Top 50 Manly P. Hall Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When the human race learns to read the language of symbolism, a great veil will fall from the eyes of men. They shall then know truth and, more than that, they shall realize that from the beginning truth has been in the world unrecognized, save by a small but gradually increasing number appointed by the Lords of the Dawn as ministers to the needs of human creatures struggling co regain their consciousness of divinity.”

— Manly P. Hall

2. “Man’s status in the natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking.”

— Manly P. Hall

3. “Wisdom is given to no man until he asks for it.”

— Manly P. Hall

4. “When the mob governs, man is ruled by ignorance; when the church governs, he is ruled by superstition; and when the state governs, he is ruled by fear. Before men can live together in harmony and understanding, ignorance must be transmuted into wisdom, superstition into an illumined faith, and fear into love.”

— Manly P. Hall

5. “To those capable of seeing the light of these spiritual orbs, there is no darkness, for they dwell in the presence of limitless light and at midnight see the sun shining under their feet.”

— Manly P. Hall

6. “Wisdom fears no thing, but still bows humbly to its own source, with its deeper understanding, loves all things, for it has seen the beauty, the tenderness, and the sweetness which underlie Life’s mystery.”

— Manly P. Hall

7. “Fascinated by the glitter of gain, man gazes at the Medusa-like face of greed and stands petrified.”

— Manly P. Hall

8. “The Greater Mysteries represented the felicity of the soul surrounded by light and truth. They symbolized that man had “raised” himself from the darkness of ignorance into the light of philosophy. Plato said that the body is the sarcophagus of the soul, for he realized that within the form was an immortal principle which could free itself from.”

— Manly P. Hall

9. “Every soul is engaged in a great work-the labor of personal liberation from the state of ignorance. The world is a great prison; its bars are the Unknown. And each is a prisoner until, at last, he earns the right to tear these bars from their moldering sockets, and pass, illuminated and inspired into the darkness, which becomes lighted by that presence.”

— Manly P. Hall

10. “Esoterically, the Hanged Man is the human spirit which is suspended from heaven by a single thread. Wisdom, not death, is the reward for this voluntary sacrifice during which the human soul, suspended above the world of illusion, and meditating upon its unreality, is rewarded by the achievement of self-realization.”

— Manly P. Hall

11. “Pythagoras said that the universal Creator had formed two things in His own image: The first was the cosmic system with its myriads of suns, moons, and planets; the second was man, in whose nature the entire universe existed in miniature.”

— Manly P. Hall

12. “Though the modern world may know a million secrets, the ancient world knew one – and that was greater than the million; for the million secrets breed death, disaster, sorrow, selfishness, lust, and avarice, but the one secret confers life, light, and truth.”

— Manly P. Hall

13. “Words are vehicles of ideas, and unless they are understood properly misunderstanding is inevitable.”

— Manly P. Hall

14. “If the infinite had not desired man to be wise, he would not have bestowed upon him the faculty of knowing.”

— Manly P. Hall

15. “Man i s given by Nature, a gift, and that gift is the privilege of labor. Through labor he learns all things.”

— Manly P. Hall

16. “The auric body of a snake is one of the most remarkable sights that the clairvoyant will ever see, and the secrets concealed within its aura demonstrate why the serpent is the symbol of wisdom among so many nations.”

— Manly P. Hall

17. “Thus, instead of gaining only an internal silence, in the common sense of the word, he gains also that strange dynamic silence which preceded creation, and from which all things come – the silence of the heart of God. This silence is the root of sound, and from it pours forth the fiat that fashioned the world. This is the dynamic silence of creation, the tremendous dramatic silence of new birth forever taking place- new worlds forever fashioning.”

— Manly P. Hall

18. “The esoteric system is all based upon the ultimate motive. Ultimate motive is the service of truth itself, a complete dedication to the service of the realities of existence.”

— Manly P. Hall

19. “He who knows not that the Prince of Darkness is the other face of the King of Light knows not me.”

— Manly P. Hall

20. “They wander in darkness seeking light, failing to realize that the light is in the heart of the darkness.”

— Manly P. Hall

21. “It is difficult for many to realize that they are actual universes; that their physical bodies are a visible nature through the structure of which countless waves of evolving life are unfolding their latent potentialities.”

— Manly P. Hall

22. “It was apparent that materialism was in complete control of the economic structure, the final objective of which was for the individual to become part of a system providing an economic security at the expense of the human soul, mind, and body.”

— Manly P. Hall

23. “If woman dreams true, and shares her dream with the men who are close to her, these same men will find their greatest joy and sense of completeness in the service of her vision. It has always been so, and will always be so.”

— Manly P. Hall

24. “There is no doubt that the Old Testament is a physiological and anatomical textbook to those capable of reading it from a scientific viewpoint.”

— Manly P. Hall

25. “The highest of all occult orders which exists only in the inner world may be called the “Order of Melchizedek,” although among certain nations it has other names. This Order is composed entirely of the graduates of the other Mystery Schools who have actually reached the point where they can give birch to their present selves out of their own natures, like the mysterious phoenix bird which, breaking open at death, permits a new bird to fly forth.”

