Quotes about nature (10000 quotes, page 26)

“A good face, they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World?”

Henry Fielding book Amelia

Book IX, ch. 5
Amelia (1751)

Men , World , Art , Falseness

“The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation.”

J.M. Coetzee book Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), p. 17

Religion , Law , Time

“The most violent revolutions in an individual’s beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one’s own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

“What Pragmatism Means,” Pragmatism, pp. 60–61 (1931); lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute, Boston, Massachusetts (December 1906) and at Columbia University, New York City, (January 1907)
1900s

Truth , History , Time

“The only secondary cause… which has, as yet, been even conjecturally brought forward, to explain how, in the ordinary course of nature, a new specific form may be generated is, as Lamarck declared, 'variation,' and this has been rendered a far more probable hypothesis by the way in which Natural Selection is shown to give intensity and permanency to certain varieties.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 422

Way

“To the extent that we are free we are like God, who has no need of an idea of a God over Godself or of an incentive other than the moral law itself. But to the extent that we are also natural beings, we desire our own happiness in everything else that we desire, and we need the practical postulate of God to bring that happiness together with morality.”

John E. Hare (1949) British philosopher

Source: “Ethics and Religion: Two Kantian Arguments” (2011), p. 165

God , Law , Idea , Happiness

“Although I can look a bit grumpy myself, I love it when the sun shines in the water, but besides that I think my country is colored and what I particularly noticed when I came from abroad: our country is colored sappy fat, that's why our beautiful- colored and built cattle, their flesh, milk and butter, nowhere you can find this, but they [the cows] are also fed by that sappy, greasy and colored land - I have often heard strangers say, those Dutch painters all paint gray and their land is green.... the more I observe the more colored and transparent nature becomes and then the air seen altogether, something very different and yet so [strong] in harmony, it is delightful when one has learned to see, because that too must be learned, I repeat, our country is not gray, even not in gray weather, the dunes aren't gray either.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: Alhoewel ik er zelf wat knorrig uit kan zien houd ik er veel van dat het zonnetje in het water schijnt, maar buiten dat ik vind mijn land gekleurd en wat mij bijzonder opviel wanneer ik uit den vreemde kwam: ons land is gekleurd sappig vet, vandaar onze schoone gekleurde en gebouwde runderen, hun vleesch melk en boter, nergens vind men dat zoo maar ze worden ook door dat sappige vette en gekleurde land gevoed - ik heb vreemdelingen dikwijls horen zeggen, die Hollandsche schilders schilderen allemaal grijs en hun land is groen.. ..hoe meer ik opserveer hoe gekleurder en transparanter de natuur word en dan de lucht erbij gezien een heel ander iets en toch zoo in harmonie, het is verrukkelijk wanneer men heeft leeren zien, want ook dat moet geleerd worden, ik herhaal het ons land is niet grijs, zelfs niet bij grijs weer, de duinen zijn ook niet grijs.
written note of Paul Gabriël, 1901; as cited in De Haagse School. Hollandse meesters van de 19de eeuw, ed. R. de Leeuw, J. Sillevis en C. Dumas); exhibition. cat. - Parijs, Grand Palais / Londen, Royal Academy of Arts / Den Haag, Haags Gemeentemuseum, Parijs, Londen, Den Haag 1983, p.183 - 23
after 1900

Love , Beauty , Color , Thinking

“The book, as far as I am aware, is the first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a history of creation.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 388

Books , History , Science

“We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves — such a friend ought to be — do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Victor Frankenstein, quoted by Robert Walton in "Letter 4"
Frankenstein (1818)

“Solution of this knot by any other conceptions of freedom and determinism than these, there plainly can be none. But the solution is secure if God and other spirits are alike rational, simply by their inner and self-active nature; in other words, if the solution is by spontaneous harmony from within, and not by productive and executive domination from without”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.327-8

God , Freedom

“This changed attitude toward slavery was, however, part of a changed attitude toward morality in general that was sweeping over Western civilization. This change was marked by the apotheosis of "change" itself. What had heretofore been regarded as moral absolutes came to be regarded as merely relative to a particular time and place—to History or Progress—with no enduring claim upon our consciences. Lincoln praised Jefferson for embodying in the Declaration "an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times." But the idea of such truth, and of the correlation of such truth with justice, was increasingly repudiated by the most educated and influential minds in the Western world. Representative of this triumph of historicism and moral relativism was historian Carl Becker's assertion in a landmark 20th-century work that "To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the American Cause

Men , Truth , World , Education

“Vertical and horizontal lines are the expression of two opposing forces; they exist everywhere and dominate everything; their reciprocal action constitutes 'life'. I recognized that the equilibrium of any particular aspect of nature rests on the equivalence of its opposites.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art', Piet Mondrian (1937), in 'Documents of modern Art', for Wittenborn, New York 1945, p. 13; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 55
1930's

Life

“Today those who peer into the future want only relief from anxiety. Unable to face the prospect that the cycles of war will continue, they are desperate to find a pattern of improvement in history. It is only natural that believers in reason, lacking any deeper faith and too feeble to tolerate doubt, should turn to the sorcery of numbers. Happily there are some who are ready to assist them. Just as the Elizabethan magus transcribed tables shown to him by angels, the modern scientific scryer deciphers numerical auguries of angels hidden in ourselves.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

In the Puppet Theatre: Dark mirrors, Hidden Angels and an Algorithmic Prayer-Wheel (p. 99)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

War , Faith , Angels , History

“Through the incarnation God descended into nature in order to super-animate and take it back to him.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Mysticism of Science (1939)

God , Animals

“As a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word "beautiful."”

