Quotes about nature (10000 quotes, page 74)

“If God does not lie at the end of any telescope, neither does he lie at the end of any syllogism. I can never starting from the natural order prove the divine order. The proof of the divine order must lie, somehow, within itself. It must be its own witness. For it, like the natural order, is complete within itself, self-contained.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 138.

God , Lie

“So, we’ve reached the state that George Will described. He said there’s a certain kind of liberal that wants diversity in everything, except thought. And so, we do need certain kinds of diversity. But the key to remember is that, diversity by its very nature is divisive, and so, what’s the function of your group? If your group needs cohesion, you don’t want diversity. If your group needs good, clear thinking and you want people to challenge your prejudices, then you need it. So in the academic world, we need that kind of diversity, and we don’t have it.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

"The Psychology Behind Morality" (12 June 2014) http://www.onbeing.org/program/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-behind-morality/transcript/6347#main_content

People , World , Thinking

“… style without substance is nothing, the substance in the story was the most important thing. Of course, there is a layer of style. If I were a director working in a different era, I would have had to be at MGM. I don't think I'd probably know how to make anything but enhanced reality, because that's what comes naturally to me.”

Tom Ford (1961) American fashion designer

A singular man, Shapiro, Gregg, December 24, 2009, The Bay Area Reporter, April 18, 2016 http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=film&article=704,

Thinking , Reality

“Chantal's only ruse … was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: La joie (Joy) 1929, p.107

Problem , Thinking , Heart

“I am not religious, but I am a pious man… A religious man has a definite religion. He says "God is there" or "God is there," "God is there." "Your god is not my god, and that's all." But the pious man, he just looks out with awe, and says, "where is God?" And "well, I don't understand it and I would like to know what this creation really means." That is a pious man, who is really touched by the greatness of nature and of the creation.”

Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986) Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937

In a television interview, ca. 1980. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi discusses religion http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/WGBBMF, National Library of Medicine.

God , Religion , Understanding

“Our true nature is something that is ineffable. In other words, it's not something you can grasp, it's not something you can really think about, it's not something you can touch, taste, or feel. (…) Because it has no shape, because it has no form, that is the reason that I call it spirit. Spirit is that which exists, but it doesn't have a particular shape or a particular form.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

The Basic Teachings - Part 1: Principles of the Teaching (2009)

Feeling , Thinking

“Eliminative materialism also doubts that the correct neuroscientific account of human capacities will produce a neat reduction of our common-sense framework, but here the doubts arise from a quite different source. As the eliminative materialists see it, the one-to-one match-ups will not be found, and our common-sense psychological framework will not enjoy an intertheoretic reduction, because our common-sense psychological framework is a false and radically misleading conception of the causes of human behavior and the nature of cognitive activity. On this view, folk psychology is not just an incomplete representation of our inner natures; it is an outright misrepresentation of our internal states and activities. Consequently, we cannot expect a truly adequate neuroscientific account of our inner lives to provide theoretical categories that match up nicely with the categories of our common-sense framework. Accordingly, we must expect that the older framework will simply be eliminated, rather than be reduced, by a matured neuroscience.”

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

Source: Matter and Consciousness, 1984/1988/2013, p. 43; Partly cited in: Advances in Descriptive Psychology (2006), p. 43

Behavior , Sense , Falseness

“Even in earliest youth my fondest desire was to understand Nature, and thus to come closer to the truth; a truth that I was unable to discover either at school or in church.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Jane Cobbald: Viktor Schauberger - A Life of Learning from Nature (2006)

Truth , Youth , School , Understanding

“No amount of force will break an egg-shell if exerted on one side alone. So capital could not squeeze labor as long as labor was free to natural opportunities, and in a world where these natural materials and opportunities were as free to all as is the air to us, there could be no difficulty in finding employment, no willing hands conjoined with hungry stomachs, no tendency of wages toward the minimum on which the worker could barely live. In such a world we would no more think of thanking anybody for furnishing us employment than we here think of thanking anybody for furnishing us with appetites.
That the Creator might have put us in the kind of world I have sought to imagine, as readily as in this kind of a world, I have no doubt. Why he has not done so may, however, I think, be seen. That kind of a world would be best for fools. This is the best for men who will use the intelligence with which they have been gifted. Of this, however, I shall speak hereafter. What I am now trying to do by asking my readers to endeavor to imagine a world in which natural opportunities were "as free as air," is to show that the barrier which prevents labor from freely using land is the nether millstone against which labor is ground, the true cause of the difficulties which are apparent through the whole industrial organization.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Source: Social Problems (1883), Ch. 13 : Unemployed Labor

Men , World , Fools , Imagination

“The science of the age, in short, is physical, chemical, physiological; in all shapes mechanical. Our favourite Mathematics, the highly prized exponent of all these other sciences, has also become more and more mechanical. Excellence in what is called its higher departments depends less on natural genius than on acquired expertness in wielding its machinery. Without undervaluing the wonderful results which a Lagrange or Laplace educes by means of it, we may remark, that their calculus, differential and integral, is little else than a more cunningly-constructed arithmetical mill; where the factors, being put in, are, as it were, ground into the true product, under cover, and without other effort on our part than steady turning of the handle. We have more Mathematics than ever; but less Mathesis.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Age , Education , Mathematics , Effort

“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) American linguist

Source: Language, thought and reality (1956), p. 213.

