Quotes about plant (1056 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Led Zeppelin is the greatest. Robert Plant is one of the most original vocalists of our time. As a rock band they deserve the kind of success they're getting.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

As quoted in "Queen's Freddie Mercury Shopping For An Image In London" by Scott Cohen in Circus Magazine (April 1975).

Time , Success

“Today it is generally accepted that although the earliest humans probably ate some meat, it was unlikely to have played a major role in their diet. Plants would have been a much more important source of food.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Harvest for Hope (2006)

Food

“I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes and dream!”

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) Finnish children's writer and illustrator

Source: Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 1

Peace , Dreams

“If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears.”

Mahmoud Darwich (1941–2008) Palestinian writer

Tear , Tree

“[Hindustan] is a wonderful country. Compared with our countries it is a different world; its mountains, rivers, jungles and deserts, its towns, its cultivated lands, its animals and plants, its peoples and their tongues, its rains, and its winds, are all different. …Once the water of Sind is crossed, everything is in the Hindustan way, land, water, tree, rock, people and horde, opinion and custom.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

People , World , Way , Mountain

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Martin Luther
Misattributed

Deep , Inspirational , Faith , For Men

“Marijuana… That's not a drug, that's a plant.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Marijuana

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Bushrod Washington http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushrod_Washington (15 January 1783)
1780s

Friendship , Confidence

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Earliest record is in a circular letter from Hessian Church minister Karl Lotz on 5 October 1944 and modified from a quote by Johanan ben Zakai according to [Landes, Richard Allen, Heaven on Earth: The varieties of the millennial experience, USA, Oxford University Press, 2011, 978-0-19-975359-8, https://books.google.com/books?id=seS-0JTykgoC&pg=PA48, 48]

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Martin Luther / Disputed
Misattributed

Deep , Inspirational , Faith , For Men

“I'm very proud [to be part Italian] … Although I don't eat a lot of Italian things, because I'm vegan. … I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding. But I am a firm believer in eating a full plant-based, whole food diet that can expand your life length and make you an all-round happier person. It is tricky dining out, but I just stick to what I know – veggies, fruit and salad – then when I get home I'll have something else.”

Ariana Grande (1993) American singer-songwriter

"Ariana Grande: "I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding"" https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ariana-grande-i-love-animals-4754625, interview with the Mirror (5 December 2014)

Love , Life , People , Food

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

love , Relationship , Good Night , Good Morning

“My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Mother's Day , For Mother , Life

“It's like if you plant something in the concrete and if it grow and the rose petal got all kinda scratches and marks, you ain't gonna say "damn, look at all the scratches and marks on the rose that grew from the concrete.." you gonna be like "DAMN! a ROSE grew from the CONCRETE?”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“Nosoi?” Percy planted his feet in a fighting stance. “You know, I keep thinking, I have now killed every single thing in Greek mythology. But the list never seems to end.”

“You haven’t killed me yet,” I noted.

“Don’t tempt me.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Thinking , Fight

“It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Heartbreaking , Depressing , Sad

“Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Animals

“The more troops they send to Vietnam, the happier we will be, for we feel that we shall have them in our power, we can have their blood. So if you want to help the Vietnamese you should encourage the Americans to throw more and more soldiers into Vietnam. We want them there. They will be close to China. And they will be in our grasp. They will be so close to us, they will be our hostages. … We are planting the best kind of opium especially for the American soldiers in Vietnam.”

Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China

Reported in Christian Crusade Weekly (March 3, 1974) as having been said be Zhou to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1965; reported as a likely misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 133.
Disputed

Feeling , Help

“That electrical energy can be economically transmitted without wires to any terrestrial distance, I have unmistakably established in numerous observations, experiments and measurements, qualitative and quantitative. These have demonstrated that is practicable to distribute power from a central plant in unlimited amounts, with a loss not exceeding a small fraction of one per cent, in the transmission, even to the greatest distance, twelve thousand miles — to the opposite end of the globe.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Loss

“Ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances has been a particularly effective technology for inducing holotropic states of consciousness”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

The Cosmic Game - Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (1997), ISBN 0-7914-3876-7, p. 260.

