“Nothing can be produced out of nothing.”
Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers
Diogenes of Apollonia, 2.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics
Nil posse creari
de nihilo.
Book I, lines 156–157 (tr. Munro)
Variant translations:
Nothing can be created from nothing.
Nothing can be created out of nothing.
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
“Nothing can be produced out of nothing.”
Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers
Diogenes of Apollonia, 2.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=807&chapter=88152&layout=html&Itemid=27 (6 January 1816) ME 14:384 <br class="br">1810s <br class="br">Context: Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks, more banks. The American mind is now in that state of fever which the world has so often seen in the history of other nations. We are under the bank bubble, as England was under the South Sea bubble, France under the Mississippi bubble, and as every nation is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design, or delusion may puff up in moments when off their guard. We are now taught to believe that legerdemain tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for common sense to urge that nothing can produce nothing; that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher’s stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem man from the original sentence of his Maker, “in the sweat of his brow shall he eat his bread.”
David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature
Part 3, Section 16
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding
“Women are nothing but machines for producing children.”
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
The St. Helena Journal of General Baron Gourgaud (9 January 1817); as quoted in The St. Helena Journal of General Baron Gourgaud, 1815-1818 : Being a Diary written at St. Helena during a part of Napoleon's Captivity (1932) as translated by Norman Edwards, a translation of Journal de Sainte-Hélène 1815-1818 by General Gaspard Gourgaud
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran
Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews
“For nothing is so much adapted to produce magnanimity.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
X, 11
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
Context: Acquire the contemplative way of seeing how all things change into one another, and constantly attend to it, and exercise thyself about this part [of philosophy]. For nothing is so much adapted to produce magnanimity.... But as to what any man shall say or think about him, or do against him, he never even thinks of it, being himself contented with these two things: with acting justly in what he now does, and being satisfied with what is now assigned to him; and he lays aside all distracting and busy pursuits, and desires nothing else than to accomplish the straight course through the law, and by accomplishing the straight course to follow God.
James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787) <br class="br">Source: Madison's notes (25 August 1787) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_825.asp
“Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader
Tous les arts ont produit des merveilles: l'art de gouverner n'a produit que des monstres. <br class="br"> Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_constitution_24_04_93.htm, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).
John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State
Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VIII, Section 1, p. 91 (1985)