“[W]aste in intellect may be as much an incident of growth as waste in nature.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

“'World' is a large term, but man must enlarge his allegiance, considering himself in the light of a world citizen," I continued "A person who truly feels: 'The world is my homeland; it is my America, my India, my Philippines, my England, my Africa,' will never lack scope for a useful and happy life. His natural local pride will know limitless expansion; he will be in touch with creative universal currents.”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 48 - "At Encinitas In California"

Life , World , Feeling , Light

“…either the Universe was One, or it was two, or it was many; either Energy was one, seen only in powers of itself, or it was several; either God was Harmony or he was discord. With practical unanimity, mankind rejected the dual or multiple scheme; it insisted on Unity. Thomas took the question as it was given him. The Unity was full of defects; he did not deny them; but he claimed that they might be incidents, and that the admitted Unity might even prove their beneficence. Granting this enormous concession, he still needed a means of bringing into the system one element which vehemently refused to be brought:— that is, Man himself, who insisted that the Universe was a unit, but that he was a universe; that Energy was one, but that he was another energy; that God was omnipotent but that man was free. The contradiction had always existed, exists still, and always must exist, unless man either admits that he is a machine, or agrees that anarchy and chaos are the habit of nature, and law and order its acident. The agreement may become possible, but it was not possible in the thirteenth century nor is it now.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

God , Law , Question , Universe

“Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale or Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimens of which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely destitute of civic rights; and a great number of them, not having even intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted by the States to the service of education. Fettered immovably so as to remove all possibility of danger, they are placed in the class rooms of our Infant Schools, and there they are utilized by the Board of Education for the purpose of imparting to the offspring of the Middle Classes that tact and intelligence of which these wretched creatures themselves are utterly devoid.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 5. Of Our Methods of Recognizing One Another

Education , School , Intelligence

“Since most of the mass immigration now convulsing Europe is composed of Muslims, it is therefore hardly surprising that anti-immigrant feeling is largely anti-Muslim feeling. The sheer weight of numbers plus the refusal to assimilate to western values makes this an unprecedented crisis for western liberalism. The crisis is forcing it to confront the fundamental questions of what constitutes a country, national identity and the very nature of a liberal society.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

"How the West was lost" http://www.melaniephillips.com/how-the-west-was-lost (May 11, 2002)

Feeling , Question , Country

“Absolute power by virtue of its very nature withdraws itself from all specification.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part 2. Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

“I'm a games player by nature. Don't get me wrong. Nothing that involves movement. Like leaving my chair.”

Maureen Lipman (1946) British actress, columnist and comedienne

How Was it For You?

Game

“Nature has had regard in everything no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like a man who throws up a ball. What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down… what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VIII, 20
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

“The open revolution changes also the spirit of man, the relationship between man and man, because it changes the method of struggle. Therefore it brings a total transformation of power economy and nature.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Change

“Limbaugh hasn't had a natural erection since the Nixon Administration; think he's compensating for something? Now, I wouldn't pick on him for any of this stuff, not his blubbiness, not his man-boobs, not his inability to have a natural erection -- none of that stuff -- to me, off limits until! until! -- Mr. Limbaugh, you turn that sort of gun on somebody else -- once you start doing that, you're fair game, fat boy. Absolutely, you jiggly pile of mess. You're just fair game, and you're going to get it, too. [Laughs] You'd better watch what you say, Limbaugh, because it can come back the other way.”

Ron Reagan (1958) talk radio host and political analyst

On Rush Limbaugh - ' "The Ron Reagan Show http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/05/20/ron-reagan-junior-limbaugh-hasnt-had-natural-erection-nixon-administrati (18 May 2009).

Way , Game , Boy , Thinking

“The most sensational of all the sick literary lives was that of Maupassant, who died mad at forty-three and whose hatred of God, man and nature - manifested in literary productions which give us immense pleasure: how is that to be explained? - spring from a kind of mother fixation as well as a terror of the cold. He was a bull of a man much given to boats and riparian dalliance, but he had bad circulation. He had other things too, including a Chinese-style priapism which enabled him to copulate, usually in public, six times in a row, the secret being his failure to detumesce. This, of course, like acne and the common cold, can be a symptom of tertiary syphilis, which Maupassant certainly had.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

God , Pleasure , Secret , Spring

“Chaos was a far subtler force than most people realised. It would be so easy to sense if it threw off thunderbolts or sent barely sensed thrummings through the fabric of reality, but it was nothing more than the possible made probable. It did not break or bend any laws of nature or tip the balance of the universe.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 8 “The Indigo Lord Spies on the Citizens of Makendha” (p. 64)

People , Law , Reality , Sense

“Our desire to conserve wildlife for our children and our children's children forces us to bring out into the open conservation's secret question : Does God give a prize for the maximum number of human beings? Put another way, which shall we bequeath to our grandchildren : human life with nature, or human life without nature?”

Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) American ecologist

Naked Emperors : Essays of a Taboo-Stalker (1982)

Life , God , Children , Secret

“If nature has made you a bat, you shouldn't try and be an ostrich. You consider yourself odd at times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that! Gaze into the fire, the clouds and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak - surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it is permitted or would please your teachers or your father or some God. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That way you will become earth bound, a vegetable.”

Hermann Hesse book Demian

Source: Demian (1919), p. 180

God , People , Way , Teachers

“Nature always uses the simplest means to accomplish its effects.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Formulation of the principle of least action, as stated in Mémoires de l'académie royale des sciences (Accord between different laws of Nature that seemed incompatible), 1748, 417-426 (15 April 1744).

“Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), pp. 286

People

“Whether arrived at through reason or revelation… natural law is the highest law known to man. It is anchored in the very existential nature of man and is therefore a priori just.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Why the Land Belongs to Bundy," http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/04/why-land-belongs-to-bundy.html Economic Policy Journal, April 25, 2014.
2010s, 2014

Law

“As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die!”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The Old Cumberland Beggar.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 3

Idea

“[Pelsaert laments] “the utter subjection and poverty of the common people-poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe.” He continues: “There are three classes of people who are indeed nominally free, but whose status differs very little from voluntary slavery-workmen, peons or servants and shopkeepers. For the workmen there are two scourges, the first of which is low wages. Goldsmiths, painters (of cloth or chintz), embroiderers, carpet makers, cotton or silk weavers, black-smiths, copper-smiths, tailors, masons, builders, stone-cutters, a hundred crafts in all-any of these working from morning to night can earn only 5 or 6 tackas (tankahs), that is 4 or 5 strivers in wages. The second (scourge) is (the oppression of) the Governor, the nobles, the Diwan, the Kotwal, the Bakshi, and other royal officers. If any of these wants a workman, the man is not asked if he is willing to come, but is seized in the house or in the street, well beaten if he should dare to raise any objection, and in the evening paid half his wages, or nothing at all. From these facts the nature of their food can be easily inferred… For their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little khichri… in the day time, they munch a little parched pulse or other grain, which they say suffices for their lean stomachs… Their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking… Their bedclothes are scanty, merely a sheet or perhaps two… this is sufficient in the hot weather, but the bitter cold nights are miserable indeed, and they try to keep warm over little cowdung fires… the smoke from these fires all over the city is so great that the eyes run, and the throat seems to be choked.””

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7
Jahangir’s India

Life , People , Food , Home

“We may… have surmised nebulae to be no other than clusters of stars disguised by their very great distance, but a longer experience and better acquaintance with the nature of nebulae, will not allow a general admission of such a principle, although undoubtedly a cluster of stars may assume a nebulous appearance when it is too remote for us to discern the stars of which it is composed.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Star , Appearance

“If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"Autonomy"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Learning

“There, where the cross in hoary ruin nods,
And weeping yews o'ershade the lettered stones,
While midnight silence wraps these dark abodes,
And soothes me wand'ring o'er my kindred bones,
Let kindled fancy view the glorious morn,
When from the bursting graves the dust shall rise,
All nature smiling, and, by angels borne,
Messiah's cross, far blazing o'er the skies.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Pollio: an Elegy (written 1762; published 1765)

Smile , Angels , Silence

“I would suggest that you tell yourselves that you will henceforth be able to remember dreams from the deeper levels of your personality, and you should find that you will be able to do so. You can also tell yourselves when you wish that you will give special attention to the nature of time and space, as these appear within your dreams. You will discover then upon awakening that many perceptions concerning time and space within the dream state will remain within you.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 174, Page 171
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 4

Dreams , Appearance , Time , Personality

“Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Abbey's Road in In Defense of the Redneck (1979), p. 168.

People

“Variant translation: "I saw the infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful God from behind as he went away, and I grew dizzy. I followed his footsteps over nature's fields and saw everywhere an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection." (As quoted in History of Science, by Peter Whitfield”

Carl Linnaeus book Systema Naturae

2003), Scholastic Library Pub, p. 23.
Systema Naturae

Wisdom , God , Quotes , History

“Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and at the same time she arms and equips another animal to destroy it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nature

Law , Time , Animals

“I don't have a specific picture in my mind's eye. I want to end up with a picture that I haven't planned. This method of arbitrary choice, chance, inspiration and destruction may produce a specific type of picture, but it never produces a predetermined picture. Each picture has to evolve out of a painterly or visual logic: it has to emerge as if inevitably. And by not planning the outcome, I hope to achieve the same coherence and objectivity that a random slice of nature (or a ready-made) always possesses. Of course, this is also a method of bringing in unconscious processes, as far as possible. I just want to get something more interesting out of it than those things that I can think out for myself.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from an interview with Sabine Schütz, 1990; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1990's

