Quotes about plant
page 11

“What, then, is the animal? First of all, a system of plant-souls. The unity of those plant-souls, which unity nature itself produces, is the soul of the animal. Its world is therefore partly that of the plants — its nourishment, for instance, it receives partly through synthesis from vegetable, and through analysis from animal nature — and partly that of the animals, whereof we shall speak directly. Each product of nature is an organically in-itself completed totality in space, like the plant. Hence, the unknown x which we are looking for must also be such a whole or totality, and in so far it must also have a principle of organization, a sphere and central point of this organization; in short, the same which we have called the soul of the plant, which thus remains common to both. … The animal is a system of plant-souls, and the plant is a separated, isolated part of an animal. Both reciprocally affect each other.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Science of Rights 1796, P. 502, 503, 504

Soul, Nature, Animals, World

“Imagine being told that it hadn’t mattered whether the Christians or the Moors got Spain! I can still remember my shock. I got over it fairly quickly, though, because by that time I had learned enough history to know that in the long run it never mattered a damn where any particular race of people planted its collective ass.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

Imagination, Time, History, People

“Were an impartial and competent observer of the state of society in these middle colonies asked, whence it happens that Virginia and Maryland (which were the first planted, and which are superior to many colonies and inferior to none, in point of natural advantage) are still so exceedingly behind most of the other British trans-Atlantic possessions in all those improvements which bring credit and consequence to a country?”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

he would answer - They are so, because they are cultivated by slaves. … Some loss and inconvenience would, no doubt, arise from the general abolition of slavery in these colonies: but were it done gradually, with judgement, and with good temper, I have never yet seen it satisfactorily proved that such inconvenience would either be great or lasting. … If ever these colonies, now filled with slaves, be improved to their utmost capacity, an essential part of the improvement must be the abolition of slavery. Such a change would hardly be more to the advantage of the slaves, than it would be to their owners."
"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

Country, Nature

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. … The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. … A land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 203-204.

Communication, Animals, Water, Parting

“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

Singing, God, Tree, Beauty

“In the fields workers are planting maize seeds under the direction of an overseer with staff and headdress. Close-up of a worker’s face. Whatever it is that makes a man a man, all feeling and all soul has gone out in that face. Nothing is left but body needs and body pleasures. I have seen faces like that in the back wards of state hospitals for the insane. Faces that live to eat, shit and masturbate.”

William S. Burroughs book The Wild Boys

The Wild Boys (1971)

Pleasure, Soul, Making love, Feeling

“The psychology of the times following the publication of Darwin's works was so strong that most thinking men could not then be brought to admit that there were any alternative explanations of the phenomena of progressive development in life — human, animal, or plant life — to the scheme of transformism which he set forth.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 3
Man in Evolution (1941)

Time, Strong, Animals, Thinking

“This is rural America. We’re rich in self-sustaining nature and neighbors helping neighbors but we don’t have resources, I’ve got a car full of toys we’re taking to a school where 60 kids weren’t going to have Christmas. [...] Now they’re closing the coal-fired plants, and those tradesmen and -women are being thrown out of those highly skilled jobs, and it’s having a terrible impact.”

Robin L. Webb (1960) American politician

About the poverty increase in Carter County, as quoted in Poverty Grew in One-Third of Counties Despite Strong National Economy https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/12/19/poverty-grew-in-one-third-of-counties-despite-strong-national-economy (December 19, 2019) by Tim Henderson, The Pew Charitable Trusts.

School, Help, Nature, Self-confidence

“When I made the switch to a plant based diet, people, they were like, "I don't know how you're gonna lift that much weight." And, "You're not gonna be eating anything, you're just gonna eat grass. Like, how you gonna be strong?" I qualified for my third Olympic team, you know what I'm saying? I broke two American records. I won at the Pan-Am games. I was like, "Man." Like, "I think, I should've done this a long while ago."”