Norman Maclean (1902–1990) American author and scholar

"A River Runs Through It", p. 2
A River Runs Through It (1976)

God , Beauty , Tree

“The laws of thought are natural laws with which we have no power to interfere, and which are of course not to be in any way confused with the artificial laws of a country, which are invented by men and can be altered by them. Every science is occupied in detecting and describing the natural laws which are inflexibly observed by the objects treated in the Science.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Introduction, Lesson I: Definition and Sphere of the Science.
Elementary Lessons on Logic (1870)

Men , Law , Way , Science

“Education in Chile has been modeled as a "consumer good" and this was accepted with much resignation by a broad layer of society for many years, they believed that education and health were to be treated like any other topic…. For this reason we cannot fail to recognize the intervention that the student movement made on the consciousness of thousands of Chileans who today are dissatisfied with the reality of today's education model, to whom a change of the outdated constitution makes sense, who understand the need to reform the taxation system, who no longer put up with the overexploitation of our natural resources, to benefit foreign capital, i. e. Chile awoke and once again came to believe in the possibility of building a different country. One which is more just, a country where education and health are guaranteed, a country where workers have dignified working conditions, where young people are not exploited nor ill-treated in their work-place, where women are integrated with rights and equal opportunities, a country where the environment is protected, where natural resources are exploited to improve the living condition of its people, a country were culture develops freely, where there is access to literature, a country where children don't suffer discrimination because they don't have any money, a country where a walk down your street doesn't mean constant fear of being assaulted, a country where the most disadvantaged youth don't have to resort to drugs or delinquency to give sense to their lives, a country where grandparents are not made to feel as burdens, a country where the development of knowledge becomes a task of society as a whole, where advances in science are placed at the service of the people. We are once again beginning to dream of this beautiful country …because we are not the same that we were a year ago, hope has resurfaced despite the elaborate effort of those who foster neoliberal ideology and who are trying to eternalize capitalism in a process of permanent auto-reproduction, excluding all possibility of a social revolution.”

Karol Cariola (1987) Chilean politician

Ser un joven comunista, por Karol Cariola, La Jota de Ingenieria, November 2011, 2013-10-03 http://www.jotainjenieria.cl/ser-un-joven-comunista-por-karol-cariola, Ser un joven comunista, por Karol Cariola, Oceansur.com, November 2011, 2013-10-03 http://www.oceansur.com/media/uploads/documents/files/prologo-karol.pdf,
Original: La educación en Chile ha sido modelada como un “bien de consumo”, hecho que fue aceptado por un amplio sector de la sociedad, con mucha resignación durante años, ellos creyeron que la Educación y la Salud debían ser tratados como cualquier otro tema.... Por esto no podemos dejar de reconocer el gran acierto del movimiento estudiantil al intervenir en las conciencias de miles de chilenos que hoy , ya no se conforman con la realidad del actual modelo de educación, que le hace sentido el cambio de esta añeja constitución, que entendieron necesaria una reforma tributaria, que ya no aguantan la sobre explotación de nuestros recursos naturales en beneficio de capitales extranjeros, es decir, Chile despertó y volvió a creer en la posibilidad de construir un país distinto, un país más justo, un país donde la educación y la salud estén garantizadas, un país donde los trabajadores tengan condiciones laborales dignas, donde los jóvenes no sean explotados ni mal tratados en su fuente laboral, donde las mujeres sean integradas con igualdad de derechos y oportunidades, un país donde se proteja el medio ambiente, en que los recursos naturales sean explotados para mejorar las condiciones de su pueblo, un país donde la cultura se desarrolle libremente, un país en el que haya acceso a la literatura, un país donde los niños no sufran la discriminación desde que nacen por no tener dinero, un país donde caminar por las calles no sean un temor constante de ser asaltados, un país donde los jóvenes más desposeídos no tengan que recurrir a las drogas y la delincuencia para dar sentido a sus vidas, un país donde los abuelos no se sientan un estorbo, un país donde el desarrollo del conocimiento sea una tarea de la sociedad en su conjunto, un país donde el avance de la ciencia se ponga al servicio del pueblo, ese hermoso país es el que hoy estamos volviendo a soñar, porque con emoción lo vuelvo a mencionar, Chile está cambiando, hoy no somos los mismos que hace un año atrás, las esperanzas han resurgido a pesar del esmero de aquellos que propician la ideología neoliberal y que pretenden eternizar el capitalismo en un proceso de auto reproducción permanente, excluyendo toda posibilidad de una revolución social.