“If you see a man dedicated to his stomach, crawling on the ground, you see a plant and not a man; or if you see a man bedazzled by the empty forms of the imagination, as by the wiles of Calypso, and through their alluring solicitations made a slave to his own senses, you see a brute and not a man. If, however, you see a philosopher, judging and distinguishing all things according to the rule of reason, him shall you hold in veneration, for he is a creature of heaven and not of earth; if, finally, a pure contemplator, unmindful of the body, wholly withdrawn into the inner chambers of the mind, here indeed is neither a creature of earth nor a heavenly creature, but some higher divinity, clothed in human flesh.”
Si quem enim videris deditum ventri, humi serpentem hominem, frutex est, non homo, quem vides; si quem in fantasiae quasi Calipsus vanis praestigiis cecucientem et subscalpenti delinitum illecebra sensibus mancipatum, brutum est, non homo, quem vides. Si recta philosophum ratione omnia discernentem, hunc venereris; caeleste est animal, non terrenum. Si purum contemplatorem corporis nescium, in penetralia mentis relegatum, hic non terrenum, non caeleste animal: hic augustius est numen humana carne circumvestitum.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

8. 40-42; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Imagination , Sense , Clothes

“For the history of the centuries that have passed since the birth of Christ nowhere reveals conditions like those of the present. There has never been such building and planting in the world. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth? There have arisen all kinds of art and sculpture, embroidery and engraving, the like of which has not been seen during the whole Christian era. In addition men are so delving into the mysteries of things that today a boy of twenty knows more than twenty doctors formerly knew.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent, Luke 21:25-36 (1522) http://www.trinitylutheranms.org/MartinLuther/MLSermons/mlserms_original.html, as translated in The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker

Men , World , Art , History

“If it was up to me, I'd get more oil tanker drivers drunk. I don’t value music much. I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney. I like Led Zeppelin, but I hate Robert Plant. I like the Who, but I hate Roger Daltrey.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in The NIRVANA Reader: 1988 – 1992 (Published December 2008).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Hate , Music

“In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad,” as if to say: “Let the one who wishes to have good fruit begin by planting a good tree.” Therefore, let the person who wishes to do good works being not with the works but with the believing, for this alone makes a person good.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), p. 76

Tree , Christ , Personality

“If you desire salvation, and want to know what to do, I advise you to go this very day to the Lord Jesus Christ, in the first private place you can find, and earnestly and heartily entreat him in prayer to save your soul. Tell him that you have heard that he receives sinners, and he has said, "Him that comes unto me I will in nowise cast out." Tell him that you are a poor vile sinner, and that you come to him on the faith of his own invitation. Tell him you put yourself wholly and entirely in his hands: that you feel vile and helpless, and hopeless in yourself: and that except he saves you, you have no hope of being saved at all. Beseech him to deliver you from guilt, the power, and the consequences of sin. Beseech him to pardon you, and wash you in his own blood. Beseech him to give you a new heart, and plant the Holy Spirit in your soul. Beseech him to give you grace and faith and will and power to be his disciple and servant from this day forever. Oh, reader, go this very day, and tell these things to the Lord Jesus Christ, if you are really in earnest about your soul.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

A Call To Prayer (first published 1840).

Faith , Hope , Feeling , Soul

“Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Speech at Goldman Awards, San Francisco (24 April 2006)

Tree , Water

“That is it. Did you notice those pumpkins and eggplants? They are big, aren’t they? The plants bear fruit because the flowers bloom. Not a single plant bears fruit without its flower. Now ponder deeply. The world says woman is unclean, but there is nothing unclean about woman. Man and woman are equally children of God and there is no discrimination. Woman has a duty, a duty to bear children. Her monthly period is the flower. Without the flower there is no fruit. Understand this well. Take the pumpkin; if its big flower is gone, that is the end of it. In many things, there are flowers that bear no fruit. But to bear fruit without any flower is impossible. Ponder deeply. There is nothing unclean about it.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

Anecdotes of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, from Anecdote 158, "Monthly Period is the Flower," p. 128.
Anecdotes of Oyasama