— Manly P. Hall

26. “What was knowledge, what was truth, beauty, love, idealism, philosophy, or religion when compared to man’s desire to control an infinitesimal spot in the fields of Cosmos for an inestimably minute fragment of time?”

— Manly P. Hall

27. “This ring of invisible flame is the eternal fire, the spark from the Infinite Wheel, the birthless, deathless, eternal center which includes within itself all that it has ever been, all that it is, and all that it ever shall be. This germ dwells in the state Eternity, for to this immortal spark time is illusionary, distance is nonexistent, joy and sorrow are unknown, for concerning its function and consciousness all that can be said is that “It is.” While other things come and go, It is.”

— Manly P. Hall

28. “All things manifesting in the lower worlds exist first in the intangible rings of the upper spheres, so that creation is, in truth, the process of making tangible the intangible by extending the intangible into various vibratory rates.”

— Manly P. Hall

29. “In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While.”

— Manly P. Hall

30. “San Juan points out that the two great enemies of integration within man are his mind and his emotions.”

— Manly P. Hall

31. “This radiance is so great that it can-not be limited by the skull and it pours out from the head, especially from the back of the neck where the uppermost vertebra of the spine articulates with the condyles of the occipital bone. It is this light pouring our in a fan-shaped aura around the posterior part of the head that has given rise to the halos of saints and the nimbus so often used in religious art. This light signifies human regeneration and it forms part of the auric bodies of man.”

— Manly P. Hall

32. “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”

— Manly P. Hall

33. “Thou wouldist not seek me hadst thou not found me.”

— Manly P. Hall

34. “Unless subjected to constant discipline the mental processes of the common sign types are apt to be scattered or non-eventuating. There is a distinct tendency to carry along unfinished business and to procrastinate in decision. If left to its own disorder, the mind may deteriorate into a tumbling ground for whimsies.”

— Manly P. Hall

35. “Philosophy invites man out of the vainness of selfishness; out of the sorrow of ignorance and the despair of worldliness; out of the travesty of ambition and the cruel clutches of greed; out of the red hell of hate and the cold tomb of dead idealism.”

— Manly P. Hall

36. “The South Node is karmic and relates to the unfinished business brought forward from the past.”

— Manly P. Hall

37. “Two unusual examples of the Gemini type in the field of letters are Dante and Bernard Shaw. Dante wrote his Inferno so that he could show in luminous verbiage all his enemies roasting in the pits of perdition. The Shavian humor has about it the bite of shallowness. It is not the deep laughter of the gods who understand all, but the shallow titillating laughter of mortals who understand not even themselves.”

— Manly P. Hall

38. “Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments.”

— Manly P. Hall

39. “In Freemasonry is concealed a mystery of creation, the answer to the problem of existence, and the path the student must tread in order to join those who are really the living powers behind the thrones of modern national and international affairs. p. 18.”

— Manly P. Hall

40. “Hegel further believed that all things owe their existence to their opposites and that all opposites are actually identical.”

— Manly P. Hall

41. “It is from the ranks of the neo-intellectuals that we develop our parlor socialists, our “modernists” in poetry and letters, and those arm-chair anarchists who have theoretical explanations for every circumstance of living. The Mercurial person must take careful stock of himself and make sure that he contributes nothing to the inanities of the day.”

— Manly P. Hall

42. “Briefly stated, the true purpose of ancient philosophy was to discover a method whereby development of the rational nature could be accelerated instead of awaiting the slower processes of Nature.”

— Manly P. Hall

43. “It is not by destroying the lower nature that man becomes virtuous; it is by the transmutation and regeneration of every base quality and attitude that he achieves divinity.”

— Manly P. Hall

44. “It is for this reason that the candidate assumes the vows of celibacy, for the close connection existing in the advanced disciple between the brain and the reproductive system necessitates an absolute conservation of all life energies.”

— Manly P. Hall

45. “All that money can buy you is a certain amount of time or leisure with which to do the things you want to do.”

— Manly P. Hall

46. “Ignorance fears all things, falling, terror-stricken before the passing wind. Superstition stands as the monument to ignorance, and before it kneel all who realize their own weakness who see in all things the strength they do not possess.”

— Manly P. Hall

47. “Having become a citizen of two worlds, the individual must act accordingly. There can be no backsliding, because the individual must reach a state of certainty before this enlightenment is given that makes it utterly and completely impossible to backslide. He cannot ‘get it’ and then fail and turn from it. If he turns from it, it means he never had it. If he fails, he fails himself. He cannot fail the infinite.”

— Manly P. Hall

48. “The fool lives but for today; the philosopher lives forever.”

— Manly P. Hall

49. “They borrowed in one life, promising to pay back in the next. They believed in a purgatorial type of hell where they would be purged of their sins, afterward passing on to the happiness of unity with the gods. The Druids taught that all men would be saved, but that some must return to earth many times to learn the lessons of human life and to overcome the inherent evil of their own natures.”

— Manly P. Hall

50. “Without the mysterious keys carried by the hierophants of the Egyptian, Brahmin, and Persian cults the gates of Wisdom cannot be opened.”

— Manly P. Hall