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The great wish of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great wish of others to save their own pocket. Slow in assembling, they devote a very small fraction of the time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come of his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays. Thucydides		Tuesday Oct 14, 2025
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Man is dragged hither and thither, at one moment by the blind instincts of the forest, at the next by the strange intuitions of a higher self whose rationale he doubts and does not understand. Loren Corey Eiseley

Quote Author: Loren Corey Eiseley

Loren Corey Eiseley

Loren Corey Eiseley

Loren Corey Eiseley (September 3, 1907 - July 9, 1977) was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist, and poet. He published books of essays, biography, and general science in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s.

Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "hidden essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public.

He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world. These helped inspire the environmental movement. Among his books are The Immense Journey (1957), Darwin's Century (1958), The Unexpected Universe (1969), The Night Country (1971), and the memoir All the Strange Hours (1975).

Other Loren Corey Eiseley Quotes

Of all the unexpected qualities of an unexpected universe, the sheer organizing power of animal and plant metabolism is one of the most remarkable.... Where it reaches its highest development, in the human mind, we forget it completely.... So important does nature regard this unseen combustion ... that a starving mans brain will be protected to the last while his body is steadily consumed.

The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness.

It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man. If he is more than a popular story-teller it may take humanity a generation to absorb and grow accustomed to the new geography with which the scientist or artist presents us. Even then, perhaps only the more imaginative and literate may accept him. Subconsciously the genius is feared as an image breaker; frequently he does not accept the opinions of the mass, or man's opinion of himself.

Man inhabits a realm half in and half out of nature, his mind reaching forever beyond the tool, the uniformity, the law, into some realm which is that of the mind alone.

Man is dragged hither and thither, at one moment by the blind instincts of the forest, at the next by the strange intuitions of a higher self whose rationale he doubts and does not understand.

Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man.

Mind is locked in matter like the spirit Ariel in a cloven pine. Like Ariel, men struggle to escape the drag of the matter they inhabit, yet it is the spirit that they fear.

Modern man lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present.

The future is neither ahead nor behind, on one side or another. Nor is it dark or light. It is contained within ourselves; its evil and good are perpetually within us.

You think that way as you begin to get grayer and you see pretty plainly that the game is not going to end as you planned.

Some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the loneliness of the process.

The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind.

Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.

Man no longer dreams over a book in which a soft voice, a constant companion, observes, exhorts, or sighs with him through the pangs of youth and age. Today he is more likely to sit before a screen and dream the mass dream which comes from outside.

Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.

One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.