God , Children , World , Flowers

“Nothing ceases to exist – there is no example of this in nature... There is an entire mass of things that cannot rationally explained. There are newborn thoughts that have not yet found form. How foolish to deny the existence of the soul. After all, that a life has begun, that cannot be denied. It is necessary to believe in immortality, insofar as it can be demonstrated that the atoms of life or the spirit of life must continue to exist after the body’s death. But of what does it exist, this characteristic of holding a body together, causing matter to change and develop, this spirit of life? I felt it as a sensual delight that I should become one with – become this earth which is forever radiated by the sun in such a constant ferment and which lives – lives – and which will grow plants from my decaying body – trees and flowers – and the sun will warm them and I will exist in them – and nothing will perish – and that is eternity.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

T 2760 (January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 119
1880 - 1895

Life , Death , Soul , Flowers

“Herb… herb is a plant, you know? And when me check it, me can't find no reason. All them say is, 'it make you rebel'. Against what?”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

As recorded in filmed interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsfYAJ3dQyY&feature=player_embedded (1979) with Dylan Taite in Aotearoa, New Zealand
Context: All dese governments and dis this and that, these people that say they're here to help, why them say you cannot smoke the herb? Herb... herb is a plant, you know? And when me check it, me can't find no reason. All them say is, 'it make you rebel'. Against what?

“Imitate the oak trees, stripped naked by the dark winter frost; who recover in the spring to resemble a powerful towering statue of emerald; and relate to its origin, consisting of soil, clouds, and dead plants.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1979

Tree , Dead , Spring , Relation ships

“You, who must rely on others for their happiness, will perpetually be planted in a life of grief and sorrow.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1992

Happiness , Life

“Relationships, like an exquisite garden do not thrive on granite. Find the valley where the bright foliage permeates the landscape; this is where you plant the flowers.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1982

Flowers

“Stop watering dead plants…”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Water , Dead

“I want it said of me by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Recalled in a letter from Joshua Speed in Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 527 http://books.google.com/books?id=rywOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA527&dq=%22plucked+a+thistle+and+planted+a+flower%22
Posthumous attributions

Flowers

“On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree”

W.S. Merwin (1927–2019) American poet

World , Tree

“We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Love , Water

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me. That's what I'd hoped to give you forever”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Romantic , Love , Peace , Hope

“The seed must grow regardless
Of the fact that it’s planted in stone”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Funny

“Human beings, like plants, grow in the soil of acceptance, not in the atmosphere of rejection”

John Powell (1645–1713) American Jesuit priest

“Love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep on watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Relationship , Love , Thinking , Water

“I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.”

Saul Bellow book Henderson the Rain King

Source: Henderson the Rain King

Life , Understanding , Kiss

“Everytime I plant a seed, he say kill it before it grow, he say kill it before they grow.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“A weed is a plant out of place.”

Jim Thompson book The Killer Inside Me

Source: The Killer Inside Me

“Even as Japanese responders continue to do heroic work, we know that the damage to the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi plant poses a substantial risk to people who are nearby. That is why yesterday, we called for an evacuation of American citizens who are within 50 miles of the plant. This decision was based upon a careful scientific evaluation and the guidelines that we would use to keep our citizens safe here in the United States, or anywhere in the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on the natural and nuclear energy disasters in Japan (March 2011)

People , World , Decision

“Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Life , Dreams , Flowers

“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As quoted in Burlington Free Press [Vermont] (15 February 1980)
1980s

“I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,—Nature's good
And God's.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

A Soul's Tragedy (1846), Act. i.

God , Law , Beauty , Soul

“In manufacturing food for its own cells, the plant is producing a supply of food that will be available for the sustenance of animal cells also. Thus the entire animal World may be said to be a vast parasitic colony as absolutely dependent upon the vegetable colony for its essential food supplies as any other parasite is dependent upon its host.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

World , Food , Animals , Dependency

“This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all. To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons", p. 149.

