
“I have no need of proof. The laws of nature, unlike the laws of grammar, admit of no exception.”
An Outline of the System of the Elements
Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch gegen ein Naturgesetz ist nur die selten vorkommende Betätigung eines andern Naturgesetzes.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 36.
Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch gegen ein Naturgesetz ist nur die selten vorkommende Betätigung eines andern Naturgesetzes.
Aphorisms (1880/1893)
“I have no need of proof. The laws of nature, unlike the laws of grammar, admit of no exception.”
An Outline of the System of the Elements
“It is a kind of law of nature. The goal one aims for can rarely be reached by a direct road.”
Source: Quest for prosperity: the life of a Japanese industrialist. 1988, p. 47
“People must help one another; it is nature's law.”
"L'Ane et le Chien", as quoted in On a Darkling Plain (1995) by Richard Lee Byers, p. 94.
In "How Little I Know", in Saturday Review (12 Nov 1966), 152. Excerpted in Buckminster Fuller and Answar Dil, Humans in Universe (1983), 31.
"The Comprehensive Man", Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (1963), 75-76.
1960s
Source: The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life (1999), Ch. 10: 'A Bio-Friendly Universe?', p. 271
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 马克思主义的哲学认为,对立统一规律是宇宙的根本规律。这个规律,不论在自然界、人类社会和人们的思想中,都是普遍存在的。矛盾着的对立面又统一,又斗争,由此推动事物的运动和变化。矛盾是普遍存在的,不过按事物的性质不同,矛盾的性质也就不同。对于任何一个具体的事物说来,对立的统一是有条件的、暂时的、过渡的,因而是相对的,对立的斗争则是绝对的。
Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part 2: Variety, p. 130
Il n’y a point de droit naturel: ce mot n'est qu’une antique niaiserie... Avant la loi il n’y a de naturel que la force du lion, ou le besoin de l’être qui a faim, qui a froid, le besoin en un mot.
Vol. II, ch. XLIV
Variant translation: There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing more than a silly anachronism … There is no such thing as right, except when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment. Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it in one word, need.
As translated by Horace B. Samuel (1916)
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 65