“[If] there is mercy in nature, it is accidental. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.”
"A Devil's Chaplain"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)
“This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”
River out of Eden (1995)
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Richard Dawkins 322
English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941Related quotes
“We’re neither good nor evil. We’re simply interested in things as they are.”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book II: The Black Cauldron (1965), Chapter 14
Paul J. McAuley
(1955) British writer
Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 1 “Camp Zero” (p. 38)
Wisława Szymborska
(1923–2012) Polish writer
"Lot's Wife"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Context: I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 27.
“In all things, there is neither male nor female.”
Gautama Buddha
(-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism
Vimalakriti Sutra, as quoted by Dr Bettany Hughes Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11785181/Feminism-started-with-the-Buddha-and-Confucius-25-centuries-ago.html
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“Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.”
Source: If Beale Street Could Talk
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
(1834–1902) British politician and historian
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Context: Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor; and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.