“As all regions below are replenished with living creatures… so may the heavens above be replenished with beings whose nature we do not understand. He that shall well consider the strange and wonderful nature of life and the frame of the Animals, will think nothing beyond the possibility of nature, nothing too hard for the omnipotent power of God. And as the Planets remain in their orbs, so may any other bodies subsist at any distance from the earth, and much more may beings, who have sufficient power of self motion, move whether they will, and continue in any regions of the heavens whatever, there to enjoy the society of one another, and by their messengers or Angels to rule the earth and convers with the remotest regions. Thus may the whole heavens or any part thereof whatever be the habitation of the Blessed, and at the same time the earth be subject to their dominion. And to have thus the liberty and dominion of the whole heavens and the choice of the happiest places for abode seems a greater happiness than to be confined to any one place whatever.”

— Isaac Newton

As quoted by Frank Edward Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (1977)

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Isaac Newton 171

British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern c… 1643–1727

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“Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De docta ignorantia http://www.challzine.net/29/29extraterr.html

“It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of externalization and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature…”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Context: Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependance on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity." It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of externalization and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

“From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

“All national currencies are deep in debt-- indebted to nature-- because human economies extract from nature faster than we replenish.”

Paul Glover (1947) Community organizer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American politician

http://www.paulglover.org/0711.html (The Ithacan, “The Destiny of Dollars”), 2007-11-01

“Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 1
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

“A word about the title--"Nature's Miracles." Some may claim that it is unscientific to speak of the operations of nature as "miracles." But the point of the title lies in the paradox of finding so many wonderful things--as wonderful as any miracle that was ever recorded--subservient to the rule of law. "But," you say, "a miracle does not come under any rule of law." Ah! are you sure of that? It is true that we may not understand the law that the so-called miracle comes under, but the Author of all natural law does.”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Familiar Talks on Science, Volume 1, 1899, p. V
(See Charles Babbage's for a similar commentary on miracles)
Nature's Miracles (1900)

“Since the science of nature is conversant with magnitudes, motion, and time, each of which must necessarily be either infinite or finite…[we] should speculate the infinite, and consider whether it is or not; and if it is what it is. …[A]ll those who appear to have touched on a philosophy of this kind… consider it as a certain principle of beings. Some, indeed, as the Pythagoreans and Plato, consider it, per se, not as being an accident to any thing else, but as having an essential subsistence… the Pythagoreans… consider the infinite as subsisting in sensibles; for they do not make number to be separate; and they assert that what is beyond the heavens is infinite; but Plato says that beyond the heavens there is not any body, nor ideas, because these are no where: he affirms, however, that the infinite is both in sensibles, and in ideas. …Plato establishes two infinities, viz. the great and the small.”

Aristotle book Physics

Book III, Ch. IV, pp. 150-152.
Physics

“A most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others.”

John Evelyn (1620–1706) writer, gardener and diarist

Samuel Pepys Diary, November 5, 1665.
Criticism

“A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1783, p. 500
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
Source: The Life of Johnson, Vol 4

“Neither in any if the stars, nor in the sun, nor in the planets that are most operant in the world, can organs be disntinguished or imagined by us; nevertheless, they live and endow with life small bodies at the earth's elevated points. If there is aught of which man may boast, that of a surety is soul, is mind; and the other animals, too, are ennobled by soul; even God, by whose rod all things are governed, is soul.”

William Gilbert (astronomer) book De Magnete

As quoted in Gilbert, William. 2013 ed. De Magnete https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=QsLDAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Courier Corporation, pp. 130-131.
De Magnete (1600)

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Isaac Newton 171

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