Women , Money , Children , People

“The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive light, there must have been light to enter it.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Geological Sketches (1870), ch. 2, pp. 31–32 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=49

Light , Sun

“No one who was not by nature a lover of logic, and an extreme precisian in the use of words and phrases, could have written the two "Alice" books.”

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1870–1937) English clergyman, headmaster, author

The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899) p. 3.

Books , Lovers

“I can not doubt that the continued maintenance of slavery in Cuba is among the strongest inducements to the continuance of this strife. A terrible wrong is the natural cause of a terrible evil. The abolition of slavery and the introduction of other reforms in the administration of government in Cuba could not fail to advance the restoration of peace and order. It is greatly to be hoped that the present liberal Government of Spain will voluntarily adopt this view.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Fourth State of the Union Address (1872)

Peace , Hope , Evil

“The best way to enrich vocabulary is organically, by coming across words in their natural habitat, taking the time to learn about them, their histories, and making lifelong friends with them.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

The Philomath Speaks An Interview with Anu Garg (Dec 15, 2009) http://www.nas.org/articles/The_Philomath_Speaks_An_Interview_with_Anu_Garg

Way , History , Learning , Time

“There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Boldness
Essays (1625)

Fools

“By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 4, Magic and Religion.

Life , Religion , Understanding

“Tribe follows tribe, nations follow nations like the tides of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.”

Chief Seattle (1786–1866) Duwamish chief

Misattributed

Sea

“For to pass by those Ancients, the wonderful Pythagoras, the sagacious Democritus, the divine Plato, the most subtle and very learned Aristotle, Men whom every Age has hitherto acknowledged as deservedly honored, as the greatest Philosophers, the Ring-leaders of Arts; in whose Judgments how much these Studies [mathematics] were esteemed, is abundantly proclaimed in History and confirmed by their famous Monuments, which are everywhere interspersed and bespangled with Mathematical Reasonings and Examples, as with so many Stars; and consequently anyone not in some Degree conversant in these Studies will in vain expect to understand, or unlock their hidden Meanings, without the Help of a Mathematical Key: For who can play well on Aristotle’s Instrument but with a Mathematical Quill; or not be altogether deaf to the Lessons of natural Philosophy, while ignorant of Geometry? Who void of (Geometry shall I say, or) Arithmetic can comprehend Plato’s 218 Socrates lisping with Children concerning Square Numbers; or can conceive Plato himself treating not only of the Universe, but the Polity of Commonwealths regulated by the Laws of Geometry, and formed according to a Mathematical Plan?”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), pp. 26-27

Men , Children , Age , Law

“I believe honestly and deeply that the treatment of whales is an example of the evil intelligence of humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world. We have seen greed of the most impossible kind descending on the Arctic and the Antarctic to destroy the most intelligent and beautiful creatures that the planet can produce…We are in the process of destroying much of the planet through destruction of the ozone layer, leading to the greenhouse effect, and the destruction of life. The whale is an example of how such destruction happens. As the ozone layer is destroyed the plankton in the Southern ocean will die and the whales will lose much of their food. Last year we opposed the Antarctic Minerals Bill because we feared that it would lead to pollution of the Southern ocean and damage the whales' food supply. The Government must oppose any extension of whaling of any type, scientific or otherwise, and I hope and trust that they will do so. But we must go further. Countries which engage in the barbarity of so-called scientific whaling, which in reality is crude commercialism of the nastiest kind, deserve retribution from us all and we must bring every possible sanction to bear against them. If we do not take care of our planet and our environment, and of animals such as the whale, mankind will suffer and our planet will die because we have not cared for the natural environment that we all share.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/mar/02/whaling in the House of Commons (2 March 1990).
1990s

Life , World , Fear , Food

“[My audiences] discover they are producing a tonal dimension of the music which interacts melodically, rhythmically, and spatially with the tones in the room. Tones ‘dance’ in the immediate space of their body, around them like a sonic wrap, cascade inside ears, and out to space in front of their eyes … Do not be alarmed! Your ears are not behaving strange or being damaged! … these virtual tones are a natural and very real physical aspect of auditory perception, similar to the fusing of two images resulting in a third three dimensional image in binocular perception… I want to release this music which is produced by the listener…”

Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009) Composer and installation artist

Quoted in: " Maryanne Amacher, Synaptic Island http://datagarden.org/5483/maryanne-amacher-synaptic-island/," on datagarden.org, 2015.

Music , Dance

“Thousands of pulpit orators have swayed their audiences as a wind sways standing corn; but in the result, those who were most affected differed nothing from their former selves. An effect of eloquence is sufficient to account for a vast amount of feeling at the moment; but to trace to this a moral power, by which a man, for his life long, overcomes his besetting sins, and adorns his name with Christian virtues, is to make sport of human nature.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 322.