Hope , Thinking , Chance

“The greatest hero of Greece was Hercules. He was a personage of quite another order from the great hero of Athens, Theseus. He was what all Greece, except Athens, most admired. The Athenians were different from the other Greeks, and their hero therefore was different. Theseus was, of course, bravest of the brave, as all heroes are; but, unlike other heroes, he was as compassionate as he was brave, and a man of great intellect as well as great bodily strength. It was natural that the Athenians should have such a hero, because they valued thought and ideas, as no other part of the country did. In Theseus their ideal was embodied. But Hercules embodied what the rest of Greece most valued. His qualities were those the Greeks in general honored and admired. Except for unflinching courage, they were not those that distinguished Theseus. Hercules was the strongest man on earth, and he had the supreme self-confidence magnificent physical strength gives. He considered himself on an equality with the gods.”

Edith Hamilton book Mythology

Source: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (1942), Ch. 11

God , Confidence , Idea , Courage

“Young people, I happen to believe, are the world's most precious natural resource.”

Nicholas Negroponte (1943) American computer scientist

Pricing the Future http://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/Wired/WIRED6-11.html.

People , World

“Those who claim a natural link between capitalism and democracy are cheating with the facts in the same way the Catholic Church cheats when it presents itself as the "natural"advocate of democracy and human rights against the threat of totalitarianism - as if it were not the case that the Church accepted democracy only at the end of the nineteenth century, and even then with clenched teeth, as a desperate compromise, making it clear that it preferred monarchy, and that it was making a reluctant concession to new times.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Source: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (2009), Chapter One, Human, All Too Human

Way , Democracy , Time , Cheating

“If you go down a road that satisfies your personal predilections and relationships and sacrifices the common good of the country, including the elementary institution by which its civilization is sustained, then you're not only derelict in your public duty, you are abandoning your obligation as a human being. And frankly, people throw around words like "crime against humanity", I think that kind of disregard for the God-endowed natural rights of human being is the archetype of all crimes against humanity, and I think we have an entire elite faction that is now committed to committing such a crime against the American people.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

2013-04-02
The Talk to Solomon Show Live, quoted in * 2013-04-02
Keyes: Marriage Equality is the 'Archetype of all Crimes Against Humanity'
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/keyes-marriage-equality-archetype-all-crimes-against-humanity
regarding Senator Rob Portman's support of same-sex marriage after learning that his son is gay.
2009

God , People , Thinking , Personality

“From society's standpoint, modern science and technology appears Janus-faced : It has given us wealth in one sense, and poverty in another; it has harnessed nature to man's basic needs in ways and to extents undreamed - of only a few decades ago, but it has fostered a continuingly lowered "quality of life."”

Richard F. Ericson (1919–1993) American academic

Source: Organizational cybernetics and human values (1969), p. 7

Life , Way , Sense , Appearance

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST : TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Passage on Muhammad by an anonymous author in The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9 (1830), edited by Joseph Blunt, Ch. X, p. 269. Robert Spencerattributed the authorship to Adams in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (2005), p. 83, but provided no clear documentation as to why this attribution was made.
Disputed

Life , Men , God , War

“The holy man, persuaded that they belonged to some idolatrous people and that in their own language they gave adherence to the Christian faith, invited them to receive baptism.
"I think," said he to them, "that you bathe often, for all the hollows of the rocks are full of pure water, and as I came to your assembly I saw several of you plunging into these natural baths. Now purity of body is the image of spiritual purity."
And he taught them the origin, the nature, and the effects of baptism.
"Baptism," said he to them, "is Adoption, New Birth, Regeneration, Illumination."
And he explained each of these points to them in succession.
Then, having previously blessed the water that fell from the cascades and recited the exorcisms, he baptized those whom he had just taught, pouring on each of their heads a drop of pure water and pronouncing the sacred words.
And thus for three days and three nights he baptized the birds.”

Anatole France book Penguin Island

Book I : The Beginnings, Ch. V : The Baptism Of The Penguins
Penguin Island (1908)

People , Faith , Birth , Bird

“There are three basic problems: how a mind can know the world of nature, how it is possible for one mind to know another, and how it is possible to know the contents of our own minds without resort to observation or evidence. It is a mistake, I shall urge, to suppose that these questions can be collapsed into two, or taken into isolation.”