Death , Music , Understanding , Thinking

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

Charles Dickens book Hard Times

Bk. I, Ch. 1
Hard Times (1854)

Life , Children , Girl , Boy

“Some more in this convention came from Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going to Missouri), not only to better their conditions, but also to get away from slavery. They have said so to me, and it is understood among us Kentuckians that we don't like it one bit. Now, can we, mindful of the blessings of liberty which the early men of Illinois left to us, refuse a like privilege to the free men who seek to plant Freedom's banner on our Western outposts? Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska? Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already oppressed race? "Woe unto them," it is written, "that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness which they have prescribed."”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Can we afford to sin any more deeply against human liberty?
From the Speech Delivered Before the First Republican State Convention of Illinois, Held at Bloomington (1856); found in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 (1894), J. M. Dent & Company, p. 56.
Also quoted by Ida Minerva Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources and Containing Many Speeches, Letters, and Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished, and Illustrated with Many Reproductions from Original Paintings, Photographs, etc, Volume 4 (1902), Lincoln History Society http://lincolnhistoricalsociety.org/; and by William C. Whitney; in The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, v. 2' . (1905) Lapsley, Arthur Brooks, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons
1850s

Men , Freedom , Strong

“The inner labor, the inner values, and the inner difficulties and frictions are too often unknown to those who decide for a vocation, and they are unable to correlate those essential factors of the life-calling with all that nature by inheritance, and society by surroundings and training, have planted and developed in their minds.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Source: Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913), p. 33

Life , Nature , Training

“Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 10.

Nature

“Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created.”

Patrick Moore (1923–2012) English writer, broadcaster and astronomer

As quoted in Ramez Naam (2013), "The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet", ISBN 978-1611682557 p. 235

“The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population. No other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population. No other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of 'Let alone' which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two standpoints. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.

Men , War , Peace , Justice

“Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him!”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

382
Daybreak — Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881)

“All I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy five by me, once Hokusai, today Gwakyo Rojin, the old man mad about drawing.”

Hokusai (1760–1849) Japanese artist

On one of his pseudonom, Gyakyo Rojin. He may have said the above in his late life definitely, since he began to use the name Gwakyo Rojin in 1843.
Attributed

Age , Nature , Bird , Fish

“It concerns the opinion of Naudin and Darwin that a single pollen grain does not suffice for fertilization of the ovule. I used Mirabilis Jalappa for an experimental plant, as Naudin had done; the result of my experiment is, however, completely different. From fertilizations with single pollen grains, I obtained eighteen well-developed seeds, and from these an equal number of plants, of which ten are already in bloom”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Letter VIII, July 3rd, 1870.
Letters to Carl Nägeli

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to James Madison http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-james-madison-12/ (2 March 1788)
1780s

“According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)

Life , Money , Disease , Law

“I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister, who said that confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe, however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit requires still more time to arrive at maturity.”

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

Source: Speech of 9 November 1867.

Confidence , Time

“Marxists should not be afraid of criticism from any quarter. Quite the contrary, they need to temper and develop themselves and win new positions in the teeth of criticism and in the storm and stress of struggle. Fighting against wrong ideas is like being vaccinated -- a man develops greater immunity from disease as a result of vaccination. Plants raised in hothouses are unlikely to be hardy. Carrying out the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend will not weaken, but strengthen, the leading position of Marxism in the ideological field.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

" VIII. ON "LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOSSOM LET A HUNDRED SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONTEND" AND "LONG-TERM COEXISTENCE AND MUTUAL SUPERVISION" "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 马克思主义者不应该害怕任何人批评。相反，马克思主义者就是要在人们的批评中间，就是要在斗争的风雨中间，锻炼自己，发展自己，扩大自己的阵地。同错误思想作斗争，好比种牛痘，经过了牛痘疫苗的作用，人身上就增强免疫力。在温室里培养出来的东西，不会有强大的生命力。实行百花齐放、百家争鸣的方针，并不会削弱马克思主义在思想界的领导地位，相反地正是会加强它的这种地位。