Life , Feeling , Sport

“Tis only from the selfishness and confin'd generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 2, Section 2
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Men , Justice , Selfishness

“The first thought that occurred to me, that night when I heard the chairman of the jury announce my name, was, Just think how many people hate me at this moment. Naturally, I wanted to annoy those people even further by being arrogant.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

About the Man Booker Prize
John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Hate , People , Thinking , Night

“Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition, but science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown to our scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a science. It is firmly and solely based on the mysterious affinities existing between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediaeval hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is understood by Plato and explained in Timaeus as the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, and of similar bodies to similar, the latter exhibiting a magnetic power rather than following the law of gravitation. The anti-Aristotelean formula that gravity causes all bodies to descend with equal rapidity, without reference to their weight, the difference being caused by some other unknown agency, would seem to point a great deal more forcibly to magnetism than to gravitation, the former attracting rather in virtue of the substance than of the weight. A thorough familiarity with the occult faculties of everything existing in nature, visible as well as invisible; their mutual relations, attractions, and repulsions; the cause of these, traced to the spiritual principle which pervades and animates all things; the ability to furnish the best conditions for this principle to manifest itself, in other words a profound and exhaustive knowledge of natural law — this was and is the basis of magic.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

Law , Knowledge , Universe , Science

“The idea that a few people have about the gene being the target of selection is completely impractical; a gene is never visible to natural selection, and in the genotype, it is always in the context with other genes, and the interaction with those other genes make a particular gene either more favorable or less favorable. In fact, Dobzhanksy, for instance, worked quite a bit on so-called lethal chromosomes which are highly successful in one combination, and lethal in another. Therefore people like Dawkins in England who still think the gene is the target of selection are evidently wrong. In the 30s and 40s, it was widely accepted that genes were the target of selection, because that was the only way they could be made accessible to mathematics, but now we know that it is really the whole genotype of the individual, not the gene. Except for that slight revision, the basic Darwinian theory hasn't changed in the last 50 years”

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) German-American Evolutionary Biologist

Part of the answer to the question "Where do you think Darwinism is going to go in the next 50 years?"
What evolution is: Talk with Ernst Mayr (2001)

People , Way , Mathematics , Idea

“Ikenobo Sen'o, a master of flower arranging, once said (the remark is to be found in his Sayings): "With a spray of flowers, a bit of water, one evokes the vastness of rivers and mountains." The Japanese garden too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature. The Western garden tends to be symmetrical, the Japanese garden asymmetrical, and this is because the asymmetrical has the greater power to symbolize multiplicity and vastness. The asymmetry, of course, rests upon a balance imposed by delicate sensibilities. Nothing is more complicated, varied, attentive to detail, than the Japanese art of landscape gardening. Thus there is the form called the dry landscape, composed entirely of rocks, in which the arrangement of stones gives expression to mountains and rivers that are not present, and even suggests the waves of the great ocean breaking in upon cliffs.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Art , Mountain , Flowers , Water

“The research questions that motivate most quantitative studies in the health, social and behavioral sciences are not statistical but causal in nature. For example, what is the efficacy of a given drug in a given population? Whether data can prove an employer guilty of hiring discrimination? What fraction of past crimes could have been avoided by a given policy? What was the cause of death of a given individual, in a specific incident? These are causal questions because they require some knowledge of the data-generating process; they cannot be computed from the data alone.”

Judea Pearl (1936) Computer scientist

Pearl, Judea (2008) "Causal Inference," in: Pearl, Judea. The science and ethics of causal modeling. (2010).

Death , Health , Behavior , Motivation

“The historical era is, we know, only a small portion of the entire age of our globe. We do not know what may have happened during the ages which preceded its commencement, as we do not know what may happen in ages yet in the distant future. All, therefore, that we can properly infer from the apparently invariable production of like by like is, that such is the ordinary procedure of nature in the time immediately passing before our eyes.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 211

Age , Distant , Time , Future

“It is a cruel proof of the want of generosity in human nature, that an affection too utterly self-sacrificing always meets with an evil return.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Evil

“At a time when it's possible for thirty people to stand on the top of Everest in one day, Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. A place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world at its most dramatic and, what's more, witness them almost exactly as they were, long, long before human beings ever arrived on the surface of this planet. Long may it remain so.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
Life in the Freezer (1993)

People , World , Time

“It is widely supposed that the naked human body is in itself an object upon which the eye dwells with pleasure and which we are glad to see depicted. But anyone who has frequented art schools and seen the shapeless, pitiful model that the students are industriously drawing will know this is an illusion. The body is not one of those objects which can be made into art by direct transcription — like a tiger or a snowy landscape. Often in looking at the natural and animal world we joyfully identify ourselves with what we see and from this happy union create a work of art. This is the process students of aesthetics call empathy, and it is at the opposite pole of creative activity to the state of mind that has produced the nude. A mass of naked figures does not move us to empathy, but to disillusion and dismay.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. 1: The Naked and the Nude

Pleasure , World , School , Art

“What produced this divine serenity, subject to no moods, clouded by no depression, this perpetual Sunday of the heart? It was not merely good nature, not the accident of a happy organization. It was deeper than that. It was the perfect poise resulting from a Christian experience. It was the habit of looking to God in love and to man in love.”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 477.

