Albert Pike, born December 29, 1809, in Boston, was a multifaceted American figure—author, poet, orator, editor, lawyer, jurist and Confederate Army general.
Raised in Massachusetts, self-educated Pike grew to be an influential Freemason, commanding the Scottish Rite’s Southern Jurisdiction (1859-1891).
He journeyed westward in 1831, engaging in hunting, trading and trapping expeditions before settling in Arkansas in 1833.
Pike contributed to the Arkansas Advocate, promoting Whig Party views and practiced law extensively, championing Native American claims against the federal government.
He supported a transcontinental railroad and participated in pre-Civil War politics, leaving a legacy of varied careers and achievements.
Let’s jump into the top quotes by Albert Pike.
Best Albert Pike Quotes
The sovereignty of one’s self over one’s self is called Liberty. ~ Albert Pike.
War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory. ~ Albert Pike.
If the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of our free will. ~ Albert Pike.
We seem never to know what any thing means or is worth until we have lost it. ~ Albert Pike.
Man’s real genius and knowledge remains preserved in books. ~ Albert Pike.
We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light. ~ Albert Pike.
The Word of God is the universal and invisible Light, cognizable by the senses, that emits its blaze in the Sun, Moon, Planets, and other Stars. ~ Albert Pike.
We Masons are among the fortunate ones who are taught to meet together with others opposing convictions or competitive ideas and yet respect each other as Brothers. ~ Albert Pike.
Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection. ~ Albert Pike.
The freest people, like the freest man, is always in danger of re-lapsing into servitude. Wars are almost always fatal to Republics. They create tyrants, and consolidate their power. ~ Albert Pike.
What We Have done for Ourselves Alone Dies With Us; What we have done for Others and the world Remains and is Immortal. ~ Albert Pike.
It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. ~ Albert Pike.
One man is equivalent to all Creation. One man is a world in miniature. ~ Albert Pike.
True thoughts have duration in themselves. If the thoughts endure, the seed is enduring; if the seed endures, the energy endures; if the energy endures, then will the spirit endure. The spirit is thought; thought is the heart; the heart is the fire; the fire is the Elixir. ~ Albert Pike.
Famous Albert Pike Quotes
Our adversaries, numerous and formidable, will say, and will have the right to say, that our Principe CrÇateur is identical with the Principe GÇnÇrateur of the Indians and Egyptians, and may fitly be symbolized as it was symbolized anciently, by the linage…To accept this in lieu of a personal God is to abandon Christianity and worship of Jehovah and return to wallow in the styles of Paganism. ~ Albert Pike.
Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true, in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temptations or menaces. ~ Albert Pike.
To present a visible symbol to the eye of another, is not necessarily to inform him of the meaning which that symbol has to you. ~ Albert Pike.
Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man’s onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason. ~ Albert Pike.
Reverence for greatness dies out, and is succeeded by base envy of greatness. ~ Albert Pike.
The Universe should be deemed an immense Being, always living, always moved and always moving in an eternal activity inherent in itself, and which, subordinate to no foreign cause, is communicated to all its parts, connects them together, and makes the world of things a complete and perfect whole. ~ Albert Pike.
We shall unleash the Nihilists and Atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations (people of different nationalities), the effects of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. ~ Albert Pike.
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; not too far off, lest he freeze. ~ Albert Pike.
Will is the dynamic soul-force. ~ Albert Pike.
There are great truths at the foundation of Freemasonry, truths which it is its mission to teach and which is constituting the very essence of, that sublime system which gives the venerable institution its peculiar identity as a science of morality, and it behooves every disciple diligently to ponder and inwardly digest. ~ Albert Pike.
I took my obligations from white men, not from negroes. When I have to accept negroes as brothers or leave masonry, I shall leave it. ~ Albert Pike.
There are no temptations from which assailed virtue may not gain strength, instead of falling before them, vanquished and subdued. ~ Albert Pike.
The absolute in reason and will is the greatest power which is given to men to attain; and it is by means of this power that what the multitude admires under the name of miracles, are effected. ~ Albert Pike.
A good man will find that there is goodness in the world; an honest man will find that there is honesty in the world; and a man of principle will find principle and integrity in the hearts of others. ~ Albert Pike.
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~ Albert Pike.
Let us drink together, fellows, as we did in days of yore. And still enjoy the golden hours that Fortune has in store; The absent friends remembered be, in all that’s sung or said, And Love immortal consecrate the memory of the dead. ~ Albert Pike.
Top Albert Pike Quotes
Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth. ~ Albert Pike.
Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders. In him and about him is that which should fill his life with majesty and sacredness. Something of sublimity and sanctity has thus flashed down from heaven into the heart of every one that lives. ~ Albert Pike.
Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other. ~ Albert Pike.
Man is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or progress as a goal, without those two great forces , Faith and Love . Prayer is sublime. ~ Albert Pike.
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice and wrong pay to virtue and justice. ~ Albert Pike.
A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. ~ Albert Pike.
We live our little life; but Heaven is above us and all around and close to us; and Eternity is before us and behind us; and suns and stars are silent witnesses and watchers over us. We are enfolded by Infinity. ~ Albert Pike.
The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is the written human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought. ~ Albert Pike.
Popular Albert Pike Quotes
We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice. ~ Albert Pike.
The Teachers, even of Christianity, are in general, the most ignorant of the true meaning of that which they teach. There is no book of which so little is known as the Bible. To most who read it, it is as incomprehensible as the Sohar. ~ Albert Pike.
There are three typical rebels: The rebel against Nature; The rebel against Knowledge; and the rebel against Truth. ~ Albert Pike.
Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth. ~ Albert Pike.
To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title. ~ Albert Pike.
A human thought is an actual existence, and a force and power, capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well as mind. ~ Albert Pike.
What is truth to me is not truth to another. The same arguments and evidences that convince one mind make no impression on another. ~ Albert Pike.
Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks. ~ Albert Pike.
What is the purpose for which Masonry exists? Its ultimate purpose is the perfection of humanity. Mankind itself is still in a period of youth. We are only now beginning to acquire a consciousness of the social aim of civilization, which is man’s perfection. Such perfection can never end with physical perfection, which is only the means to the end or spiritual perfection. ~ Albert Pike.
That which we say and do, if its effects last not beyond our lives, is unimportant. ~ Albert Pike.
Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason. ~ Albert Pike.
Great Albert Pike Quotes
We are all naturally seekers of wonders. We travel far to see the majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary mountains, great waterfalls, and galleries of art. And yet the world’s wonder is all around us; the wonder of setting suns, and evening stars, of the magic spring-time, the blossoming of the trees, the strange transformations of the moth.. ~ Albert Pike.
A free people, forgetting that it has a soul to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material advancement. If it makes war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. ~ Albert Pike.
Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius. ~ Albert Pike.
The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme reason and absolute justice for the mind, mathematical and practical truth for the body, the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold. ~ Albert Pike.
Constitutions and Laws, without Genius and Intellect to govern, will not prevent decay. In that case they have the dry-rot and the life dies out of them by degrees. ~ Albert Pike.
To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General (33rd Degree Masons), we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th degrees: ‘The Masonic religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine.’ ~ Albert Pike.
For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave. ~ Albert Pike.
God acts by His works: in Heaven, by angels; on earth, by men. In the heaven of human conceptions, it is humanity that creates God; and men think that God has made them in His image, because they make Him in theirs. ~ Albert Pike.
It is most true, that Truth is a Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue. To be true, and to seek to find and learn the Truth, are the great objects of every good Mason. ~ Albert Pike.
There is a deformity of baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny. ~ Albert Pike.
The double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life. ~ Albert Pike.
A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all our little worldliness. ~ Albert Pike.
Wise Albert Pike Quotes
The doctrines of the Bible are often not clothed in the language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doctrine. ~ Albert Pike.
That which we do for ourselves dies with us … that which we do for others lives forever. ~ Albert Pike.
Justice is peculiarly indispensable to nations . The unjust State is doomed of God to calamity and ruin. This is the teaching of the Eternal Wisdom and of history . ~ Albert Pike.
Masonry, like all the religions, all the mysteries,… conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be mislead. ~ Albert Pike.
Be prudent, diligent, temperate and discreet. Remember that every human being has a claim upon your kind offices. ~ Albert Pike.
I am Isis, Queen of this country. I was instructed by Mercury. No one can destroy the laws which I have established. I am the eldest daughter of Saturn, most ancient of the Gods. ~ Albert Pike.
The Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, the Secret of the generation of the Angels and Worlds, that of the Omnipotence of God . ~ Albert Pike.
If his country should be robbed of her liberties, he should still not despair. The protest of the Right against the Fact persists forever. ~ Albert Pike.
The unruliest of men bend before the leader that has the sense to see and the will to do. ~ Albert Pike.
The Blue Degrees are but the outer court or portico of the Temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the initiate, but he is intentionally mislead by false interpretations. It is not intended that he shall understand them, but it is intended that he shall imagine he understands them. The true explication is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry. ~ Albert Pike.
The true philosophy, known and practiced by Solomon, is the basis on which Masonry is founded. ~ Albert Pike.
So these were the 80 top Albert Pike quotes and sayings on truth, war, creation, morals, death and dogma.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Jeffrey Dahmer quotes and Annie Oakley quotes.
