Hugh Nibley Quote
Brigham, the greatest and certainly the most able economist and administrator and businessman this nation has ever seen, didn't give a hoot for earthly things: 'I have never walked across the streets to make a trade.' He didn't mean that literally. You always do have to handle things. But in what spirit do we do it? Not the Krishna way, by renunciation, for example... If you refuse to be concerned with these things at all, and say, "I'm above all that," that's as great a fault. The things of the world have got to be administered; they must be taken care of, they are to be considered. We have to keep things clean, and in order. That's required of us. This is a test by which we are being proven. This is the way by which we prepare, always showing that these things will never captivate our hearts, that they will never become our principle concern. That takes a bit of doing, and that is why we have the formula 'with an eye single to his glory.' Keep first your eye on the star, then on all the other considerations of the ship. You will have all sorts of problems on the ship, but unless you steer by the star, forget the ship. Sink it. You won't go anywhere.
Brigham, the greatest and certainly the most able economist and administrator and businessman this nation has ever seen, didn't give a hoot for earthly things: 'I have never walked across the streets to make a trade.' He didn't mean that literally. You always do have to handle things. But in what spirit do we do it? Not the Krishna way, by renunciation, for example... If you refuse to be concerned with these things at all, and say, "I'm above all that," that's as great a fault. The things of the world have got to be administered; they must be taken care of, they are to be considered. We have to keep things clean, and in order. That's required of us. This is a test by which we are being proven. This is the way by which we prepare, always showing that these things will never captivate our hearts, that they will never become our principle concern. That takes a bit of doing, and that is why we have the formula 'with an eye single to his glory.' Keep first your eye on the star, then on all the other considerations of the ship. You will have all sorts of problems on the ship, but unless you steer by the star, forget the ship. Sink it. You won't go anywhere.
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About Hugh Nibley
Nibley was born in Portland, Oregon, and his family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1921, where Nibley attended middle school and high school. Nibley served an LDS mission in Germany, where he learned German. After his mission, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he graduated in 1934. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in 1938. He taught various subjects at Claremont Colleges until he enlisted in the United States Army in 1942, where he was trained as an intelligence officer.
Nibley became a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1946, where he taught foreign languages and Christian church history. He continued to study Egyptian and Coptic, and became the figurehead of the Institute for Ancient Studies at BYU in 1973. During his professorship, Nibley wrote articles for scholarly publications and for official LDS Church publications. Nibley published multiple series of articles in the Improvement Era as well as An Approach to the Book of Mormon, which was the lesson manual for Melchizedek priesthood lessons in 1957. Nibley also published a response to the Joseph Smith Papyri as well as other articles on the Pearl of Great Price. In addition to Nibley's church publications, he also published social commentary, often aimed at LDS culture. Nibley's work is controversial. Kent P. Jackson and Douglas F. Salmon have argued that the parallels Nibley finds between ancient culture and LDS works are selective or imprecise. Nibley's defenders like Louis C. Midgley and Shirley S. Ricks argue that his parallels are meaningful.
Hugh Nibley's son Alex organized a documentary on Hugh entitled Faith of an Observer. Hugh Nibley's complete works were published jointly by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and Deseret Book. Around the time of Nibley's death in 2005, his daughter Martha Beck published a memoir where she claimed to have recovered repressed memories of Nibley sexually abusing her. Immediate family members and some book reviewers of Beck's memoirs considered her claims to be false.