Kendrick Farris (1986) American weightlifter

Like, "Why didn't I research this before?"
Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Strong, Game, Grass, People

“When you eat a healthy, whole foods, plant-based diet, it changes the expression of your genes. It turns on the good genes, turns off the bad genes. Your genes are a predisposition, but your genes are not your fate. And even if your mother and your father and aunts and uncles all died of diabetes, cancer, even heart disease, it doesn't mean that you need to.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Food, Fate, Bad luck, Heart

“If people adopted a plant-based diet, the changes we would see in our individual health, in our national health situation and in this physical, environmental world we live in, would be so profound!”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

World, People, Health, Change

“Is it possible to be a healthy vegetarian or vegan? I became vegan, let’s see, 32 years ago now. And, I run several miles every day, I go biking 40, 50 miles through the countryside, I work long hours, I feel great, it’s nice waking up with a light, trim body every day. And so many of my vegan friends, and patients, you know, are thriving, ever since their transition to a vegan diet. So, yes, and I’ve seen vegan moms go through healthy vegan pregnancies, deliver healthy vegan children, and raise them to tall, full-size, intelligent vegan adults. And, yes, certainly, all the nutrients are there in the plant kingdom to do this.”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film Cowspiracy by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (2014).

Light, Intelligence, Children, Moms

“If we all, as a society, did go vegan, and we moved away from eating animal foods and toward a plant-based diet, what would happen? If we didn’t kill all these cows and eat them, then we wouldn’t have to breed all these cows because we’re breeding cows, and chickens, and pigs, and fish. We’re breeding them over and over again, relentlessly. So if we didn’t breed them, then we wouldn’t have to feed them. If we didn’t have to feed them, then we wouldn’t have to devote all this land to growing grains, and legumes, and so forth to feed to them. And so then the forests could come back. Wildlife could come back. The oceans would come back. The rivers would run clean again. The air would come back. Our health would return.”

Will Tuttle (1953) American writer, speaker and musician

Interview in the documentary-film Cowspiracy by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (2014).

Animals, Fish, Health, Food

“When we think about the diet of early humans, we're often drawn to thinking about meat, but plant foods were more important than the archaeological record gives credit for. The food that could be relied on wherever you were was the plant food.”

Richard Wrangham (1948) British Primatologist

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Thinking, Food

“DESOLATE are the mansions of the fair, the stations in Minia, where they rested, and those where they fixed their abodes! Wild are the hills of Goul, and deserted is the summit of Rijaam.
The canals of Rayaan are destroyed: the remains of them are laid bare and smoothed by the floods, like characters engraved on the solid rocks.
Dear ruins! Many a year has been closed, many a month, holy and unhallowed, has elapsed, since I exchanged tender vows with their fair inhabitants!
The rainy constellations of spring have made their hills green and luxuriant: the drops from the thunder-clouds have drenched them with profuse as well as with gentle showers:
Showers, from every nightly cloud, from every cloud veiling the horizon at day-break, and from every evening cloud, responsive with hoarse murmurs.
Here the wild eringo-plants raise their tops: here the antelopes bring forth their young, by the sides of the valley: and here the ostriches drop their eggs.
The large-eyed wild-cows lie suckling their young, a few days old—their young, who will soon become a herd on the plain.
The torrents have cleared the rubbish, and disclosed the traces of habitations, as the reeds of a writer restore effaced letters in a book;
Or as the black dust, sprinkled over the varied marks on a fair hand, brings to view with a brighter tint the blue stains of woad.
I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants; but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 41-42. First Stanza, lines 1-10 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up <br class="br">The Poem of Labīd (translated by C. J. Lyall in 1881)

Question, Spring, Lie, Books

“One activity initiates another; the largest individual force maintains those more active adjustments, "simultaneous and successive," between the internal and external, which indicate the most vigorous life. We must look, then, to something more than a direct antagonism, between growth and reproduction, to account for unlikeness's of the sexes in plant or animal.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 608
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Animals, Sex, Life, Success

“I grew up in Kentucky so that's the land of casseroles and barbecue and meat. So when I transitioned over to an entirely plant-based diet, I wasn't sure if I was gonna survive. And I actually became like a machine. […] I just immediately started feeling like I could go kick ass and not need the recovery in between. It was mind-blowing to my teammates. […] I was about ready to retire, as I should've been, because I'm like 35 at that time. But I just kept getting better, and so they had to take me to the Olympics. We were complete underdogs as Team USA. In our semi-final ride against Australia, we were down by 1.7 seconds. No one's ever come back in team pursuit from a deficit that large. And we beat them on the line by eight one-hundredths of a second. I was 39 and a half years old when I stood on the Olympic podium. I'm still the oldest person, male or female, to even go to the Olympic Games in my event. My diet was the most powerful aspect to me being able to perform and produce for the US team at the Olympic Games.”

