the doctrines he is to teach, and acquire a complete knowledge both of the Sacred Scriptures and of these philosophical and mythological dogmas which form the souls of the Buddhist and Hindu Systems.

William Carey

All of the exoteric teachings are only designed to give you the type of life that will allow you to practice the esoteric teachings.

Frederick Lenz

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.

Ram Dass

In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.

Alexis de Tocqueville

I think of mythology as a function of biology; the energies of the body are the energies that move the imagination. These energies are the source, then, of mythological imagery; in a mythological organization of symbols, the conflicts between the different organic impulses within the body are resolved and harmonized. You might say mythology is a formula for the harmonization of the energies of life.

Joseph Campbell

Religious symbols should be visible in public space, in a dignified and non-provocative manner. Christmas trees here, Jewish menorahs there and, further along, a minaret - these symbols represent human life in all its diversity.

Tariq Ramadan

As I study both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Dharma-nature by birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages - undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment - find it necessary to seek enlightenment and engage in spiritual practice?

Dogen

So we find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the worship of God - forms or symbols, names, God-men. All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other...These are the external forms of devotion, through which man has to pass; but if he is sincere, if he really wants to reach the truth, he goes higher than these, to a plane where forms are as nothing.

Swami Vivekananda

Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion.

Joseph Campbell

To a zealot every one of his own sect is a saint, while the most upright of a different sect are to him children of perdition.

Henry Home, Lord Kames

In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science.

Ada Lovelace

The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious it makes little or no difference.