The Wisdom Letter #305

5 quotes from J. R. R. Tolkien, Albert Schweitzer, and more.

✹ For today’s edition of Wisdom Letter, we have carefully curated five bite-sized quotes from brilliant thinkers such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Albert Schweitzer, each paired with a philosophical question designed to provoke deep reflection.

Quote № 01:

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973)

~ Follow-up Question:

In a world shadowed by fear and loss, how can individuals remain open to wonder and fairness without succumbing to despair, and what inner resources must they cultivate to do so without retreating into denial?

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Quote № 02:

“The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. We have reached the point of regarding each other only as members of a people either allied with us or against us and our approach; prejudice, sympathy, or antipathy are all conditioned on that.”

— Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)

~ Follow-up Question:

In what ways does the fragmentation of shared human identity into political or national affiliations diminish our capacity for empathy, and how might this distortion shape the moral boundaries we construct when engaging with those labeled as the “other”?

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Quote № 03:

“Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.”

— Georges I. Gurdjieff (1877–1949)

~ Follow-up Question:

Can true freedom exist for a person who has never examined their internal motivations or unconscious patterns, or does the absence of self-understanding inevitably lead to a life governed by illusion, habit, and manipulation?

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Quote № 04:

“There is obviously a place in life for a religious attitude for awe and astonishment at existence. That is also a basis for respect for existence. We don't have much of it in this culture, even though we call it materialistic. In this culture we call materialistic, today we are of course bent on the total destruction of material and its conversion into junk and poisonous gases. This is of course not a materialistic culture because it has no respect for material. And respect is in turn based on wonder.”

— Alan Watts (1915–1973)

~ Follow-up Question:

If awe and wonder are essential to cultivating respect for existence, what are the spiritual and ecological consequences of living in a culture that treats the material world not with reverence, but as disposable and expendable?

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Quote № 05:

“To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”

— E. M. Forster (1879–1970)

~ Follow-up Question:

How does true art achieve the paradox of humbling us without humiliating us, inviting a sense of smallness that awakens wonder rather than shame, and what does this say about the difference between reverence and diminishment?

✽ Thank you for reading today’s Wisdom Letter.

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