Disease , School , Flowers , Idea

“We imagine that the Creator at the actual time of creation made only one single species for each natural order of plants, this species being different in habit and fructification from all the rest. That he made these mutually fertile, whence out of their progeny, fructification having been somewhat changed, Genera of natural classes have arisen as many in number as the different parents, and since this is not carried further, we regard this also as having been done by His Omnipotent hand directly in the beginning; thus all Genera were primeval and constituted a single Species. That as many Genera having arisen as there were individuals in the beginning, these plants in course of time became fertilised by others of different sort and thus arose Species until so many were produced as now exist… these Species were sometimes fertilised out of congeners, that is other Species of the same Genus, whence have arisen Varieties.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Fundamenta fructificationis (1742). As quoted in John S. Wilkins (2009), "Species: A History of the Idea," University of California Press. p. 72

Imagination , Nature , Parent , Change

“A wise Government, allying itself with religion, would, as it were, consecrate society and sanctify the State. But how is this to be done? It is the problem of modern politics which has always most embarrassed statesmen. No solution of the difficulty can be found in salaried priesthoods and complicated concordats. But by the side of the State in England there has gradually arisen a majestic corporation wealthy, powerful, independent with the sanctity of a long tradition, yet sympathising with authority, and full of conciliation, even deference, to the civil power. Broadly and deeply planted in the land, mixed up with all our manners and customs, one of the main guarantees of our local government, and therefore one of the prime securities of our common liberties, the Church of England is part of our history, part of our life, part of England itself.”

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

Source: Speech in Aylesbury (14 November 1861), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 96

Life , Religion , History , Problem

“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.”

C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Closing lines of the preface.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)

Life , Appearance , Summer , Parting

“That is the secret of all culture: it does not provide artificial limbs, wax noses or spectacles—that which can provide these things is, rather, only sham education. Culture is liberation, the removal of all the weeds, rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender buds of the plant.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Untimely Meditations (1876)

Education , Secret

“I'm like the farmer, planting words, people are seeds/ My truth is the soil, help you grow like trees/ May the children come in all colors, change like leaves/ Behold before you, one of those prophetic MC's.”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

"Ghetto Prisoners"
On Albums, I Am... (1999)

Children , People , Truth , Color

“But for those folks who have lost their job right now because a plant went down the Mexico, that isn't going to make you feel better. And so what we have to do is to make sure that folks are trained for the jobs that are coming in now because some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back, and when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I'm not going to advertise for, that he's going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There's — there's no answer to it. He just says, "Well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal." Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn't have an answer.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Questions for President Obama: A Town Hall Special http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/questions-for-president-obama-a-town-hall-special/ with Gwen Ifill, PBS NewsHour (1 June 2016)
2016

Feeling , Past , Personality , Training

“Our nuclear power plants have undergone exhaustive study, and have been declared safe for any number of extreme contingencies. But when we see a crisis like the one in Japan, we have a responsibility to learn from this event, and to draw from those lessons to ensure the safety and security of our people.
That’s why I’ve asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do a comprehensive review of the safety of our domestic nuclear plants in light of the natural disaster that unfolded in Japan.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on the natural and nuclear energy disasters in Japan (March 2011)

People , Nature , Study , Light

“I'm asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change - but in yours. I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written: Yes, we can. Yes, we did. Yes, we can.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)

Faith , Justice , Idea , Change

“All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.”

Henri Bergson book Creative Evolution

Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271

Death , Time , Animals

“Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth. (Translation from Norman Lewis Torrey: Les Philosophes. The Philosophers of the Enlightenment and Modern Democracy. Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 277-8)”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Questions sur les miracles (1765)
Widely used paraphrase: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities".

Life , God , Fate , People

“It took me a long time to understand my water lilies... I planted them for pleasure, and grew them without thinking of painting them.. You don't absorb a landscape in a day... And then, all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond. I took up my palette.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Marc Elder, A Giverny, chez Claude Monet (1924); as quoted in: Vivian Russell (1998) Monet's Water Lilies: The Inspiration of a Floating World. p. 19
1920 - 1926

Pleasure , Understanding , Thinking , Water

“It is always the under side of the branches of any plant that show themselves to the wind which strikes it, and one leans against the other.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

“As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

As quoted at Penn State University Libraries http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/wlolita.htm.
On a Book Entitled Lolita (1956)