Donald Davidson (philosopher) (1917–2003) scriitor amator

Davidson. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, (2001) p. 208, as cited in: Dermot Moran (ed). The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy, (2008), p. 681

World , Question , Problem

“I cannot help regretting that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has felt it his duty to put the question. It is put under circumstances that naturally belong to one of those fluctuations in the condition of trade which, however unfortunate and lamentable they may be, recur from time to time. Undoubtedly I think that questions of this kind, whatever be the intention of the questioner, have a tendency to produce in the minds of people, or to suggest to the people, that these fluctuations can be corrected by the action of the Executive Government. Anything that contributes to such an impression inflicts an injury upon the labouring population.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1893/sep/01/the-unemployed#S4V0016P0_18930901_HOC_190 in the House of Commons (1 September 1893) in answer to a question from Howard Vincent MP who asked Gladstone "if the Government propose to take any steps to mitigate the consequences to the masses of the people" of unemployment.
1890s

People , Question , Thinking , Time

“The story of widows and orphans now wandering amid the ravines of the rural counties of my native state seeking protection and maintenance from others who are yet unable, on account of their own poverty, to grant them aid. I could dwell upon the sorrows of poor women, with their helpless infants, cast upon the world, homeless and destitute, deprived of their natural protectors by the red hand of the midnight assassin. I could appeal to you, members upon this floor, as husbands and fathers, to picture to yourselves the desolation of your own happy firesides should you be suddenly snatched away from your loved ones. Think of gray-haired men, whose fourscore years are almost numbered, the venerated heads of peaceful households, without warning murdered for political opinion's sake.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

Love , Women , Men , World

“Freedom and determinism are only the obverse and the reverse of the two-faced fact of rational self-activity. Freedom is the thought-action of the self, defining its specific identity, and determinism means nothing but the definite character which the rational nature of the action involves. Thus freedom, far from disjoining and isolating each self from other selves, especially the Supreme Self, or God, in fact defines the inner life of each, in its determining whole, in harmony with theirs, and so, instead of concealing, opens it to their knowledge — to God, with absolute completeness eternally, in virtue of his perfect vision into all possible emergencies, all possible alternatives; to the others, with an increasing fulness, more or less retarded, but advancing toward completeness as the Rational Ideal guiding each advances in its work of bringing the phenomenal or natural life into accord with it. For our freedom, in its most significant aspect, means just our secure possession, each in virtue of his self-defining act, of this common Ideal, whose intimate nature it is to unite us, not to divide us; to unite us while it preserves us each in his own identity, harmonising each with all by harmonising all with God, but quenching none in any extinguishing Unit. Freedom, in short, means first our self-direction by this eternal Ideal and toward it, and then our power, from this eternal choice, to bring our temporal life into conformity with it, step by step, more and more.”

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.375-6

Life , God , Knowledge , Freedom

“Wait a minute! I am not a mystic. Trying to find out the laws of nature has nothing to do with mysticism, though in the face of creation I feel very humble. It is as if a spirit is manifest infinitely superior to man's spirit. Through my pursuit in science I have known cosmic religious feelings. But I don't care to be called a mystic.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 117

Law , Feeling , Science , Waiting

“For the poet, the biblical sense of 'know' is as much part of nature as the heat of fire, and in the cognative sense as much a given phenomonen as the brightness itself.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Sense , Parting

“One of the first and most difficult steps in a science is to conceive clearly the nature of the magnitudes about which we are arguing.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter III, Theory of Utility, p. 78.

Science

“By the end of World War II, the specter of an imminent working class uprising that had so haunted the ruling classes of Europe and North America for the previous century had largely disappeared. This was because class war was suspended by a tacit settlement. To put it crudely: the white working class of the North Atlantic countries, from the United States to West Germany, were offered a deal. If they agreed to set aside any fantasies of fundamentally changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep their unions, enjoy a wide variety of social benefits (pensions, vacations, health care …), and, perhaps most important, through generously funded and ever-expanding public educational institutions, know that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the working class entirely. One key element in all this was a tacit guarantee that increases in workers' productivity would be met by increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s. Largely as a result, the period saw both rapidly rising productivity and rapidly rising incomes, laying the basis for the consumer economy of today.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 373

War , Children , Health , World

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist

Source: Psychology: An elementary textbook, 1908, p. 44

Law , Support , Parting

“The evening is indescribable. And on the top of everything else a full moon came up. Louis urged me to paint it. I said: it will be an exercise at best. Naturally I am not up to this kind of nature. Still, I know a bit more than I did before. I know the disparity between my inadequate resources and nature. This is an internal affair to keep me busy for the next few years. It doesn't trouble me one bit. No use hurrying when you want so much. The evening is deep inside me forever. Many a blond, northern moon rise, like a muted reflection, will softly remind me, and remind me again and again. It will be my bride, my alter ego. An incentive to find myself. I myself am the moon-rise of the South.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry, (Tunisia, April 1914), # 926-k, in: The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918, transl. Pierre B. Schneider, R.Y. Zachary and Max Knight; Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1964
1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Exercises , Business , Painting

“In making war with nature, there was risk of loss in winning.”

