Albert Pike Quotes

There are greater and better things in us all, than the world takes account of, or than we take note of; if we would but find them out. ~ Albert Pike

To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General (33rd Degree Masons), we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th degrees: 'The Masonic religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine.' ~ Albert Pike

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave. ~ Albert Pike

The true philosophy, known and practiced by Solomon, is the basis on which Masonry is founded. ~ Albert Pike

There are certain men who are sacrosanct in history; you touch on the truth of them at your peril. These are such men as Socrates and Plato, Pericles and Alexander, Caesar and Augustus, Marcus Aurelius and Trajan, Martel and Charlemagne, Edward the Confessor and William of Falaise, St. Louis and Richard and Tancred, Erasmus and Bacon, Galileo and Newton, Voltaire and Rousseau, Harvey and Darwin, Nelson and Wellington. In America, Penn and Franklin, Jefferson and Jackson and Lee. There are men better than these who are not sacrosanct, who may be challenged freely. But these men may not be. Albert Pike has been elevated to this sacrosanct company, though of course to a minor rank. To challenge his rank is to be overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse, and we challenge him completely.

Looks are important to these elevated. Albert Pike looked like Michelangelo's Moses in contrived frontier costume. Who could distrust that big man with the great beard and flowing hair and godly glance?
If you dislike the man and the type, then he was pompous, empty, provincial and temporal, dishonest, and murderous. But if you like the man and the type, then he was impressive, untrammeled, a man of the right place and moment, flexible or sophisticated, and firm.
These are the two sides of the same handful of coins.
He stole (diverted) Indian funds and used them to bribe doubtful Indian leaders. He ordered massacres of women and children (exemplary punitive operations). He lied ~ R.A. Lafferty

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

The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is the written human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought. ~ Albert Pike

Before God manifested Himself, when all things were still hidden in Him ... He began by forming an imperceptible point; that was His own thought. With this thought He then began to construct a mysterious and holy form ... the Universe. ~ Albert Pike

Man is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or progress as a goal, without those two great forces , Faith and Love . Prayer is sublime. ~ Albert Pike

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

If the Soul sees, after death , what passes on this earth , and watches over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery , and cursing and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name and memory are forgotten. ~ Albert Pike

The Teachers, even of Christianity, are in general, the most ignorant of the true meaning of that which they teach. There is no book of which so little is known as the Bible. To most who read it, it is as incomprehensible as the Sohar. p. 105 ~ Pike, Albert

Masonry is identical with the Ancient Mysteries ~ Albert Pike

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. ~ Albert Pike

We seem never to know what any thing means or is worth until we have lost it. ~ Albert Pike

The irony of it, is how Freemasons have been trying to create and fulfill prophecy, and in their endeavor to hide behind secrecy they have been the catalyst for prophetic fulfillments. Moreover, I have taken the worst excrement ever defecated by mankind and have turned it into knowledge. Therefore, I have made the Thought a Thing and have aided the march of a TRUTH which I have bequeathed to mankind as a personal estate to hold in trust and I have dropped it into the world's wide treasury as an example of a human excellence of growth that shall make the spiritual glory of the human race greater because this endowment has been cultivated from Truth as raw as a diamond in the rough. For what man develops and creates will always be artificial and glorified fabrication that when dismantled, is nothing more than just a lie regardless of how sophisticated the deception. A con artist will never be more than just a thief, and a cubic zirconia will never be more perfect than a diamond. Thus I have written in the same line as Moses and he who died upon the cross, and I have achieved an intellectual sympathy with the Deity himself and since[according to Albert Pike] the best gift we can bestow on humanity, is manhood, then I shall call it:
ANTI - CHRIST ENDOWMENTS
Because I'm the Little Horn with the biggest horn on the field. They were not kidding when they said I would be more stout than my fellows. ~ Alejandro C. Estrada

Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted. ~ Albert Pike

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth. ~ Albert Pike

Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks. ~ Albert Pike

The sources of our knowledge of the kabalistic doctrines are the books of Yetzirah and Zohar, the former drawn up in the second century, and the latter a little later; but they contain materials much older than themselves ... In them, as in the teachings of Zoroaster, everything that exists emanates from a source of infinite Light. ~ Albert Pike

The unconsidered act of the poorest of men may fire the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and an empire be rent by the explosion. ~ Albert Pike

Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason. ~ Albert Pike

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

Strange and mysterious name to give to the spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not! ~ Albert Pike

The doctrines of the Bible are often not clothed in the language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doctrine. ~ Albert Pike

A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life . There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all our little worldliness . ~ Albert Pike

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. ~ Albert Pike

If the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of our free will. ~ Albert Pike

Nothing excites men's curiosity so much as Mystery, concealing things which they desire to know; and nothing so much increases curiosity as obstacles that interpose to prevent them from indulging in the gratification of their desires. Of this the Legislators and Hierophants took advantage, to attract the people to their sanctuaries, and to induce them to seek to obtain lessons from which they would perhaps have turned away with indifference if they had been pressed upon them. ~ Albert Pike

