„Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.“
— Hubert Reeves Canadian astrophysicist and popularizer of science 1932
Quotes about nature
A collection of quotes on the topic of nature.
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„Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.
The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.“
— Thomas Sankara, Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle
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„It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.“
— Émile Durkheim French sociologist (1858-1917) 1858 - 1917
„Many creatures go through a natural change and by decay pass into different forms, as bees [are formed] by the decaying flesh of calves, as beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs.“
— Isidore of Seville bishop, confessor and doctor of the Catholic Church 560 - 636
Bk. 11, ch. 4, sect. 3; p. 221.
„Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.“
— Anaïs Nin writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903 - 1977
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„Now one could say, at the risk of some superficiality, that there exist principally two types of scientists. The ones, and they are rare, wish to understand the world, to know nature; the others, far more frequent, wish to explain it. The first are searching for truth, often with knowledge that they will not attain it; the second strive for plausibility, for the achievement of an intellectually consistent, and hence successful, view of the world.“
— Erwin Chargaff Ukrinian-born biochemist who emigrated to the United States 1905 - 2002
Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature, Paul & Co Pub Consortium, June, 1978.
„Few mortals know that the kingdom of God includes the kingdom of mundane fulfillments. … The divine realm extends to the earthly; but the later, illusory in nature, does not contain the essence of Reality.“
— Mahavatar Babaji Hindu Yogi
Ch. 34 : Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas <!-- p. 311 -->
„On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scoured by any white-light religion.“
— Anton LaVey Founder of the Church of Satan, author of the Satanic Bible 1930 - 1997
As quoted in the Introduction by Burton H. Wolfe
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„Nature is cruel but we don't have to be“
— Temple Grandin, The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's
„Nature ever calls people to live
Along with her; why should I be lured
By transient rank and honours?“
— Du Fu Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty 712 - 770
"The Winding River", as translated by Rewi Alley in Du Fu: Selected Poems (1962), p. 54
„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
„When a soul has advanced so far on the spiritual road as to be lost to all the natural methods of communing with God; when it seeks Him no longer by meditation, images, impressions, nor by any other created ways, or representations of sense, but only by rising above them all, in the joyful communion with Him by faith and love, then it may be said to have found God of a truth, because it has truly lost itself as to all that is not God, and also as to its own self.“
— John of the Cross Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint 1542 - 1591
Note to Stanza 29 part 8
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„Nature in fact the best and wisest is an architect and urban planner. (...) The history of establishing gardens and orchards throughout the centuries in Poland is worth knowing, taking into consideration changes in fashions and the foreign influences. Unfortunately, not many objects from those days manifesting the love of nature by man have remained till the present days.“
— Marek Żukow-Karczewski Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist 1961
Gardens and orchards in the old Poland, "Aura" 11, 1987-11, p.17-18. http://pbn.nauka.gov.pl/sedno-webapp/works/508860
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„I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges.“
— Neil Armstrong American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon 1930 - 2012
Context: I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul … we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.
Apollo mission press conference (1969); ABC World News http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/neil-armstrong-man-moon-dead/story?id=12325140&page=2#.UE0Vm67hdjw; also quoted in Of a Fire on the Moon (1970) by Norman Mailer, <!-- p. 46-47 --> and in First Man: The Life of Ronnie Petch the bender (2005) by James R. Hansen<!-- p. 399 -->