John McPhee book The Control of Nature

The Control of Nature (1989)

War , Loss

“Never to see or describe any interesting appearance in nature, without connecting it by dim analogies with the moral world, proves faintness of Impression. Nature has her proper interest; & he will know what it is, who believes & feels, that every Thing has a life of it's own, & that we are all one Life.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to William Sotheby (10 September 1802)
Letters

Life , World , Feeling , Appearance

“When nobody in the world loves any other, naturally the strong will overpower the weak, the many will oppress the few, the wealthy will mock the poor, the honoured will disdain the humble, the cunning will deceive the simple. Therefore all the calamities, strifes, complaints, and hatred in the world have arisen out of want of mutual love. Therefore the benevolent disapproved of this want.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 4; Universal Love II
Mozi

Love , World , Strong

“How to get joy out of nature.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 7 (1919), A School for Living

Joy

“I have endeavour'd to make every thing so plain, that a very little Skill in Geometry may be sufficient to enable one to read this Book by himself. And upon this occasion I would advise all my Readers, who desire to make themselves Masters of this Subject, not to be contented with the Schemes they find here; but upon every Occasion to draw new ones of their own, in all the Variety of Circumstances they can think of. This will take up a little more Time at first; but in a little while they will find the vast Benefit of it, by the extensive Notions it will give them of the Nature of these Principles.”

Brook Taylor (1685–1731) English mathematician

New Principles of Linear Perspective (1715, 1749)

Books , Thinking , Time , Reading

“Learn by heart the forms to be found in nature, so that you can use them like the notes in a musical composition. That is what these forms are for. Nature is a marvelous chaos, and it is our job and our duty to bring order into that chaos and – to perfect it.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckmann's lecture 'Drei Briefe an eine Malerin' ('Three letters to a Woman-painter'), New York and Boston, Spring 1948; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 214
1940s

Music , Learning , Heart , Perfection

“It is difficult to become familiar with animals without becoming fond of them, provided one doesn't wish to domineer them. I have never heard that love for animals has changed to hate, but many cases where the opposite happened. Many hunters, obliged to observe the animals while stalking them, in time grow increasingly reluctant to kill them, and finally wish to become wardens in the national parks, to help protect them. Very few vivisectors seem to be hampered by this natural evolution that leads to the love and respect of the animals through a deeper knowledge of them.”

Hans Ruesch (1913–2007) Swiss racing driver

Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), p. 52

Love , Hate , Knowledge , Change

“It’s quite a problem for retired people, I do see. All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for. Or nothing to naturally stay sober during, if you see what I…We used to laugh at Malcolm’s dad, the way he used to mark up the wireless programs in Radio Times in different-coloured pencils. Never caught him listening to any of them but it was an hour taken care of.”

Kingsley Amis book The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986)

People , Way , Problem , Time

“The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"A Far Cry from Africa" (1962)

Pain , Law , Reading

“I already see things backwards! You see, in printmaking everything comes out backwards so printing is an absolute natural for me. It is difficult for a lot of artists to do prints because they draw one way and can’t imagine it the other way. I always had trouble reading as a child. Every few minutes my mind would shift and I would pick out all the o's, than all the letter a's on a page.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 28

Way , Imagination , Reading , Drawing

“The result was that when war did break out German preparations were far ahead of our own, and it was natural then to expect that the enemy would take advantage of his initial superiority to make an endeavour to overwhelm us and France before we had time to make good our deficiencies. Is it not a very extraordinary thing that no such attempt was made? Whatever may be the reason—whether it was that Hitler thought he might get away with what he had got without fighting for it, or whether it was that after all the preparations were not sufficiently complete—however, one thing is certain: he missed the bus.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Central Council of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations at Central Hall, Westminster (4 April 1940), quoted in "Confident of Victory," The Times (5 April 1940), p. 8.
Hitler began the 'Westfeldzug' five weeks later and entered France at the beginning of june. June 10th, Paris was declared to be an 'open town.
Prime Minister

War , Time , Fight

“I don't know who my audience is. People have said there is an integrity about me, and I think there is. I don't try to follow a trend. I have my own little path, and although I delve into things, I stay with what I am. I'm quite natural with it. Maybe people feel comfortable with that and they trust it, so they buy it. They'll come and see me in concert. I think I always do a good job in that area.”

Sarah Brightman (1960) British soprano, musical theatre actress, and dancer

The Irish Times (1999)

People , Feeling , Thinking

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

and may Allah bless you and grant you success in these examinations – but even in the Akhirah we ask Allah to bless you, to open your doors. To prepare for the Akhirah, it's not an easy task, but with the hope in the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala things will be made easy, and at the same time, with the constant preparation, without giving up hope – never ever giving up, never saying no, never just throwing the towel – by the will of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we will achieve, and we will achieve great heights.
"Exams in Life - Never Give Up - Mufti Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4w4pak66V0, YouTube (2013)
Lectures

Life , Death , People , World

“Back in September, my friend Donald said he had his lawyers look at this from every which way and there was no issue there. There was nothing to this birther issue. Now since September, the Constitution hasn't changed. But the poll numbers have. And I recognize, I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa. But the facts and law here are really quite clear. Under longstanding U. S. law, the child of a U. S. Citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