Love , God , Mood , Heart

“Not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of Nature, but the origin and formation of the Philosophy of Nature presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics. However, the course of a science's origin and the preliminaries of its construction are one thing, while the science itself is another. In the latter, the former can no longer appear as the foundation of the science; here, the foundation must be the necessity of the Concept.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1816)

Knowledge , Appearance , Science

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Limits of Evolution, p.17-8

Intelligence , Knowledge , Dependency

“Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Life , Home , Understanding

“I believe, like you, that civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence, whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (c. August 1930)
Letters

Evil

“Lloyd George suggested a compromise. If France relinquished her claims on the Rhine, Britain and the United States would guarantee France's boundary against future German aggression. Wilson agreed and treaties to that effect were drawn up. Marshall Foch, pressed by the uncompromising Poincaré, (former French Premier), made one last desperate effort to save for France the only natural barrier there was against the hereditary enemy. On March 31, he demanded to be heard in person by the Big Four, Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and the Italian premier, Orlando, who were responsible for drawing up the peace terms.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Peace , Effort , Future , Drawing

“From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadi', Niza'm'i and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedánti and Sufi theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert… that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion which Gotama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom , God , Age , Religion

“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 18, "The Goal"

Law , Birth

“Yes," I continued, "I discovered this model recently and her style never fails to be mathematically perfect. She seems to come by it naturally. As if she were born resonant. I notice Japanese models tend to do this. Like I said, they seem to have resonance somewhere deep in their culture. But Yuri Nakagawa, she's the best I've ever seen. The best model, with the most powerful resonance. I need her to probe deeper into this profound mathematical instinct, which I call resonance.”

Alexei Maxim Russell (1976) Canadian writer

from Trueman Bradley - The Next Great Detective.

Mathematics , Perfection

“I interpret contemporary human social behavior to comprise hypertrophic outgrowths of the simpler features of human nature joined together into an irregular mosaic.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Behavior

“I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods.'”

Savitri Devi book Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958, p. 327, http://www.savitridevi.org/pilgrimage-09.html)

Love , Life , God , People

“Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

After the Gold Rush
Song lyrics, After the Gold Rush (1970)

“It cannot be too frequently emphasized that the behavior of any animal must depend upon on the nature of the stimulus which it meets, its anatomic and physiologic capacities, and its background of previous experience. Unless it has been conditioned by previous experience, an animal should respond identically to identical stimuli, whether they emanate from some part of its own body, from another individual of the same sex, or from an individual of the opposite sex.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Sex , Behavior , Animals , Parting

“Politics, especially in our country, is like a mountain stream which suddenly overflows and soon recedes, while educational work flows not only during monsoon but also in the summer by melting the hearts of mountains. Politics is concerned with the strengthening of national existence and is impatient by nature, education is dedicated to social ideals, it is inherently patent. Which is why education is the master and politics its servant.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

In:p.6.
Uniqueness of Zakir Husain and His Contributions (1997)

Education , Mountain , Heart , Summer

“Have you yet read Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s new work, Letters on the Nature and Development of Man? If you have not, it would be worth your while to do so. Of the impression this book has made on me, I will not now say much. It is the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism I have ever read; the first unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a future life I have ever seen. In judging of such exposition and declaration, one would wish entirely to put aside the sort of instinctive horror they awaken, and to consider them in an impartial spirit and collected mood. This I find difficult to do. The strangest thing is, that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank — to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain — to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do this if he could? Sincerely, for my own part, do I wish to know and find the Truth; but if this be Truth, well may she guard herself with mysteries, and cover herself with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said however, I would not dwell on what I thought; rather, I wish to hear what some other person thinks,--someone whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have time — not otherwise.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on Letters on the Nature and Development of Man (1851), by Harriet Martineau. Letter to James Taylor (11 February 1851) The life of Charlotte Brontë

Life , God , Truth , Books

“The Sabbath bids us behold in His created works the glory of the Creator. And it was because He desired us to do this that Jesus bound up His precious lessons with the beauty of natural things. On the holy rest day, above all other days, we should study the messages that God has written for us in nature. We should study the Saviour's parables where He spoke them, in the fields and groves, under the open sky, among the grass and flowers. As we come close to the heart of nature, Christ makes His presence real to us, and speaks to our hearts of His peace and love.”

Ellen G. White book Christ's Object Lessons

Source: Christ's Object Lessons (1900), Ch. 1, p. 25 - 26

Love , God , Peace , Beauty

“Fortune have somewhat the nature of a woman; if she be too much wooed, she is the farther off.”

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) Holy Roman Emperor

Source: As quoted in The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book II, by Francis Bacon

“Before seeing Truffaut's Small Change, I was afraid it was going to be one of those simple, natural films about childhood which I generally try to avoid — I'm just not good enough to go to them. But this series of sketches on the general theme of the resilience of children turns out to be that rarity — a poetic comedy that's really funny.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Review of Small Change, from When The Lights Go Down (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980, ISBN 0-030-42511-5).

Children , Change , Childhood

“A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

Question

“But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress.Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", pages 308-309 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=326&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image

Francis Darwin calls these "extracts, somewhat abbreviated, from a part of the Autobiography, written in 1876". The original version is presented below.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)
Variant: p>But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;—I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.And this is a damnable doctrine.Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.</p

Imagination , Animals , Personality , Thinking

“They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through EDEN took thir solitarie way.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

x.1532-40
Paradise Lost (1667)

World , Way , Tear , Happiness

“Naturally, in order to find in this break [in the visual perception] with time-honored habits a basis for a new pictorial harmony and a plastic means of dealing with life and movement, there must be an artistic sensibility far in advance of the normal vision of the crowd.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Life , Time

“MacUser: Which person do you most admire?
Jef Raskin: For what attribute? Once again you ask a question that linearises a complex matter. I can name many. Let's start with people named George: George Cantor for moving infinity out of philosophy into mathematics, George Washington for showing how a leader should relinquish power, and George Bernard Shaw for his humanity… Or we can do it by subject and admire Aristotle, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for their pulling from nature comprehensible laws; or Euclid, Gauss and Gödel for their contributions to mathematics; or people who have influenced me very directly, in which case I'd mention my very admirable parents and the teacher who taught me to be intellectually independent, L R Genise; or how about Claude Shannon without whose work on information theory I would have been lost.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

MacUser interview (2004)

People , Law , Mathematics , Question

“Marxism has only killed 100 million people, so naturally at the new voice of the mainstream center Democratic Party, they’re ready to give it another chance.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

August 26, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26823_Daily_Kos_Diary-_Mainstream_Marxism&only

People , Chance

“.. and the first thing for he artists [of Die Brücke ] was free drawing from the free human figure in the freedom of nature... We drew and we painted. Hundreds of paintings a day, with talk and fooling in between, the artists joining the models before the easel and vice versa. All the encounters of everyday life were incorporated in our memories in this way. The studio became the home of the people who were being drawn; they learned from the artists and the painters from them. The picture [ made] took on immediate and abundant life.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Quote from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as cited in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 28-29
1920's

Life , People , Fools , Way

“Your honoured letter regarding suppression of the Jats has arrived. Allah is merciful, and it is hoped that he will crush the enemy. You should rest assured… You should forge unity with Musa Khan and other Muslim groups, and put to use this friendship and unity for facing the enemies. I hope for sure that on account of this unity among Muslims and their nobility, victory will be achieved.
The reason for the rise of enemies and the fall of Muslims is nothing except that, led by their lower nature, Muslims have shared their (Muslims’) concerns with Hindus. It is obvious that Hindus will not tolerate the suppression of non-Muslims. Being farsighted and practising patience are praiseworthy things, but not to the extent that non-Muslims take possession of Muslim cities, and go on occupying one (such) city every day… This is no time for farsightedness and patience. This is the time for putting trust in Allah, for manifesting the might of the sword, and for arousing the Muslim sense of honour. If you will do that, it is possible that winds of favour will start blowing. Whatever this recluse knows is this that war with the Jats is a magic spell which appears fearful at first but which, if you depend fully on the power of Allah and draw His attention towards this (war), will turn out to be no more than a mere show. Let me hope that you will keep me informed of developments and the faring of your arms…”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Taj Muhammad Khan Baluch Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, pp. 150-51.
From his letters

Friendship , War , Fear , Hope

“It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the man whose people have been here many generations.”

Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) American statesman

Address (1915).

People

“The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Family , Wealth

“At the present stage, the historic function of the Soviet Armed Forces is not restricted merely to their function in defending our motherland and the other socialist countries. In its foreign policy activity the Soviet state actively and purposefully opposes the export of counter-revolution and the policy of oppression, supports the national liberation struggle, and resolutely resists imperialist aggression in whatever distant region of our planet it may appear. The party and Soviet Government rely on the country's economic and defense might in fulfilling these tasks…The development of the external functions of the socialist armies is a natural process. It will continue.”

