Thomas Merton Quotes

"We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves."
-Thomas Merton in Choice quotes.

"The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error."
-Thomas Merton in Truth quotes.

"The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little."
-Thomas Merton

"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone-we find it with another."
-Thomas Merton

"The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom."
-Thomas Merton in Learning quotes.

"Propaganda makes up our minds for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds. And in the last analysis, propaganda achieves this effect because we want it to. This is one of the few real pleasures left to modern man: this illusion that he is thinking for himself when, in fact, someone else is doing his thinking for him."
-Thomas Merton

"The least of learning is done in the classrooms."
-Thomas Merton

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
-Thomas Merton

"We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness."
-Thomas Merton