We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute atheism; the origins of savagery and of most bloody turmoil.
Then everywhere, the people will be forced to defend themselves against the world minority of the world revolutionaries and will exterminate those destroyers of civilization and the multitudes disillusioned with Christianity whose spirits will be from that moment without direction and leadership and anxious for an ideal, but without knowledge where to send its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer brought finally out into public view. A manifestation which will result from a general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism; both conquered and exterminated at the same time. ~ Albert Pike

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

Masonry is a search after Light. That search leads us directly back, as you see, to the Kabalah. ~ Albert Pike

The word well spoken, the deed fitly done, even by the feeblest or humblest, cannot help but have their effect. More or less, the effect is inevitable and eternal. ~ Albert Pike

Religion would, in many points, not be comprehended by the ignorant, nor consolatory to them, nor guiding and supporting for them. The doctrines of the Bible are often clothed in the language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doctrine. A perfectly pure faith, free from all extraneous admixtures, a system of noble theism and lofty morality, would find too little preparation for it in the common mind and heart. ~ Albert Pike

Justice is peculiarly indispensable to nations. ~ Albert Pike

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. ~ Albert Pike

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. ~ Albert Pike

Justice to others and to ourselves is the same; that we cannot define our duties by mathematical lines ruled by the square, but must fill with them the great circle traced by the compasses ~ Albert Pike

Let us drink together, fellows, as we did in days of yore.
And still enjoy the golden hours that Fortune has in store;
The absent friends remembered be, in all that's sung or said,
And Love immortal consecrate the memory of the dead. ~ Albert Pike

To sow, that others may reap; to work and plant for those that are to occupy the earth when we are dead; to project our influences far into the future, and live beyond our time; to rule as the Kings of Thought, over men who are yet unborn; to bless with the glorious gifts of Truth and Light and Liberty those who will neither know the name of the giver, nor care in what grave his unregarded ashes repose, is the true office of a Mason and the proudest destiny of a man. ~ Albert Pike

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. ~ Albert Pike

The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth Degree, the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not! For traditions are full of Divne Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspirations is not of one Age or of one Creed.
p. 321 ~ Pike, Albert

All the great and beneficent operations of Nature are produced by slow and often imperceptible degrees. The work of destruction and devastation only is violent and rapid. ~ Albert Pike

Be prudent, diligent, temperate and discreet. Remember that every human being has a claim upon your kind offices. ~ Albert Pike

Death is the inseparable antecedent of life; the seed dies in order to produce the plant, and earth itself is rent asunder and dies at the birth of Dionusos. Hence the significancy of the phallus, or of its inoffensive substitute, the obelisk, rising as an emblem of resurrection by the tomb of buried Deity at Lerna or at Sais. ~ Albert Pike

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

Reverence for greatness dies out, and is succeeded by base envy of greatness. ~ Albert Pike

We Masons are among the fortunate ones who are taught to meet together with others opposing convictions or competitive ideas and yet respect each other as Brothers. ~ Albert Pike

Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders. In him and about him is that which should fill his life with majesty and sacredness. Something of sublimity and sanctity has thus flashed down from heaven into the heart of every one that lives. ~ Albert Pike

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. ~ Albert Pike

A free people, forgetting that it has a soul to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material advancement. If it makes war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. ~ Albert Pike

I took my obligations from white men, not from negroes. When I have to accept negroes as brothers or leave masonry, I shall leave it ~ Albert Pike

The Blue Degrees are but the outer court ... of the temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the initiate, but he is intentionally misled by false interpretation. It is not intended that he shall understand them, but it is intended that he shall imagine that he understands them ... The true explanation is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry (those of the 32nd and 33rd degrees) ~ Albert Pike

Every Masonic Lodge is a temple of religion; and its teachings are instruction in religion. ~ Albert Pike

Will is the dynamic soul-force. ~ Albert Pike

There are great truths at the foundation of Freemasonry, truths which it is its mission to teach and which is constituting the very essence of, that sublime system which gives the venerable institution its peculiar identity as a science of morality, and it behooves every disciple diligently to ponder and inwardly digest. ~ Albert Pike

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. ~ Albert Pike

The power of a free people is often at the disposal of a single and seemingly an unimportant individual; a terrible and truthful power; for such a people feel with one heart, and therefore can lift up their myriad arms for a single blow. And, again, there is no graduated scale for the measurement of the influences of different intellects upon the popular mind. Peter the Hermit held no office, yet what a work he wrought! ~ Albert Pike

The common right is nothing more or less than the protection of all, pouring its rays on each. This protection of each by all, is Fraternity. ~ Albert Pike

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. ~ Albert Pike

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. ~ Albert Pike

People who believe they have the power to exercise some measure of control over their lives are healthier, more effective and more successful than those who lack faith in their ability to effect changes in their lives. ~ Albert Bandura

Learning is experience. Everything else is just information. ~ Albert Einstein

Keep my desires and goals in mind. Don't insist that they must or must not be fulfilled. Let me work unfrantically to achieve them. REBT ~ Albert Ellis

There are very few large and many poor feelings in everyone's life. ~ Albert Camus

Soldiers' graves are the greatest preachers of peace. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen. ~ Albert Einstein