Animals , Drawing

“Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection in various forms. He appeared to Mary Magdalene so that they might take him for a gardener. Very ingeniously these manifestation of Jesus is to our minds difficult to penetrate. (He appears) as a gardener. The gardener plants seedlings in prepared soil. The soil must exert a physical and chemical influence so that the seed of the plant can grow. Yet this is not sufficient. The warmth and light of the sun must be added, together with rain, in order that growth may result. The seed of supernatural life, of sanctifying grace, cleanses from sin, so preparing the soul of man, and man must seek to preserve this life by his good works. He still needs the supernatural food, the body of the Lord, which received continually, develops and brings to completion of the life. So natural and supernatural must unite to the realization of the holiness to the people. Man must contribute his minimum work of toil, and God gives the growth. Truly, the seed, the talent, the grace of God is there, and man has simply to work, take the seeds to bring them to the bankers. So that we "may have life, and abundantly."”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Mendel makes several allusions to biblical verses, including John 20:15, Matthew 25:26 and John 10:10.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Jesus erschien den Jüngern nach der Auferstehung in verschiedener Gestalt. Der Maria Magdalena erschien er so, daß sie ihn für einen Gärtner halten mochte. Sehr sinnreich sind diese Erscheinungen Jesu und unser Verstand vermag sie schwer zu durchdringen. (Er erscheint) als Gärtner. Dieser pflanzt den Samen in den zubereiteten Boden. Das Erdreich muss physikalisch-chemisch Einwirkung ausüben, damit der Same aufgeht. Doch reicht das nicht hin, es muß noch Sonnenwärme und Licht hinzukommen nebst Regen, damit das Gedeihen zustandekommt. Das übernatürliche Leben in seinem Keim, der heiligmachenden Gnade wird in die von der Sünde gereinigte, also vorbereitete Seele des Menschen hineingesenkt und es muß der Mensch durch seine guten Werke dieses Leben zu erhalten suchen. Es muss noch die übernatürliche Nahrung dazukommen, der Leib des Herrn, der das Leben weiter erhält, entwickelt und zur Vollendung bringt. So muss Natur und Übernatur sich vereinigen, um das Zustandekommen der Heiligkeit des Menschen. Der Mensch muß sein Scherflein Arbeit hinzugeben, und Gott gibt das Gedeihen. Es ist wahr, den Samen, das Talent, die Gnade gibt der liebe Gott, und der Mensch hat bloß die Arbeit, den Samen aufzunehmen, das Geld zu Wechslern zu tragen. Damit wir »das Leben haben und im Überflusse haben.

Life , God , People , Food

“The sun gives spirit and life to plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), VIII Botany for Painters and Elements of Landscape Painting

Life , Sun

“As soon as it is completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

On the Wardenclyffe Tower, in "The Future of the Wireless Art" in Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony (1908)

Music , Business , Distant , Appearance

“But now the seeds are planted and the gates are opened wide
The old ways are forgotten there is no place left to hide
And the legacy I'm leaving you is not very hard to find
You'll see it all around you at this crossroads of time
In the sweet soil its a growing at the crossroads of time”

Gordon Lightfoot (1938) Canadian singer-songwriter

Crossroads, Track 4, United Artists
The Way I Feel (1967)

Way , Time

“When the great truth accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections, faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere — on sea, or land, or high in the air — humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick: See the excitement coming!”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

"The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires" in Electrical World and Engineer (5 March 1904)

Truth , Secret , Imagination , Motivation

“Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)

Tree , Dance

“First, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow. And reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Nature , Animals

“Some eat animals, some eat the plants. None can survive without eating either of them. The doctrine of Ahimsa is difficult to sustain.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Flowers of Wisdom

Animals

“O mortals, from your fellows' blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:
While corn, and pulse by Nature are bestow'd,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While labour'd gardens wholesom herbs produce,
And teeming vines afford their gen'rous juice;
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,
But tam'd with fire, or mellow'd by the frost;
While kine to pails distended udders bring,
And bees their hony redolent of Spring;
While Earth not only can your needs supply,
But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;
A guiltless feast administers with ease,
And without blood is prodigal to please.”
Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis corpora! sunt fruges, sunt deducentia ramos pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae, sunt herbae dulces, sunt quae mitescere flamma mollirique queant; nec vobis lacteus umor eripitur, nec mella thymi redolentia florem: prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia tellus suggerit atque epulas sine caede et sanguine praebet.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book XV, 75–82 (from Wikisource); on vegetarianism, as the following quote
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Food , Spring , Nature , Bee

