“It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.”
Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 162
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Simon Blackburn 29
British academic philosopher 1944Related quotes

“When the center does not hold, the circle falls apart.”
This is a paraphrase of lines in "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats.
Misattributed

“Things fall apart;
the center cannot hold…”
Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Nature it seems also produces oxides of nitrogen. As a matter of fact nature produces 97% of them.”
Radio commentary (August 1975)
1970s
Context: Right now our main effort is directed toward oxides of nitrogen which comes out of automobile tail pipe and cause the photochemical reactions which color the air a muddy brown. There is no question they are a problem in areas like L. A. where we have a more or less constant temperature inversion trapping the air. But Dr. [John] McKetta lists the findings in his field as his no. 3 shock & surprise. Nature it seems also produces oxides of nitrogen. As a matter of fact nature produces 97% of them.

In "How Little I Know", in Saturday Review (12 Nov 1966), 152. Excerpted in Buckminster Fuller and Answar Dil, Humans in Universe (1983), 31.
"The Comprehensive Man", Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (1963), 75-76.
1960s
Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 141 as cited in John Laurent (2003) Evolutionary Economics and Human Nature. p. 175

Source: Testimony: its Posture in the Scientific World (1859), p. 9

“ Princeton for the Nation's Service http://books.google.com/books?id=9vQtAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA1326&dq=%22It+has+never+been+natural%22” (21 October 1896)
1890s
Context: It has never been natural, it has seldom been possible, in this country for learning to seek a place apart and hold aloof from affairs. It is only when society is old, long settled to its ways, confident in habit, and without self-questioning upon any vital point of conduct, that study can affect seclusion and despise the passing interests of the day.