Wise Words of Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (February 25th or 27th, 1861--March 30th, 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and clairvoyant. He published may works including The Philosophy of Freedom, and founded an esoteric spiritual movement called anthroposophy.

Steiner often noted the core spiritual unity of all humans and harshly criticized racial prejudice. He believed the individual nature of any person is far more important than race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. He also believed that those aspects of each person are transient and superficial because of reincarnation, and how we all incarnate in many different countries, religions, and cultures.

Steiner's work has influenced philosophers, writers, economist, ecologist, artists, actors, cinema directors, composers, and conductors

Below we list some words of wisdom by Rudolf Steiner.

"Receive the children in reverence, educate them in love, and send them forth in freedom."

"To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts - not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality."

"Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education."

"Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled - thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty."

"To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world."

"The heart of the Waldorf method is that education is an art-it must speak to the child's experience. To educate the whole child, his heart and his will must be reached, as well as the mind."

"When human beings meet together seeking the spirit with unity of purpose then they will also find their way to each other."

"A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living."

"Intuition is for thinking what observation is for perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge."

"The smallest thing in its rightful place can lead to the highest goals."

"You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher."

"Wherever love and compassion are active in life, we can perceive the magic breath of the spirit blowing through the sense world."

"Our highest endeavour must be to develop individuals who are able out of their own initiative to impart purpose & direction to their lives."

"For every human illness, somewhere in the world there exists a plant which is the cure. I believe that there is a healing potential locked inside plants which is integral with their evolution, just as it is part of human evolution to learn to tap this wonderful gift of Nature."

"Love starts when we push aside our ego and make room for someone else."

"If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher."

"When the human being hears music, he has a sense of wellbeing, because these tones harmonize with what he has experienced in the world of his spiritual home."

"Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him. For those who do not have such higher senses, these worlds are dark and silent, just as the bodily world is dark and silent for a being without eyes and ears."

"When we raise ourselves through meditation to what unites us with the spirit, we quicken something within us that is eternal and unlimited by birth and death. Once we have experienced this eternal part in us, we can no longer doubt its existence. Meditation is thus the way to knowing and beholding the eternal, indestructible, essential centre of our being."

Copyright © Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo