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Careerism is the determination to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven.
~Hugh Nibley
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The guarded degree, the closed corporation, the technical vocabulary, these are the inner redoubt, the inviolable stronghold of usurped authority. Locked safe within the massive and forbidding walls of institution and formality lies what the Egyptians called "the king's secret," the secret of controlling the past.
~Hugh Nibley
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An open mind is not a mind devoid of opinion but one that is able to change opinion in the face of new evidence.
~Hugh Nibley
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That may just be an accident, but it's a happy accident anyway. I love them.
~Hugh Nibley
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The chances of our being here are not even to be thought of, yet here we are.
~Hugh Nibley
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The one thing that all the experimenters in psychokinesis, telepathy, and ESP, and all the borderline probings into the workings of the mind (which in our day are being undertaken with such astonishing results by the most skeptical people on earth—mostly Soviets) agree on is that whenever the task is set, successful performance is directly related to the power of concentration, to the will, to the desire, to total interest and involvement. The person has to be excited; then he can do amazing things. But if the interest and concentration are not kept at a high level, nothing much goes on. When the level is high, the mind actually has a direct effect on things. The mind can do astonishing things just by thought. It is a matter of concentrating and ordering it.
~Hugh Nibley
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It would be easy to say we were making up a story, if we didn't have a world to prove it.
~Hugh Nibley
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No matter where we begin, if we pursue knowledge diligently and honestly our quest will inevitably lead us from the things of earth to the things of heaven.
~Hugh Nibley
from Of All Things, page 219
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True knowledge never shuts the door on more knowledge, but zeal often does.
~Hugh Nibley
from Of All Things, p 218
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Who is righteous? Anyone who is repenting. No matter how bad he has been, if he is repenting, he is a righteous man. There is hope for him. And no matter how good he has been all his life, if he is not repenting, he is a wicked man. The difference is which way you are facing. The man on the top of the stairs facing down is much worse off than the man on the bottom step who is facing up. The direction we are facing, that is repentance; and that is what determines whether we are good or bad.
~Hugh Nibley
from "Of All Things" p. 7
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Forty sparrows do not make an eagle, forty house cats do not make a lion, and forty survey courses do not make a scholar. Moreover, if you bring together forty men, each of whom knows a little Latin or math, the result is not the equivalent of consulting just one person with a good knowledge of those subjects.
~Hugh Nibley
from Nobody to Blame
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The worst sinners, according to Jesus, are not the harlots and publicans, but the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status-symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism. Longhairs, beards, and necklaces, LSD and and rock, Big Sur and Woodstock, come and go, but Babylon is always there: rich, respectable, immovable.... We want to be vindicated in our position and to know that the world is on our side as we all join in a chorus of righteous denunciation; the haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances.
~Hugh Nibley
from "What is Zion?," in What Is Zion? Joseph Smith Lecture Series, 1972-73 (Provo, UT; Brigham Young University Press, 1973)
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We recognize what is lovely because we have seen it somewhere else, and as we walk through the world, we are constantly on the watch for it with a kind of nostalgia, so that when we see an object or a person that pleases us, it is like recognizing an old friend; it hits us in the solar plexus, and we need no measuring or lecturing to tell us that it is indeed quite perfect. It is something we have long been looking for, something we have seen in another world, memories of how things should be.
~Hugh Nibley
from "Goods of First and Second Intent," Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 9:528