“The distinction, between what is done by labour, and what is done by nature, is not always observed.”

— James Mill

'Labour produces its effects only by conspiring with the laws of nature.'
It is found that the agency of man can be traced to very simple elements. He does nothing but produce motion. He can move things towards one another, and he can separate them from one another. The properties of matter perform the rest.
Ch 1 : Production https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/mill-james/ch01.htm
Elements of Political Economy (1821)

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James Mill 12

Scottish historian, economist, political theorist and philo… 1773–1836

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“The distinction, between what is done by labour, and what is done by nature, is not always observed.
Labour produces its effects only by conspiring with the laws of nature.
It is found that the agency of man can be traced to very simple elements. He does nothing but produce motion. He can move things towards one another, and he can separate them from one another. The properties of matter perform the rest.”

James Mill (1773–1836) Scottish historian, economist, political theorist and philosopher

Ch 1 : Production https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/mill-james/ch01.htm 
Elements of Political Economy (1821)

“Surely then some distinction between the different kinds of labour, with reference to their different effects on national wealth, must be admitted to be not only useful, but necessary; and if so, the question is what this distinction should be, and where the line between the different kinds of labour should be drawn.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 43
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“The activity of observing establishes a distinction in a space that remains unmarked, the space from which the observer executes the distinction. The observer must employ a distinction in order to generate the difference between unmarked and marked space, and between himself and what he indicates. The whole point of this distinction (its intention) is to mark something as distinct from something else. At the same time, the observer — in drawing a distinction - makes himself visable to others. He betrays his presence - even if a further distinction is required to distinguish him.”

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist

Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 54 as cited in: Pamela M. Lee (2004) Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960's. p. 66.

“[T]he real business of men, what promotes their prosperity, is always better done by themselves than by any few separate and distinct individuals, acting as a government in the name of the whole.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Travels in the North of Germany (1820), p. 292, Vol. 1

“The first and most important quality of all scientific ways of thinking must be the clear distinction between the outer object of observation and the subjective nature of the observer.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Where is science going? The Universe in the light of modern physics. (1932)

“We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against Nature.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Eating of Flesh, Tract 1
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

The Rediscovery of the Mind, p. 97, MIT Press (1992) ISBN 0-262-69154-X.

“No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX

“The fact of the matter is, you don't give up what's natural. Anything I've fantasized about, I've done.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

Los Angeles Times (1989)

“We observe things in the present and then, okay, we're assuming that that's always happened in the past, and we're going to figure out how this happened. You see? There is a difference between what you observed and what happened in the past.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

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