Chapter One Tao Te Ching

More accurately, Lao Tsu wrote:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.


David Bohm, quoting philosopher Alfred Korzybski in "Science, Order and Creativity" writes similar thoughts, a little less poetically:

"Korzybski said, for example, that whatever we say a thing is, it isn't. First of all, whatever we say is words, and what we want to talk about is generally not words. Second, whatever we mean by what we say is not what the thing actually is, though it may be similar. For the thing is always more than what we mean and is never exhausted by our concepts. And the thing is also different from what we mean, if only because no thought can be absolutely correct of it is extended indefinitely. The fact that a thing has qualities going beyond whatever we think and say about it is behind our notion of objective reality. Clearly, if reality were ever to cease to show new aspects that are not in our thought, then we could hardly say that it had an objective existence independent of us."


Some quotes I like:

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. Eliot

A man has got to know his limitations.
Clint Eastwood.