“America has never come easy. Our freedom, our democracy, has never been easy. Sometimes we stumble; we make mistakes; we get frustrated or discouraged. But for more than two hundred years, we have put those things aside and placed our collective shoulder to the wheel of progress: to create and build and expand the possibilities of individual achievement; to free other nations from tyranny and fear; to promote justice and fairness and equality under the law, so that the words set to paper by our founders are made real for every citizen. The America we want for our kids -- a rising America where honest work is plentiful and communities are strong; where prosperity is widely shared and opportunity for all lets us go as far as our dreams and toil will take us -- none of it is easy. But if we work together; if we summon what is best in us […], with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow, I know it's within our reach. Believe it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Sixth State of the Union Address (January 2014)

Fear , Justice , Law , Dreams

“Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,

And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,

Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!”

Al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Medieval Arab philosopher

As quoted in "The Meditations of Al-Maʿarri", Studies in Islamic Poetry (1921) by R. A. Nicholson, Verse 197, pp. 134–135

Food , Way , Flowers , Bird

“It delights me even more, though, to hear that my nameless cosmic monsters have an air of originality about them! Shapeless, unheard-of creatures are not original with me; for although Poe did not use them, they figure quite widely in minor horror-writing since his time. Usually they tend to be exaggerations of certain known life-forms such as insects, poisonous plants, protozoa, & the like, although a few writers break away wholly from terrestrial analogy & depict things as abstractly cosmic as luminous protoplasmic globes. If I have gone beyond these, it is only subtly & atmospherically—in details, & in occasional imputations of geometrical, biological, & physico-chemical properties definitely outside the realm of matter as understood by us. Most of my monsters fail altogether to satisfy my sense of the cosmic—the abnormally chromatic entity in The Colour Out of Space being the only one of the lot which I take any pride in.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 316
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , Sense , Time

“We must plant the sea and herd its animals … using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about — farming replacing hunting.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Interview (17 July 1971); Cited in: Elizabeth Brubaker et al. (2008) Breath of Fresh Air, p. 180

Animals , Sea

“Because a long stay in the same place does not add to one’s own happiness and might disturb the serene ascetics; the deer are eaten up and the plants and herbs depleted.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

Vyasa's advise to the Pandavas, his grandsons who were staying in the forest. Quoted in p. 49.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

Happiness

“More often than not, the classes of objects encountered in the real physical world do not have precisely deﬁned criteria of membership. For example, the class of animals clearly includes dogs, horses, birds, etc. as its members, and clearly excludes such objects as rocks, ﬂuids, plants, etc. However, such objects as starfish, bacteria, etc. have an ambiguous status with respect to the class of animals. The same kind of ambiguity arises in the case of a number such as 10 in relation to the “class” of all real numbers which are much greater than 1.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Source: 1960s, Fuzzy sets (1965), p. 338

World , Dogs , Bird , Animals

“If each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound — then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature — which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)

Law , Nature , Bird , Sense

“Now that we're 18 days before the election, Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year. He told folks he was the ideal candidate for the Tea Party, now he's telling folks, "What? Who me?" He's forgetting what his own positions are. And he's betting that you will too. I mean, he's changing up so much and backtrackin' and sidesteppin'. We've gotta name this condition that he's going though. I think it's called Romnesia. That's what it's called. I think that's what he's goin' through. Now, I'm not a medical doctor, but I do wanna go over some of the symptoms with you, because I wanna make sure nobody else catches it.You know, if you say you're for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you'd sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia.If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.If you say you'll protect a woman's right to choose, but you stand up in a primary debate and say that you'd be delighted to sign a law outlying — outlawing that right to choose in all cases — man, you definitely got Romnesia.Now, this extends to other issues. If you say earlier in the year, "I'm gonna give a tax cut to the top 1%", and in a debate you say, "I don't know anything about giving tax cuts to rich folks", you need to get a thermometer, take your temperature, because you've probably got Romnesia.If you say that you're a champion of the coal industry when, while you were governor, you stood in front of a coal plant and said "This plant will kill you" —[audience: Romnesia! ] that's some Romnesia.And if you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you've made over the six years you've been running for President, here's the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions. We can fix you up.. We've got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Campaign rally http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/10/19/remarks-president-campaign-event-fairfax-va, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia,
2012