You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity. ~ Albert Ellis

A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest. ~ Albert Einstein

Why does man behave like perfect idiot? This is the problem I wish to deal with. ~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Here are a few things I've learned from Albert
1. Any food is fair game until it is actually swallowed by someone else.
2. Take a nap whenever you can.
3. Don't bark unless it's important.
4. Chasing one's tail is sometimes unavoidable. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I grew up with The Beatles, Bob Marley and Talking Heads. I like the melody-with-rhythm aspect of music - there's so much to discover still. ~ Albert Hammond, Jr.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. ~ Albert Einstein

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist. ~ Albert Camus

In "The Myth of Sisyphus", his most important non-fiction work, Albert Camus suggested that if we believed what most people claim to be the purpose of life, we would feel compelled to commit suicide. If, however, we accept that life has no purpose we would be inclined to soldier on in a cussed, stoical manner like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill only to see it roll down again. ~ Philip French

The true artist stands midway between what he imagines and what he does. He is the one who is 'capable of.' he could be what he describes, experience what he writes. The mere act would limit him; he would be the one who has acted. ~ Albert Camus

Empathy is patiently and sincerely seeing the world through the other person's eyes. It is not learned in school; it is cultivated over a lifetime. ~ Albert Einstein

Help me to fling my life like a flaming firebrand into the gathering darkness of the world. ~ Albert Schweitzer

To be free means to be independent, not to be influenced by what others think and say. ~ Albert Einstein

A vitamin is a substance that makes you ill if you don't eat it. ~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

In a sense I want the same thing that my grandfather wanted, that people should not suffer. Yet I am not like him. He remade himself so that he could live for eternity. Yet he never defeated the eternal enemy - no, not the cyborgs or the robots. The enemy is fear, simple fear. Grandfather was always afraid of suffering.
I am not afraid. I want something more for people. I want them to be happy, and I believe our suffering as a race can eventually bring us to a place of great wonder. For all I have suffered since I came back in time, I have been happy to be alive. ~ Christopher Pike

This is the magic secret of dog training -- lose control over yourself and you at once lose control of the dog. Your strongest and most irresistible weapon is iron patience. ~ Albert Payson Terhune

Thinking rationally is often different from "positive thinking," in that it is a realistic assessment of the situation, with a view towards rectifying the problem if possible. ~ Albert Ellis

The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die. ~ Albert Camus

I have a liking for energy and conquests. But I soon tire of what I have obtained. This is my great weakness. ~ Albert Camus

I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me. ~ Albert Einstein

Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance. ~ Albert Ellis

Although I cannot believe that the individual survives the death of his body, feeble souls harbor such thought through fear or ridiculous egotism. ~ Albert Einstein

I believe in mystery and, frankly, I sometimes face this mystery with great fear. In other words, I think that there are many things in the universe that we cannot perceive or penetrate, and that also we experience some of the most beautiful things in life only in a very primitive form. Only in relation to these mysteries do I consider myself to be a religious man ... ~ Albert Einstein

Grown up at last and required to live all day long in the real world, it now seemed to Beatrix that imaginary fairies were of a great deal more use than real ones. And I think we must agree with her on that score. It is undeniably true that the imagination is far more powerful than knowledge, and that it is much more important to believe in something than to know it! There is, after all, a limit to the things we can know (even if we are fortunate enough to be geniuses), but no limit whatsoever to the things we might imagine. And if we cannot imagine, we will never know what we have yet to learn, for imagination shows us what is possible before knowledge leads us to what is true. For Beatrix, dreaming, imagining, creating, improvising, and fancying redeemed the stern and sometimes frightening world in which she lived, and allowed her to transform it. ~ Susan Wittig Albert

I wanted that uncaring, 'here's your blood and guts and your fucked-up happy ending' fairy-tale voice... And it was perfect. There are no lessons in it. There's just this harsh, horrible world touched with beautiful magic, where shitty things happen. And they don't happen for a reason, or in threes, or in a way that looks like justice. They're set in a place that has no rules and doesn't want any. And the author's voice... is perfectly pitiless. She's like a war reporter who doesn't give a fuck. ~ Melissa Albert

The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.. ~ Albert Einstein

As they left, the girls were choking with laughter, but once they reached Mersault's house and the cool shade of the rooms, which emphasized the dazzling whiteness of the sun-drenched garden walls, they discovered a silent harmony that Catherine expressed by the desire to take a sunbath on the terrace. ~ Albert Camus

Get scared. It will do you good. Smoke a bit, stare blankly at some ceilings, beat your head against some walls, refuse to see some people, paint and write. Get scared some more. Allow your little mind to do nothing but function. Stay inside, go out - I don't care what you'll do; but stay scared as hell. You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself. ~ Albert Camus

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual. ~ Albert Einstein

Please explain the problem to me slowly, as I do not understand things quickly. ~ Albert Einstein

I decided that I would make my life my argument, ~ Albert Schweitzer

[Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin. ~ Albert Camus

I think if my eight-year-old self could see me at the Royal Albert Hall winning a prize for playing the Doctor on telly, he would need a stiff shot of Irn-Bru. ~ David Tennant

I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally. ~ Albert Einstein