Best 40 quotes of Hugh Nibley on MyQuotes

Hugh Nibley

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    Hugh Nibley

    All scholarship, like all science, is an ongoing, open-ended discussion in which all conclusions are tentative forever, the principal value and charm of the game being the discovery of the totally unexpected.

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    Hugh Nibley

    And the issue is never the merits of the evidence but always the jealous rivalry of the contestants to see which would be the official light unto the world. Right down to the present day we have been the spectators of a foolish contest between equally vain and bigoted rivals.

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    Hugh Nibley

    A professor is not one who knows, but one who professes to know, and [thus] is constantly in the position of inviting challenge. . . . He professes publicly where everyone is invited to come and challenge, [and] at any time he must be willing and able to defend it openly against all comers. The degree is originally a chivalric device-a gauntlet of defiance to all rivals-and not a safe rampart or dug-out for a scholar to hide behind in safe immunity from any challenge.

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    Hugh Nibley

    As knowledge increases, the verdict of yesterday must be reversed today, and in the long run the most positive authority is the least to be trusted.

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    Hugh Nibley

    At UCLA I quickly learned the knack of getting grades, a craven surrender to custom, since grades had little to do with learning.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Being self-taught is no disgrace; but being self-certified is another matter.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Careerism is the determination to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Competitiveness always rests on the assumption of a life-and-death struggle.

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    Hugh Nibley

    [Eve] sees through Satan's disquise of clever hypocrisy, identifies him, and exposes him for what he is...[ever since Satan has] had it in for women.

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    Hugh Nibley

    God's command to have dominion over every living thing is a call to service, a test of responsibility, a rule of love, a cooperation with nature, whereas Satan's use of force for the sake of getting gain renders the earth uninhabitable. Brigham Young's views on the environment direct attention to man's responsibility to beautify the earth, to eradicate the influences of harmful substances, and to use restraint, that the earth may return to its paradisiacal glory.

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    Hugh Nibley

    If you pray for an angel to visit you, you know what he'll do if he comes. He'll just quote the scriptures to you - so you know you're wasting your time waiting for what we already have. I'm quite serious about that.

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    Hugh Nibley

    In this crucible of wickedness the true greatness of Mormon shines like a star.

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    Hugh Nibley

    It is throwing our life away, to think of the wrong things.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Knowledge can be heady stuff, but it easily leads to an excess of zeal! -- to illusions of grandeur and a desire to impress others and achieve eminence . . . Our search for knowledge should be ceaseless, which means that it is open-ended, never resting on laurels, degrees, or past achievements.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Nobody loves the rat race, but nobody can think of anything else—Satan has us just where he wants us.

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    Hugh Nibley

    No matter what happens, it will, then, always remain secret: only I know exactly the weight and force of the covenants I have made -- I and the Lord with whom I have made them -- unless I choose to reveal them. If I do not, then they are secret and sacred no matter what others may say or do. Anyone who would reveal these things has not understood them, and therefore that person has not given them away. You cannot reveal what you do not know!

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    Hugh Nibley

    No matter where we begin, if we pursue knowledge diligently and honestly, our quest will inevitably lead us from the things of the earth to the things of heaven.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Only if you reach the boundary will the boundary recede before you. And if you don't, if you confine your efforts, the boundary will shrink to accommodate itself to your efforts. And you can only expand your capacities by working to the very limit.

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    Hugh Nibley

    The Book of Mormon is an inexhaustible encyclopedia of knowledge.

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    Hugh Nibley

    The gas-law of learning: . . . any amount of information no matter how small will fill any intellectual void no matter how large.

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    Hugh Nibley

    There is no patriarchy or matriarchy in the garden; the two supervise each other. Adam is given no arbitrary power; Eve is to heed him only insofar as he obeys their Father--and who decides that? She must keep check on him as much as he does on her. It is, if you will, a system of checks and balances in which each party is as distinct and independent in its sphere as are the departments of government under the Constitution--and just as dependent on each other.

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    Hugh Nibley

    The tragedy of the Book of Mormon is not what became of the Nephites but what the Nephites became.

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    Hugh Nibley

    The unique value of Christianity lies in those things which would never in a million years occur to men if left to themselves.

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    Hugh Nibley

    The very helplessness of the public which makes it necessary for them to consult the experts also makes it impossible for them to judge how expert they are.

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    Hugh Nibley

    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... the haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Things that appear unlikely, impossible, or paradoxical from one point of view often make perfectly good sense from another.

