“Nature has no use for the plea that one 'did not know'.”

—  C.G. Jung

Last update May 26, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nature has no use for the plea that one 'did not know'." by C.G. Jung?
C.G. Jung photo
C.G. Jung 257
Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytic… 1875–1961

Related quotes

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“Nature has given us two ears but only one mouth.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book 6, chapter 24.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

Gertrude Stein photo

“Alice Toklas' father had almost once had an oil well they dug and dug but naturally the oil did not gush, naturally not these things never do happen to any one one knows, if it could happen to them you would not be very likely to know them most naturally not.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 4

Paul Gauguin photo

“Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 39: 'Huysmans and Redon', (written in 1889, published 1953)

Ovid photo

“Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear.”
Usus communis aquarum est. Nec solem proprium natura nec aera fecit nec tenues undas

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book VI, 349-351; translation by Michael Simpson https://books.google.ca/books?id=hDPmwbCSSPEC
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

“The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter III, POWER AND LIBERTY A THEORY OF POLITICS, p. 59.

T.S. Eliot photo

“Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.”

T.S. Eliot book Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Source: Selected Essays

Claude Lévi-Strauss photo

“Nature has only a limited number of procedures at her disposal and that the kinds of procedure which Nature uses at one level of reality are bound to reappear at different levels.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

Source: Myth and Meaning (1978), Chapter 1 : The Meeting of Myth and Science

Eric Hoffer photo

“Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 36
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Arthur Ponsonby photo

“This is no plea that lies should not be used in war-time, but a demonstration of how lies must be used in war-time. If the truth were told from the outset, there would be no reason and no will for war.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction
Context: Between nations, where the consequences are vital, where the destiny of countries and provinces hangs in the balance, the lives and fortunes of millions are affected and civilization itself is menaced, the most upright men honestly believe that there is no depth of duplicity to which they may not legitimately stoop. They have got to do it. The thing cannot go on without the help of lies.
This is no plea that lies should not be used in war-time, but a demonstration of how lies must be used in war-time. If the truth were told from the outset, there would be no reason and no will for war.
Anyone declaring the truth: "Whether you are right or wrong, whether you win or lose, in no circumstances can war help you or your country," would find himself in gaol very quickly. In war-time, failure to lie is negligence, the doubting of a lie a misdemeanour, the declaration of the truth a crime.

Related topics