Dotsie Bausch (1973) cyclist

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Personality, Game, Time, Feeling

“In the NFL, the injury rate is a 100 percent. It's a violent game. And so, how you respond to injury and how quickly you heal from injury is important because if you're not on the field, you're not helping the team. I was reading the research and seeing that a plant-based diet could be beneficial, specifically for recovery. And so I started incorporating it and I started seeing really good results with it. I was recovering better. I wasn't getting as sore. I was a lot less swollen. Basically, to confirm what I was feeling, I got my blood tested. Six months after being on the diet, all of my markers were down, my blood pressure, my cholesterol. But the main thing I was looking at was the inflammation marker in your blood and mine was... almost obsolete. It wasn't there anymore.”

Derrick Morgan (American football) (1989) Player of American football

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Help, Game, Feeling, Reading

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

History, Question, Nature, Universe

“When you're treating diseases with drugs, you know there's one drug you take for cholesterol, a different class of drugs you take for high blood pressure, different class of drugs you take for diabetes, but, with diet, a plant-based diet affects all these diseases. One diet to kinda rule them all.”

Michael Greger (1972) American physician, author, and vegan health activist

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

Disease

“Life on Earth is dependent on nature to survive.
Ecological balance comes naturally.
Planting trees and flowers can maintain a good environment.
Reproduction of saplings can benefit the earth.”

Deng Feng-Zhou (1949) Chinese poet, Local history writer, Taoist Neidan academics and Environmentalist.

(zh-TW) 萬物依存大自然，平衡動態順其緣。
栽花植樹維佳境，繁殖新生種福田。

"Reproduction" (繁殖新生)

Source: Deng Feng-Zhou, "Deng Feng-Zhou Classical Chinese Poetry Anthology". Volume 6, Tainan, 2018: 87.

Tree, Dependency, Nature, Flowers

“This is my child . I planted it . I saw it grow . I loved it . Don't cut it down .”

R. K. Narayan book Malgudi Days

Malgudi Days(1943)

Love, Making love

“…every day I’m convinced that if one is firmly planted in his own world, the work necessarily appeals to a greater number of people. In that sense, I want to profit from my Caribbean self and incorporate it into my literature, hoping to give testimony to who and what I am…”

Luis Rafael Sánchez (1936) Puerto Rican playwright and novelist

On the lack of ubiquity regarding Puerto Rican writings in “Luis Rafael Sánchez: Counterpoints" https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00096005/00024/14j (Sargasso, 1984)

People, Hope, Self-confidence, Literature

“…I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…”

Jackie Kay (1961) Poet and novelist

On the living nature of stories in “The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2016/03/the-srb-interview-jackie-kay/ in the Scottish Review of Books (2016 Mar 21)

People, Flowers, Memory, Idea

“I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are. Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

'A savagely broken food system': Cory Booker wants radical reform ... now https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/a-savagely-broken-food-system-cory-booker-wants-radical-reform-now. The Guardian, September, 15 2020 <br class="br">2020

Betrayal, Food, Suffering, Communication

“Kill the losers. You have to be ruthless in weeding out the sickly plants so that the best specimens can flourish.”

Paul Sloane (1950) British author and puzzle designer

Source: The Innovative Leader, 2007, p. 129

“I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies—in great towns and great crowds. It is a plant that takes times and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash," as we elegantly call it—an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob.”