Women , Disease , Law , Support

“Nothing's Planted, I don't have a thing in the ground.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

As quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 612

Pain , World , Time , Weather

“Plant your lands and reap; these be your best gold fields, for all must eat while they live.”

Luís María Peralta

Archives Santa Cruz, MS., 107; quoted in Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. VI (1890), ch. V, pp. 65-66

“If you condemn painting, which is the only imitator of all visible works of nature, you will certainly despise a subtle invention which brings philosophy and subtle speculation to the consideration of the nature of all forms — seas and plains, trees, animals, plants and flowers — which are surrounded by shade and light. And this is true knowledge and the legitimate issue of nature; for painting is born of nature — or, to speak more correctly, we will say it is the grandchild of nature; for all visible things are produced by nature, and these her children have given birth to painting. Hence we may justly call it the grandchild of nature and related to God.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting

God , Children , Flowers , Birth

“I have obtained… spark discharges extending through more than one hundred feet and carrying currents of one thousand amperes, electromotive forces approximating twenty million volts, chemically active streamers covering areas of several thousand square feet, and electrical disturbances in the natural media surpassing those caused by lightning, in intensity.
Whatever the future may bring, the universal application of these great principles is fully assured, though it may be long in coming. With the opening of the first power plant, incredulity will give way to wonderment, and this to ingratitude, as ever before.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Way , Nature , Universe , Future

“Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of 'Fire!' In the situation that existed in the great depression, things could only be set right by causing the idle plant to work again. But everybody felt that to do so was to risk almost certain loss. Within the framework of classical economics there was no solution. Roosevelt saved the situation by bold and heretical action. He spent billions of public money and created a huge public debt, but by so doing he revived production and brought his country out of the depression. Businessmen, who in spite of such a sharp lesson continued to believe in old-fashioned economics, were infinitely shocked, and although Roosevelt saved them from ruin, they continued to curse him and to speak of him as 'the madman in the White House.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Except for Fabre's investigation of the behavior of insects, I do not know any equally striking example of inability to learn from experience.
Part II: Man and Man, Ch. 14: Economic Co-operation and Competition, pp. 132–3
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)

Death , Money , People , Way

“In the beginning was boredom, commonly called chaos. God, bored with boredom, created the earth, the sky, the waters, the animals, the plants, Adam and Eve; and the latter, bored in their turn in paradise, ate the forbidden fruit. God became bored with them and drove them out of Eden.”

Alberto Moravia book L'Ennui

In principio, dunque, era la noia, volgarmente chiamata caos. Iddio, annoiandosi della noia, creò la terra, il cielo, l'acqua, gli animali, le piante, Adamo ed Èva; i quali ultimi, annoiandosi a loro volta in paradiso, mangiarono il frutto proibito. Iddio si annoiò di loro e li cacciò dall'Eden.
La noia (Milano: Bompiani, 1960) pp. 10-11; Angus Davidson (trans.) Boredom (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999) p. 8.

God , Water , Animals

“It is understood from this verse that the predominating deity of the Moon is the maintainer of all the trees and plants throughout the universe. It is due to the moonshine that trees and plants grow very luxuriantly. Therefore how can we accept the so-called scientists whose Moon expeditions have informed us that there are no trees or vegetation on the Moon? Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura says, somo vrksadhisthata sa eva vrksanam raja: Soma, the predominating deity of the Moon, is the king of all vegetation. How can we believe that the maintainer of vegetation has no vegetation on his own planet?”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 6, Chapter 4, verse 6, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/6/4/6
Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Tree , Universe