Andrei Grechko (1903–1976) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "National Security Affairs: Theoretical Perspectives and Contemporary Issues" - Page 111 - by B. Thomas Trout, James E. Harf - Political Science - 1982

Support , Distant , Appearance , Country

“All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists in bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 20

Death , Women , Men , Hunger

“I don't want people memorizing the planets or counting how many plants there are in the world. But I want them to know that the world is 4.56 billion years old, and I want them to know how we know it is 4.56 billion years old. It's wonderful and exciting, and it creates a reverence for nature. When I see people reject all that, it's kind of creepy.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, D-01, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, brings humor to normally serious field, The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, New York, March 9, 2005, Bill Buell]

People , World

“When told by a constituent that he would rather vote for the devil, Wilkes responded: "Naturally." He then added: "And if your friend decides against standing, can I count on your vote?"”

John Wilkes (1725–1797) English journalist and politician

“The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form-knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Henry Moore, ‎Sir Herbert Edward Read, ‎David Sylvester (1957) Henry Moore: 1921-1948, p. xxxi
1955 - 1970

Life , Knowledge , Parting

“Yes, I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this. I have noticed through experience and observation that providence, nature, God, or what I would call the power of creation seems to favor human beings who accept and love life unconditionally, and I am certainly one who does with all my heart.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

From his autobiography My Young Years (1973), quoted in Carol Krucoff (August 13, 1982) "FOCUS: With a Little Bit of Good Luck", The Washington Post, p. D5.

Love , Life , God , Heart

“As I came to Munich in 1901 it was in a period of great artistic renewal. Jugendstil began in its way to attack the old naturalism and to cultivate the qualities of pure line.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

as quoted in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 11

Way

“In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

April Thesis (1917)

War , Parting

“All relations are determining. … As soon as we realise there is a determining relation, and become conscious of its nature and how it grips us, we are that much freer.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949), Chapter IV: Consciousness: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology

“Churchman recognized in his critical systemic thinking that the human mind is not able to know the whole. … Yet the human mind, for Churchman, may appreciate the essential quality of the whole. For Churchman, appreciation of this essential quality begins … when first you see the world through the eyes of another. The systems approach, he says, then goes on to discover that every worldview is terribly restricted. Consequently, with Churchman, a rather different kind of question about practice surfaces. … That is, who is to judge that any one bounded appreciation is most relevant or acceptable? Each judgment is based on a rationality of its own that chooses where a boundary is to be drawn, which issues and dilemmas thus get on the agenda, and who will benefit from this. For each choice it is necessary to ask, What are the consequences to be expected insofar as we can evaluate them and, on reflection, how do we feel about that? As Churchman points out, each judgment of this sort is of an ethical nature since it cannot escape the choice of who is to be the client—the beneficiary—and thus which issues and dilemmas will be central to debate and future action. In this way, the spirit of C. West Churchman becomes our moral conscience. A key principle of systemic thinking, according to Churchman, is to remain ethically alert. Boundary judgments facilitate a debate in which we are sensitized to ethical issues and dilemmas.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Robert L. Flood (1999, p. 252-253) as cited in: Michael H. G. Hoffmann (2007) Searching for Common Ground on Hamas Through Logical Argument Mapping. p. 5.

World , Way , Feeling , Question

“There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix: Miracle. Note (A), p. 88
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

Support , Dependency

“And, notwithstanding a few exceptions, we do undoubtedly find that the most truly eminent men have had not only their affections, but also their intellect, greatly influenced by women. I will go even farther; and I will venture to say that those who have not undergone that influence betray a something incomplete and mutilated. We detect, even in their genius, a certain frigidity of tone; and we look in vain for that burning fire, that gushing and spontaneous nature with which our ideas of genius are indissolubly associated. Therefore, it is, that those who are most anxious that the boundaries of knowledge should be enlarged, ought to be most eager that the influence of women should be increased, in order that every resource of the human mind may be at once and quickly brought into play.”

Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) English historian

" The Influence Of Women On The Progress Of Knowledge http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/u-rel/buckle.html". Lecture given at the Royal Institution 19 March 1858. In: The Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works of Henry Thomas Buckle (1872)

Women , Men , Idea , Knowledge

“States should practice multilateralism and abandon unilateral actions that adversely affect a democratic and equitable international order, refraining from the threat or use of force. They should apply international law uniformly, abandon overreliance on “positivism” and efforts to circumvent treaty obligations or invent loopholes. As “nature abhors a vacuum” (Spinoza, Ethics), human rights law abhors “legal black holes””

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013

Law , Effort

“Let me tell you the story of the most successful organism of all time: this is the story of the parasite. … Early on, evolution branched into two distinct paths: independent organisms—those that exist on their own in the natural world—and parasites—organisms that live on other organisms. And it was, by far, the parasites that proved the more successful of the two branches. Today, for every independent organism in nature, there exist three parasites. … These two strains of evolution have been locked in a primordial arms race, constantly evolving to best each other for supremacy of this planet. As parasites evolve to perfect their systems against a species of host, the host evolves to evade their attack. Scientists call this theory of an eternal genetic struggle the Red Queen Hypothesis—a name taken from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 31: Red Queen Hypothesis, Character: Sobol

World , Time , Success , Perfection

“This is not like any other policy issue. This will determine the nature of our country over the next decades in how we settle this. Either we’re going to add to the anxiety and all this hate-filled back and forth, or we find an economic solution for this country moving forward.”