Republican Presidential Debate http://www.vox.com/2016/1/15/10774204/winners-losers-republican-debate-charleston-fox-business (January 14, 2016)
2010s

Law , Way , Change

“Good nature and kindness towards those with whom they come in personal contact, at the expense of public interests, that is of those whom they never see, is the besetting sin of public men.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 23. p. 176

Men , Personality

“I admit, of course, that the artist does not see nature as the vulgar do. His emotion reveals to him the inner truths that underlie appearance. But the only principle In art is to copy what one sees. Every other method is ruinous. No one can embellish Nature. It is simply and solely a question of seeing. Doubtless a mediocre man, when he copies will never produce a work of art. He looks without seeing. No matter how minutely he observes, the result will be flat and without character. But the artist's trade is not for mediocre men, and no amount of training can supply them with talent. The artist sees - he sees with his heart. He sees deep into the heart of Nature. To the artist everything in Nature is beautiful.
The vulgarian imagines that what looks to him ugly In Nature is not material for the artist. He would forbid us to represent what displeases and offends him. He makes a grave mistake. What is commonly called ugliness in Nature may become a great beauty in art.
In the realm of realities, people regard as ugly everything that is deformed and diseased and that suggests sickness, weakness and suffering. They regard as ugly everything that defies regularity, which is to them the symbol and condition of health and strength. A hump is ugly, bow-legs are ugly, misery in rags is ugly. Ugly, again, are the soul and conduct of the immoral, the vicious, the criminal man, the abnormal man who is an enemy of society; ugly is the soul of the parricide, the traitor, the unscrupulous slave of ambition. And it is right that the lives and the of which we can expect only evil should be given an odious epithet.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Men , People , Health , Truth

“Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Evil , Help

“Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Real Peace (1983)
1980s

War , World , Peace , Way

“Self-knowledge will reveal the elements of biological human nature from which modern social life proliferated in all its strange forms.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Life , Knowledge

“Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Last lines
Middlemarch (1871)

Life , World , Dependency

“In principle, should the laborers have the produce of their labor? I do not hesitate to say: No! although I know that a multitude of workers will cry out. Look, proletarians, cry out, shout as much as you like, but then listen to me: No, it is not the product of their labors to which the workers have a right. It is the satisfaction of their needs, whatever the nature of those needs. To have the possession of the product of our labor is not to have possession of that which is proper to us, it is to have property in a product made by our hands, and which could be proper to others and not to us. And isn’t all property theft?”

Joseph Déjacque (1821–1864) French writer

Le Libertaire, No. 6, September 21, 1858 ( French http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/libertaire/n06/lib01.htm; English http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2011/12/joseph-dejacque-on-exchange.html)

Cry

“We are satisfied that it is right because it gives the freest play to individual energy and initiative and character and the largest liberty both to producer and consumer. …trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. …We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form. Besides we have experience of fifty years, during which our prosperity has become the envy of the world.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Bolton (15 October 1903), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 413
Leader of the Opposition

World , Envy

“Whatever is common to children of a given age is set up as the fundamental character of that age. The fact that three-year-old children are quite often negative is considered evidence that negativism is inherent in the nature of three-year-olds, and the concept of a negative age or stage is then regarded as an explanation for the appearance of negativism.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in contemporary psychology, 1931, p. 153 as cited in: Eells, T. D. (2007). " Generating and generalizing knowledge about psychotherapy from pragmatic case studies http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/journals/index.php/pcsp/article/viewFile/893/2263". In: Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy, Vol 3, Nr. 1, p. 35-54.

Children , Age , Appearance

“Nature shows us its artistic beauty that sciences explain the hows and religions contemplate the whys.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Religion , Beauty , Science

“I’m sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations of earthly nothingness. Surely we are here precisely so as to turn what passes into something that endures; but this is possible only if you can appreciate both.”

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

Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.
Maxim 155, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

People

“To investigate the essence of a natural phenomenon, three conditions are necessary: We must first study and know the phenomenon itself, from all sides; we must then determine in what relation it stands to other natural phenomena; and lastly, when we have ascertained all these relations, we have to solve the problem of measuring these relations and the laws of mutual dependence—that is, of expressing them in numbers. In the first period of chemistry, all the powers of men's minds were devoted to acquiring a knowledge of the properties of bodies; it was necessary to discover, observe, and ascertain their peculiarities. This is the alchemistical period. The second period embraces the determination of the mutual relations or connections of these properties; this is the period of phlogistic chemistry. In the third period, in which we now are, we ascertain by weight and measure and express in numbers the degree in which the properties of bodies are mutually dependent. The inductive sciences begin with the substance itself, then come just ideas, and lastly, mathematics are called in, and with the aid of numbers, complete the work.”

Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) German chemist

Familiar Letters on Chemistry, Tr. Blythe, 4th ed., London, 1859, p. 60 as quoted by John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=xqwQAAAAYAAJ (1903).

