Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them. – Huston Smith
If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi’s poetry is really remarkable. – Huston Smith
Ive spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the worlds religions, and Ive done my homework. Ive gone to each of the worlds eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and Ive apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith. – Huston Smith
Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet. – Huston Smith
It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world. – Henry James Sumner Maine