Henry James book The Awkward Age

Said by Vanderbank in Book I, ch. II.
The Awkward Age (1899)

Time, Friendship

“I am confident that the enactment of the right bill next year will in due course increase our gross national product by several times the amount of taxes actually cut. Profit margins will be improved and both the incentive to invest and the supply of internal funds for investment will be increased. There will be new interest in taking risks, in increasing productivity, in creating new jobs and new products for long-term economic growth. Other national problems, moreover, will be aided by full employment. It will encourage the location of new plants in areas of labor surplus and provide new jobs for workers that we are retraining and facilitate the adjustment which will be necessary under our new trade expansion bill and reduce a number of government expenditures.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Problem, Confidence, Time, Self-confidence

“Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital. The Government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plant and equipment. [...] For all these reasons, next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Business, Home, Personality, Effort

“When was the last time anybody made a billion of anything safely and reliably? Never. Plants go offline, crap breaks, you can't find a part. There's a ton of things that can go wrong just on manufacturing”

Arthur Caplan (1950) American academic

a billion COVID-19 vaccines <br class="br">Source: Arthur Caplan (2020) cited in " This Is How We’ll Vaccinate the World Against COVID-19 https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/this-is-how-well-vaccinate-the-world-against-covid19" on IEEE Spectrum, 15 December 2020.

Time, Parting

“The hardest thing about making a vaccine is mass-producing it. You have to have the right buffering agent, the right stabilizing agent. You have to have the right vial. You have to do real-time stability studies to make sure that when the vaccine leaves the manufacturing plant, that the time it takes to get from the tarmac to the person's arm does not cause any problems. Because, remember, when you're shipping vaccines, they're going to be exposed to high temperatures and low temperatures, and you have to make sure that you have a stable product.”

Paul Offit (1951) American immunologist

Paul Offit (2020) cited in " This Is How We'll Vaccinate the World Against COVID-19 https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/this-is-how-well-vaccinate-the-world-against-covid19" on IEEE Spectrum, 15 December 2020.

Study, Time, Personality, Problem

“But, so far as we can see, so long as the present laws and constitution of nature continue there must still remain a vast amount of really inevitable suffering for mankind, without reckoning beastkind, birdkind, fishkind, insectkind, reptilekind, plant- kind, and leaving quite out of discussion stonekind.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part V, p. 83
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Suffering, Law, Nature

“The animals [nature] brings forth (not to speak of the plants and the minerals) are in many cases ugly, unamiable, ferocious, and tormented with monstrous appetites, which can only be satisfied by devouring their fellow-creatures; nearly all of them are quite selfish and immoral; and the few of them that are philanthropic (such as surly old lions, tigers, wolves, sharks, vultures and other sweet carrion fowl; all genuine lovers of man) are almost as disagreeably so as our human philanthropists themselves.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 60
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Animals, Selfishness, Nature, Lovers

“[S]ince vegetal fat is identical chemically with animal fat, and vegetal protein with animal protein, since these substances are found abundantly in non-flesh products, and since the only other food substances used by man (starch and sugar) are not found except in plants and plant products, it may be asserted positively that from the standpoint of food-supply there is no reason why man should prey when he eats. The plant world contains all of the compounds necessary for human alimentation, it contains them abundantly, it contains them in forms of the highest delicacy and the greatest variety and economy, and it contains them in a much more prime condition than they are found in the diseased tissues of our mistreated servants.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), What Shall We Eat?, pp. 92–93

World, Animals, Disease, Food

“Furs just as warm and beautiful as murderous sealskin may be made of plush; and vegetal silk as fine and lustrous as ever was spun by the oak-eating babes of Polyphemus can be made of wood. Vegetal leather has been manufactured in London with the polish and durability of calfskin. And when the demand becomes strong enough to turn human attention profitably to the task, foot-wear just as comely and lasting, and more sanitary and comfortable, will be made at even less cost from plant products.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 74–75

Strong, Beauty

“When you think about it from a native plant perspective," Oyster says."Johnny Apple seed was a fucking biological terrorist.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 19

Thinking

“You would think that pot had some kind of power; I mean come on, it’s a plant, not a reason for living. Controlled by a plant, how hilarious. A plant! A fucking plant!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Get In The Van

Thinking

“Everybody needs to understand when you drink a glass of water you’re drinking the ocean. There’s only one water system. If you go up in the Alps or wherever on top of the mountains to go skiing, you’re skiing on the ocean. That water system is life for every plant, every animal, and we need to manage it like a business. We need to make sure it’s not polluted and we need to stop using the ocean ultimately as a universal sewer.”

