for approximately 500 years [sciences] argument for its pre-eminence was the beautiful toys that it could create: aircraft, railroads, global economies, television, spacecraft. But that is a fool’s argument for truth! I mean, that’s after all how a medicine show operates, you know: the juggler is so good, the medicine must be even better! This is not an entirely rational way to proceed."

The Beliefs of a Witoto|Witoto shaman and the beliefs of a Princeton phenomenologist|phenomenologist have an equal chance of being correct, and there are no arbiters of who is right. Here is something we have not assimilated. We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.

The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.

If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.