Jan Smuts Quotes

A man is not defeated by his opponents but by himself

To me the greatest thing that has happened on this earth of ours is the rise of the human race to the vision of God. That story of the human rise to what I call the vision of God is the story which is told in the Bible.

The mountain is not something eternally sublime; it has a great historic and spiritual meaning to us. It stands for us as the ladder of life. Nay, more; it is the ladder of the soul and in a curious way the source of religion. From it came the Law, from it came the Gospel in the Sermon of the Mount. We may trul say that the highest religion is the Religion of the Mountain.

History writes the word 'Reconciliation' over all her quarrels.

Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.

The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us; sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear.

...evolution is the gradual development and stratification of progressive series of wholes, stretching from the inorganic beginnings to the highest level of spiritual creation.

Perhaps it is God's will to lead the people of South Africa through defeat and humiliation to a better future and a brighter day.

If there was to be equal manhood suffrage the whites would be swamped all over South Africa by the blacks and the whole position for which whites have striven for 200 years or more would be given up.

In spite of the great advances which have been made in our knowledge, some fundamental gaps remain. Matter, life and mind still remain utter disparate phenomena, yet the concepts of all three arise in experience; and in the human all three meet and intermingle.

If a nation does not want a monarchy, change the nation's mind. If a nation does not need a monarchy, change the nation's needs.

Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings.

What was everybody's business in the end proved to be nobody's business. Each one looked to the other to take the lead, and the aggressorsgot away with it.

When I look at history, I am a pessimist...but when I look at prehistory, I am an optimist.

When in doubt, do the courageous thing.

This is a good world. We need not approve of all the items in it, nor of all the individuals in it; but the world itself-which is more than its parts or individuals; which has a soul, a spirit, a fundamental relation to each of us deeper than all other relations-is a friendly world.

Instead of the animistic, mechanistic, or the mathematical universe, we see the genetic, organic, holistic universe.