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    Hugh Nibley

    True knowledge never shuts the door on more knowledge, but zeal often does.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Well, I have a testimony, I may be ignorant, but I am not lost.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Wherever we look in the ancient world the past has been controlled, but nowhere more rigorously than in the history of the Christian church. The methods of control, wherever we find them, fall under three general heads which might be described as (a) the invention, (b) the destruction, and (c) the alteration of documents.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Why do people feel guilty about TV? What is wrong with it? Just this: it shuts out all the wonderful things of which the mind is capable, leaving it drugged in a state of thoughtless stupor.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Why read the Book of Mormon? Because angels do not come on trivial errands.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Work is, after all, not a busy running back and forth in established grooves, though that is the essence of our modern business and academic life, but the supreme energy and disciplined curiosity required to cut new grooves.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Brigham, the greatest and certainly the most able economist and administrator and businessman this nation has ever seen, didn't give a hoot for earthly things: 'I have never walked across the streets to make a trade.' He didn't mean that literally. You always do have to handle things. But in what spirit do we do it? Not the Krishna way, by renunciation, for example... If you refuse to be concerned with these things at all, and say, "I'm above all that," that's as great a fault. The things of the world have got to be administered; they must be taken care of, they are to be considered. We have to keep things clean, and in order. That's required of us. This is a test by which we are being proven. This is the way by which we prepare, always showing that these things will never captivate our hearts, that they will never become our principle concern. That takes a bit of doing, and that is why we have the formula 'with an eye single to his glory.' Keep first your eye on the star, then on all the other considerations of the ship. You will have all sorts of problems on the ship, but unless you steer by the star, forget the ship. Sink it. You won't go anywhere.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Can the mere convenience that makes money such a useful device continue indefinitely to outweigh the horrendous and growing burden of evil that it imposes on the human race and ultimately brings its dependents to ruin?

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    Hugh Nibley

    First, of course, the work ethic, which is being so strenuously advocated in our day. This is one of those neat magician’s tricks in which all our attention is focused on one hand while the other hand does the manipulating. Implicit in the work ethic are the ideas (1) that because one must work to acquire wealth, work equals wealth, and (2) that that is the whole equation. With these go the corollaries that anyone who has wealth must have earned it by hard work and is, therefore, beyond criticism; that anyone who doesn’t have it deserves to suffer—thus penalizing any who do not work for money; and (since you have a right to all you earn) that the only real work is for one’s self; and, finally, that any limit set to the amount of wealth an individual may acquire is a satanic device to deprive men of their free agency—thus making mockery of the Council of Heaven. These editorial syllogisms we have heard a thousand times, but you will not find them in the scriptures. Even the cornerstone of virtue, “He that is idle shall not eat the bread . . . of the laborer” (D&C 42:42), hailed as the franchise of unbridled capitalism, is rather a rebuke to that system which has allowed idlers to live in luxury and laborers in want throughout the whole course of history. The whole emphasis in the holy writ is not on whether one works or not, but what one works for: “The laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish” (2 Nephi 26:31). “The people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches, . . . precious things, which they had obtained by their industry” (Alma 4:6) and which proved their undoing, for all their hard work. In Zion you labor, to be sure, but not for money, and not for yourself, which is the exact opposite of our present version of the work ethic.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Meteorology . . . is quite as “scientific” as geology and far more so than archaeology—it actually makes more use of scientific instruments, computers, and higher mathematics. . . . Yet we laugh at the weatherman every other day; we are not overawed by his impressive paraphernalia, because we can check up on him any time we feel like it: he makes his learned pronouncements—and then it rains or it doesn’t rain. No scientific conclusion is to be trusted without testing—to the extent to which exact sciences are exact they are also experimental sciences; it is in the laboratory that the oracle must be consulted. But the archaeologist is denied access to the oracle. For him there is no neat and definitive demonstration; he is doomed to plod along, everlastingly protesting and fumbling through a laborious, often rancorous running debate that never ends.

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    Hugh Nibley

    The genius of stable societies is that they achieve stability without stagnation, repetition without monotony, conformity with originality, obedience with liberty.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Who then is to judge what is good, true, and beautiful? You are. Plato says it is the soul: the proper dimensions and proportions are already stored in our minds, and when we recognize the good, true, and beautiful-- how is it that we do it? It is by anamnesis, the act of recalling what we have seen somewhere before. You must have received an impression of what is right somewhere else, because you recognize it instantly; you don't have to have it analyzed; you don't have to say, "That is beautiful," or "That is ugly"; you welcome it as an old acquaintance. 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.

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    Hugh Nibley

    Why should we labor this unpleasant point? Because the Book of Mormon labors it, for our special benefit. Wealth is a jealous master who will not be served halfheartedly and will suffer no rival--not even God: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." (Matthew 6:24) In return for unquestioning obedience wealth promises security, power, position, and honors, in fact anything in this world. Above all, the Nephites like the Romans saw in it a mark of superiority and would do anything to get hold of it, for to them "money answereth all things." (Ecclesiastes 10:19) "Ye do always remember your riches," cried Samuel the Lamanite, ". . .unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities." (Helaman 13:22) Along with this, of course, everyone dresses in the height of fashion, the main point being always that the proper clothes are expensive--the expression "costly apparel" occurs 14 times in the Book of Mormon. The more important wealth is, the less important it is how one gets it.

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    Hugh Nibley

    You can always somebody who is worse than you are to make you feel virtuous. It's a cheap shot: those awful terrorists, perverts, communists--they are the ones who need to repent! Yes, indeed they do, and for them repentance will be a full-time job, exactly as it is for all the rest of us.