Dave Brat (1964) American economist and professor at Randolph–Macon College

Rep. Dave Brat: 2018 DACA Amnesty Fight ‘Will Determine the Nature of Our Country’ — ‘If We Fail on This, Just Picture Europe’ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/12/30/rep-dave-brat-2018-daca-amnesty-fight-will-determine-the-nature-of-our-country-if-we-fail-on-this-just-picture-europe/ (December 30, 2017)

Hate , Country

“Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond — a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art — which is art.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

Source: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), Ch. 7

Love , Art

“Socrates’ way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Western Civ,” p. 18.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Life , Way , Knowledge

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Aurobindo, from a letter of Sri Aurobindo that C.R. Das was reading out while defending him in the Alipore Bomb Trial. C.R. Das Speech in defence of Aurobindo Ghosh in the Maincktala Bomb Case. The judgement was issued in 1909. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.

Life , Law , Dreams , Idea

“Our appetite for meat leads to widespread, horrific cruelty to animals—chickens pressed wing-to-wing into filthy sheds and debeaked, for example. And since I've always espoused creative nonviolence as the fundamental gospel value, my vegetarianism helps me not to participate in the vicious torture and destruction of billions of cows, chickens, and so many other creatures. These chickens never raise families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything natural. … Animals have feelings, they suffer; they have needs and desires. They were created by God to breathe fresh air, raise their families, peck in the grass, or root in the soil. Today's farms don't let them do anything God designed them to do. Animal scientists attest that farm animals have personalities and interests, that chickens and pigs can be smarter than dogs and cats. I like that even Jesus identified himself as “a mother hen who longs to gather us under her wings.””

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

They Will Inherit the Earth (2018)

God , Family , Dogs , Feeling

“A lesser-known fact about the geopolitics of resources has escaped public polemics. This refers to rare earth metals or rare-earth elements (REMs), a set of 17 naturally occurring non-toxic materials, which play a pivotal role for emerging technologies and which are predominantly produced and exported from China.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Rare-Earth Metals: Anticipating the New Battle for Resources http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/20/03/2014/rare-earth-metals-anticipating-new-battle-resources - Global Policy Journal, March 2014

“Physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature, and a student of it says that he is learning physics, not nature. Art, like nature, has to be distinguished from the systematic study of it, which is criticism.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction

Art , Knowledge , Study , Learning

“Almost all of the social tragedies occurring around the world today are caused by ignoring the basic biological laws of nature … The quicker we humans learn that saving open space and wildlife is critical to our welfare and quality of life, maybe we'll start thinking of doing something about it.”

Jim Fowler (1930–2019) American zoologist

http://www.lindberghfoundation.org/events/past.html

Life , World , Law , Thinking

“No matter how far our spiritual culture may continue to progress, no matter how much the natural sciences may grow, becoming ever more profound and more inclusive, no matter how much the human spirit may will to expand, that human spirit will never escape from the majesty and ethical sublimity of Christianity, as it shimmers and shines in the Gospels.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

A message to Eckermann on March 11, (1832), translated by Albert Schweizer in Goethe: Five Studies http://archive.is/tOo5z (1961), Beacon Press, p. 56

Science

“Out of the book of Natur's learned brest.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii. Compare: "The book of Nature is that which the physician must read; and to do so he must walk over the leaves", Paracelsus, 1490–1541. (From the Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition, vol. xviii. p. 234).
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

Books , Learning

“Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Advice to his children (1699)

World , Reading

“The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one’s own nature.”

Georg Büchner Danton's Death

Act I.
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

“The power to distinguish between person and performance and to communicate intrinsic worth flows naturally out of our own sense of intrinsic worth.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Source: Principle-Centered Leadership (1992), Ch. 11 : Thirty Methods of Influence

Communication , Sense , Personality

“Why should we put up with the present evils in our society? As opposed to the society we are visualizing, the present one can be described as a diseased one. The evils are there on all levels, international and national, and even within the smaller units such as towns and families. Of course, the disease did not appear like a bolt from the blue, either yesterday, or last year. It is the result of factors that have deep roots and long lives. These consist of privations, discriminations oppressions, bigotries, hatreds, and hostilities; poverty, ignorance, hunger, and illiteracy. Each and all of these have been left to us as ar evil heritage from the past. The fundamental difference between our situation today and that of our forefathers is that now knowledge has enabled us to realize that these evils are neither natural nor inevitable in the same way as we have found that cholera or the bubonic plague are not necessary calamities.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

The Shah's Address to Harvard University - Creation of the Universal Welfare Legion - June 13, 1968 http://members.cybertrails.com/~pahlavi/harvard.html
Speeches, 1968

Hunger , Hostility , Disease , Family