Men , Law , Mathematics , Idea

“Let’s not lose our perspective here. The Smokies achieved their natural splendor without the guidance of a national park service and don’t actually need it now.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 94)

“The concept of God was for a long time the place where the idea was kept alive that there are other norms besides those to which nature and society give expression in their operation.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

"Thoughts on Religion," Critical Theory: Selected Essays (1995), p. 129.

God , Idea , Time

“Dicko: Hayley, hair looks great by the way. Curls are good for you. I've got to say, look, I don't think you're a natural at this. You have to work really hard at everything you do and it's pleasing to see the way you're moving in the right direction. I think that was a really tough song to chose. Some of those timings in there, it was a bit like a maths exam at times for me trying to keep up. But I think it's a really good style for you. That type of song. That type of artist, George as well. The only problem I have with you, I've had it for the past few weeks, is I can see you concentrating and I can hear you thinking about what you're trying to do as you're doing it and I don't know. Sometimes I just think if you could switch all of that off and just let yourself go a bit I think you'd be a lot better for it. But that was very good.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 8

Way , Problem , Thinking , Time

“The more jealousy one has in his nature the more critical he is of those who have accomplished things.
If you are critical and mouthing negativisms it could be that your own failures are caused by a mixed-up, hate-filled mind. A sign of mental health is to be glad when others achieve, and to rejoice with them. Never compare yourself or your achievements with others, but make your comparisons only with yourself. Maintain a constant competition with yourself This will force you to attain higher standards and achievements. do not defeat yourself by holding spiteful or jealous thoughts. Think straight, with love, hope and optimism and you will attain victory in life.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Stay Alive All Your Life (1957)

Love , Life , Hate , Health

“Now, as Emerson turned to the active ministry, he tried emphatically to recover the original fervor of a Paul. When he later came to a parting of the ways with the church, he would see himself as a modern Luther. This personal identification with the great is for Emerson at bottom a hunger for a religion by revelation to us—as he would say in Nature—and not just the history of someone else’s religion. He wished to feel Christianity with feelings as strong as Paul’s. He did not wish merely to report Paul’s feeling as though such things were impossible in the modern world.”

Robert D. Richardson (1934) American historian

Source: Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995), p. 90

Hunger , World , Religion , Way

“There's alcohol in plant and tree.
It must be Nature's plan
That there should be in fair degree
Some alcohol in Man.”

A. P. Herbert (1890–1971) British politician

Number Nine ([1951] 1952) p. 151.

Alcohol , Tree

“When you think of the visual style, when you think of the visual language of a film there tends to be a natural separation of the visual style and the narrative elements, but with the great, whether it is Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick or Hitchcock what you're seeing is inseparable, a vital relationship between the images and the story he's telling.”

Christopher Nolan (1970) British–American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Chistopher Nolan and David Fincher featurette on Movieweb http://www.movieweb.com/movie/the-tree-of-life-2011/christopher-nolan-and-david-fincher-featurette

Thinking

“I'm becoming very interested in non-Western things, and in Europe a lot of what's offered to me is the Western tradition I've grown up with. Now I've got to find a way out, but the problem is that the piano is just about as Western as you can get. The piano's my instrument, and I wouldn't want it any other way, but I'm gravitating quite naturally towards things that have developed my sense of rhythm. "I've come to all this incredible Indian classical music and its more modern formations late in the day; the Messiaen I've played has led me down that road, and I've been following my nose all the time.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Times, 15/12/1998
Musician's life

Music , Way , Problem , Sense

“The process of transforming all direct experience into the supreme symbolic expression, language, monopolizes life. Like ideology, language conceals and justifies, compelling us to suspend our doubts about its claim to validity. It is the root of civilization, the dynamic code of civilization's alienated nature. As the paradigm of ideology, language stands behind all of the massive legitimation necessary to hold civilization together. It remains for us to clarify what forms of nascent domination engendered this justification, made language necessary as basic means of repression”

John Zerzan (1943) American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author

Elements of Refusal (1988)

Life

“Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected. … The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.””

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 1, "Atoms in Motion"; section 1-1, "Introduction"; p. 1-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Truth , Law , Knowledge , Learning

“Conceptual graphs are system of logic based on the existential graphs of Charles Sanders Peirce and the semantic networks of artificial intelligence. The purpose of the system is to express meaning in a form that is logically precise, humanly readable, and computationally tractable. With their direct mapping to language, conceptual graphs can serve as an intermediate language for translating computer-oriented formalisms to and from natural languages. With their graphic representation, they can serve as a readable, but design and specification language.”

John F. Sowa (1940) artificial intelligence researcher

Source: Conceptual graphs for knowledge representation, 1993, p. 3-51. cited in: Bernhard Ganter, Gerd Stumme, Rudolf Wille (2005) Formal Concept Analysis: Foundations and Applications. p. 87

Intelligence