„Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.“
— Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
Quotes about nature
A collection of quotes on the topic of nature.
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„I’ve lived here for 20 years and I have been a citizen for 10 years. I hope I am a good one. I know I don’t take it for granted. I feel I am an awfully lucky person to be an American and I think that every naturalized American and every person born in this land should kneel on his knees every morning and utter a prayer for being an American.“
— Béla Lugosi Hungarian actor 1882 - 1956
Interview for the Broadway Newsreel https://beladraculalugosi.wordpress.com/1939-3/ (April 5, 1939)
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„For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.“
— Jacques-Yves Cousteau French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher 1910 - 1997
„The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!“
— Swami Vivekananda Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher 1863 - 1902
„What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.“
— Jacques-Yves Cousteau French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher 1910 - 1997
Christian Science Monitor (21 July 1971)
„Animals shouldn’t be hunted and nature shouldn’t be disturbed, even destroyed, to benefit the whims of mankind“
— Charles Manson American criminal and musician 1934
„Though I think that man has from nature the capacity of living, either by prey, or upon the fruits of the earth; it appears to me, that by nature, and in his original state, he is a frugivorous animal, and that he only becomes an animal of prey by acquired habit.“
— James Burnett, Lord Monboddo Scottish judge, scholar of language evolution and philosopher 1714 - 1799
Of the Origin and Progress of Language (Edinburgh and London: J. Balfour and T. Cadell, 2nd ed., 1774), Vol. I, Book II, Ch. II, pp. 224-225 https://archive.org/stream/originandprogre01conggoog#page/n251/mode/2up.
„The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.“
— Euclid Greek mathematician, inventor of axiomatic geometry -323 - -285 BC
The earliest published source found on google books that attributes this to Euclid is A Mathematical Journey by Stanley Gudder (1994), p. xv http://books.google.com/books?id=UiOxd2-lfGsC&q=%22mathematical+thoughts%22+euclid#search_anchor. However, many earlier works attribute it to Johannes Kepler, the earliest located being in the piece "The Mathematics of Elementary Chemistry" by Principal J. McIntosh of Fowler Union High School in California, which appeared in School Science and Mathematics, Volume VII ( 1907 http://books.google.com/books?id=kAEUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false), p. 383 http://books.google.com/books?id=kAEUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA383#v=onepage&q&f=false. Neither this nor any other source located gives a source in Kepler's writings, however, and in an earlier source, the 1888 Notes and Queries, Vol V., it is attributed on p. 165 http://books.google.com/books?id=0qYXAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA165#v=onepage&q&f=false to Plato. It could possibly be a paraphrase of either or both of the following to comments in Kepler's 1618 book Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the World)': "Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God" and "Since geometry is co-eternal with the divine mind before the birth of things, God himself served as his own model in creating the world".
„God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.“
— Marcus Garvey Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur 1887 - 1940
„As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.“
— Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues French writer, a moralist 1715 - 1747
p. 184.
„It is in the body politic, as in the natural, those disorders are most dangerous that flow from the head.“
— Pliny the Younger Roman writer 61 - 113
Letter 22, 7.
„[F]rom the earliest periods of time [man] alone has divided the empire of the world between him and Nature.... [H]e rather enjoys than possesses, and it is by constant and perpetual activity and vigilance that he preserves his advantage, for if those are neglected every thing languishes, changes, and returns to the absolute dominion of Nature. She resumes her power, destroys the operations of man; envelopes with moss and dust his most pompous monuments, and in the progress of time entirely effaces them, leaving man to regret having lost by his negligence what his ancestors had acquired by their industry. Those periods in which man loses his empire, those ages in which every thing valuable perishes, commence with war and are completed by famine and depopulation. Although the strength of man depends solely upon the union of numbers, and his happiness is derived from peace, he is, nevertheless, so regardless of his own comforts as to take up arms and to fight, which are never-failing sources of ruin and misery. Incited by insatiable avarice, or blind ambition, which is still more insatiable, he becomes callous to the feelings of humanity; regardless of his own welfare, his whole thoughts turn upon the destruction of his own species, which he soon accomplishes. The days of blood and carnage over, and the intoxicating fumes of glory dispelled, he beholds, with a melancholy eye, the earth desolated, the arts buried, nations dispersed, an enfeebled people, the ruins of his own happiness, and the loss of his real power.“
— Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon French natural historian 1707 - 1788
Buffon's Natural History (1797) Vol. 10, pp. 340-341 https://books.google.com/books?id=respAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA340, an English translation of Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804).
„Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.“
— Baron d'Holbach French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist 1723 - 1789
ibid., chap. 206
„Nature is my manifestation of God.
I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work.“
— Frank Lloyd Wright American architect (1867-1959) 1867 - 1959
„The steam-engine having furnished us with a means of converting heat into a motive power, and our thoughts being thereby led to regard a certain quantity of work as an equivalent for the amount of heat expended in its production, the idea of establishing theoretically some fixed relation between a quantity of heat and the quantity of work which it can possibly produce, from which relation conclusions regarding the nature of heat itself might be deduced, naturally presents itself. Already, indeed, have many successful efforts been made with this view; I believe, however, that they have not exhausted the subject, but that, on the contrary, it merits the continued attention of physicists... The most important investigation in connexion with this subject is that of S. Carnot.“
— Rudolf Clausius German mathematical physicist 1822 - 1888
First Memoir. On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws which may be Deduced Therefrom
