Albert Pike Quotes (36 Quotes)

He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashedinto angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of thecurrent... Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success.

A Human Thought is an actual EXISTENCE, and a Force and Power, capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well as mind.

To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title.

That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve which could not happen unless we had commence with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.

War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

Everything actual must also first have been possible, before having actual existence.

Everywhere in the Universe, what we call Life and Movement results from a continual conflict of Forces or Impulses. Whenever that active antagonism ceases, the immobility and inertia, which are Death, result.

Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true, in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temptations or menaces.

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.

The attachment to solitude is the surest preservative from the ills of life.

But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze.

Symbols were the almost universal language of ancient theology. They were the most obvious method of instruction for, like nature herself, they addressed the understanding through the eye...

The Word of God is the universal and invisible Light, cognizable by the senses, that emits its blaze in the Sun, Moon, Planets, and other Stars.

To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispassionately, and to decide to impartially these are the chief duties of a Judge.

The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme Reason and Absolute Justice; for the mind, mathematical and practical Truth; for the body, the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold.

Will is the dynamic soul-force.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted.

One man is equivalent to all Creation. One man is a World in miniature.

The Universe should be deemed an immense Being, always living, always moved and always moving in an eternal activity inherent in itself, and which, subordinate to no foreign cause, is communicated to all its parts, connects them together, and makes the world of things a complete and perfect whole.

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.

We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice.

Knowledge is convertible into power, and axioms into rules of utility and duty. But knowledge itself is not Power. Wisdom is Power and her Prime Minister is Justice, which is the perfected law of Truth.

Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.

A man, foreseeing that another will do a certain act, and in nowise controlling or even influencing him may use that Action as an instrument to effect his own purposes.

What we have done for ourselves dies with us what we have done for others remains and is immortal.

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.

All eyes do not see alike. Even the visible creation is not, for all who look upon it, of one form and one color. Our brain is a book printed within and without, and the two writings are, with all men, more or less confused.

The double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy And antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life.

We each have some dominant defect, by which the enemy can grasp us. In some it is vanity, in others indolence, inmost egotism. Let a cunning and evil spirit possess himself of this, and you are lost.

It is Genius that gets Power and its prime lieutenants Are Force and Wisdom. The unruliest of men bend before the leader that has the sense to see and the will to do.

Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth.

Science deals only with phenomena, and is but charlatanism when it babbles about the powers or causes that produce these, or what the things are, in essence, of which it gives us merely the names.