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.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Doubt
Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. 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
Everything actual must also first have been possible, before having actual existence.
—Albert Pike
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
—Albert Pike
The sovereignty of one’s self over one’s self is called Liberty.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Freedom
A human thought is an actual existence, and a force and power, capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well as mind.
—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
Topics: Service, Death, Helping, Generosity, Sacrifice
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.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Medicine
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
Topics: Writing
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
He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into angry waves by the wind. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current. Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on towards ultimate success.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Service
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.
—Albert Pike
Be prudent, diligent, temperate and discreet. Remember that every human being has a claim upon your kind offices.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Kindness
From the doctrine of the two Principles, Active and Passive, grew that of the Universe, animated by a Principle of Eternal Life, and by a Universal Soul, from which every isolated and temporary being received at its birth an emanation, which, at the death of such being, returned to its source.
—Albert Pike
Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Faith
Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read; and the greater of these is the doing.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Action
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.
—Albert Pike
Topics: Adversity
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