“Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal.”

— Immanuel Kant

Third Thesis
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
Context: Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man reason and the freedom of the will which depends upon it is clear indication of her purpose. Man accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge; rather, he should bring forth everything out of his own resources.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal." by Immanuel Kant?

Immanuel Kant 200

German philosopher 1724–1804

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

“Hunkered down out on the spacious ice / coat-hems touching the snow / she slaps her knees, tries to sweet-talk her dog / but it won't come, does not remember its name, / left it there, / she does not remember her own, either, / and here on the shore I keep shouting, in vain.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

“The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

“Is it what we impart, or impute to nature from ourselves, that we chiefly lean upon? or does she truly impart of what is really in her to us?”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

Source: Fated to Be Free: A Novel (1875), Ch. 25, p. 315.

“Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer
Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,
Her virtues were so rare.”

George Chapman All Fools

Act I, scene i.
All Fools (1605)

“4934. There is nothing more precious than Time, and nothing more prodigally wasted.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“And one false step entirely damns her fame.
In vain with tears the loss she may deplore,
In vain look back on what she was before;
She sets like stars that fall, to rise no more.”

Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718) English poet, dramatist

Jane Shore (1714), Act I.

“Humans are great lovers of consistency, and it annoys us that cats have different rules. Even if a cat is willing to give up her life for you, that does not mean that she is willing to change her mind at your request.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 2

“Nature made us men, and she surrenders not her children without a struggle.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: Once in our lives we have all to choose. More or less we have all felt once the same emotions. We have not always been what the professions make of us. Nature made us men, and she surrenders not her children without a struggle. I will go back to my story now with but this one word, that it is these sons of genius, and the fate they meet with, which is to me the one sole evidence that there is more in "this huge state" than what is seen, and that in very truth the soul of man is not a thing which comes and goes, is builded and decays like the elemental frame in which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, a very energy of God's organic Will, which rules and moulds this universe.
For what are they? Say not, say not, it is but a choice which they have made; and an immortality of glory in heaven shall reward them for what they have sacrificed on earth. It may be so; but they do not ask for it. They are what they are from the Divine power which is in them, and you would never hear their complainings if the grave was the gate of annihilation.

“The philosophers likewise assume that in Nature there is nothing in vain, so that everything that is not the product of human industry serves a certain purpose, which may be known or unknown to us.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.25

“Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Immanuel Kant 200

Related quotes

Related topics