F. David Peat Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

The mescal bead... is no mere symbol. For those who wear it, it really does enfold the universe and bring them into contact with all of creation.

F. David Peat
Science is essentially a public and social activity.

F. David Peat
Although science literally means "knowledge," the scientific attitude is concerned much more with rational perception through the mind and with testing such perceptions against actual fact, in the form of experiments and observations.

F. David Peat
The choice before us is either to abandon any hope of knowing the nature of quantum reality or to accept a nonlocal universe.

F. David Peat
Science is an attempt to understand the universe and humanity's relationship to nature.

F. David Peat
Science is, however, at least in principle, dedicated to seeing any fact as it is, and to being open to free communication with regard not only to the fact itself, but also to the point of view from which it is interpreted.

F. David Peat
Each one of our thoughts changes the world in a tiny but subtle way. Multiply this by... the billions in the world, and human thought has an enormous impact.

F. David Peat
Is there an objective aspect that remains constant through time? Or are we more like open systems or processes within the constant flow of life?

F. David Peat
Within the indigenous world the act of coming to know something involves a personal transformation. The knower and the known are indissolubly linked and changed in a fundamental way.... it is a dynamic and living process, an aspect of the ever-changing, ever-renewing process of nature.

F. David Peat
In the act of simply being with another culture there comes the realization of a need for balance, the understanding that there are times when it is better to listen than to ask, better the feel than to think, more appropriate to stay with a silence than to seek answers in speech.

F. David Peat
The danger arises when a culture takes its own story as the absolute truth, and seeks to impose this truth on others as the yardstick of all knowledge and belief.

F. David Peat
In modern physics the essential stuff of the universe... exists as relationships and fluctuations... Indigenous science teaches that all that exists is an expression of relationships, alliances, and balances between what... we call energies, powers, or spirits.

F. David Peat
Quantum theory stresses the irreducible link between observer and observed and the basic holism of all phenomena. Indigenous science also holds that there is no separation between the individual and society, between matter and spirit, between each one of us and the whole of nature.

F. David Peat
We must ask if.. structures and organizations continue to serve the purposes for which they were first created. Are they true to the spirit that once inspired them?

F. David Peat
On the one hand, our minds try to probe the ephemeral reality of the quantum world; on the other, we talk, think, and act in a language adapted for discussing trees, rocks, and automobiles — as well as poetry and emotions.

F. David Peat
Science proceeds by abstracting what is essential from the accidental details of matter and process.

F. David Peat
The persona can eventually become ourselves, or an aspect of ourselves, to the point where we don't know which is the mask and which is the I.

F. David Peat
Several leading-edge thinkers in physics suggest that nature is... a flux of processes. The whole notion of flux and process is fundamental to the Indigenous sciences of... Algonkian-speaking peoples... all share a strongly verb-based family of languages that reflects this direct experience.

F. David Peat
Art and music make manifest, by bringing into conscious awareness, that which has previously been felt only tentatively and internally. Art, in its widest sense, is a form of play that lies at the origin of all making, of language, and of the mind's awareness of its place within the world. Art, in all its forms, makes manifest the spiritual dimension of the cosmos, and expresses our relationship to the natural world. This may have been the cause of that natural light which first illuminated the preconscious minds of early hominids.

F. David Peat
When the Iroqouis needed to make a decision they thought of the implications of the seventh generation to come after them. Today we must think... of peoples all over the world, rich or poor, industrialized or indigenous.

F. David Peat