Jean-Michel Cousteau (1938) French explorer and environmentalist; son of Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Exclusive: Jean-Michel Cousteau talks marine conservation & why education is key https://www.diveplanit.com/marine-environment/jean-michel-cousteau/ (April 14, 2019)

Drink, Understanding, Business, Mountain

“All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Soul

“Going to trade school, that’s a good honest job, working as a machinist or at a steel plant. It seems like we forgot about that. People get massively indebted going to liberals arts schools and this is how we can deal with our student debt problem too.”

Scott Wagner (1955) American politician

Exclusive–Scott Wagner on Running for PA Governor: ‘My Campaign Is About’ Leadership and Solving Problems https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/02/13/exclusive-scott-wagner-on-running-for-pa-governor-my-campaign-is-about-leadership-and-solving-problems/ (13 February 2018)

People, School, Art, Problem

“…It was very purposeful that I included animals that I’ve never touched, never looked into their eyes. We should be able to care for creatures outside of [our immediate vicinity]. We should be able to care about plants and animals and people that we’ve never seen before.”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil (1974) American writer

On not encountering every single animal mentioned in her book World of Wonders in “Aimee Nezhukumatathil: What a Wonderful World” https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/aimee-nezhukumatathil-world-of-wonders-interview/ in Kirkus Reviews (2020 Dec 2)

People, Animals

“That story, as all good stories, planted a seed in my soul and never left me.”

Chigozie Obioma (1986) Nigerian writer

The fishermen (2015)

Soul

“Even vegetarians always cause more damage to plants. The same as steak lovers do to animals.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Animals, Lovers

“The most beautiful gift of nature is a pleasant morning whenever I see this beautiful sight of nature I fall in love with nature. A pleasant morning brings with it different colors of nature. Just like the green trees and plants that make my eyes feel relaxed, the blue color of the sky signifies ambition, the yellow color of the sun lights the lamp of hope in me, the red and pink colors of flowers fill me with love, these I am surprised to see all the colours. The scent of the wet soil in the morning along with the cool breeze fills me with freshness. When i hear the sweet chirping of birds, my heart starts humming.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Flowers, Nature, Bird, Love

“Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.”

Harriet Jacobs book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Source: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861), p. 16

God, Children, Faith, Horse

“The law of nature […] is nothing other than the light of the intellect planted in us by God, by which we know what should be done and what should be avoided. God gave us this light or law in creation.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Original: (la) Lex naturae […] nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectis insitum nobis a Deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione.
Source: On the Ten Commandments (c. 1273) Art. 1

God, Law, Light, Nature

“If you sit with your memories, you might as well become a plant.”

Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.

Source: On the dilemma faced by his protagonist in The Angel of History in “Rabih Alameddine: 'I think we lose something once we get accepted'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/09/rabih-alameddine-the-angel-of-history in The Guardian (2016 Oct 9)

Memory

“Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals' and plants' business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Organic and Inorganic
Source: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter

Understanding, Business, Animals

“Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation (1999) Page 61

“Whenever one tree is cut, two trees should be planted in return.”

Mirza Masroor Ahmad (1950) spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

Virtual Meetings <br class="br">Source: Virtual Meeting with Waqf-e-Nau From Indonesia https://www.alislam.org/press-release/members-of-waqf-e-nau-from-indonesia-have-honour-of-virtual-meeting-with-head-of-ahmadiyya-muslim-community/, 23rd January 2021

Tree

“[I]f we lay at all too much stress on the need of warlike preparations for quelling the peace-breaker, we find ourselves on a very slippery slope. ... It is all a perpetuation of war, not a planting of peace: a hardening in old error, not a change of heart. One of the most advanced French advocates of the League once said to me that the true guarantee of peace in Europe was a strong French Army and a strong British Navy. The sort of man who thinks that is the sort of man who ought never to be allowed to touch international affairs. Remove that implication. Accept freely, and put into practice, the principles of genuine and equal Disarmament, and then your preparation for Sanctions is perfectly right. To put crushing Sanctions in the hands of two particular Powers, or of an alliance of certain highly armed Powers, would be a crime against humanity.”

Gilbert Murray (1866–1957) Anglo-Australian scholar

1920s, The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (1929)
Source: "The Felt Need. The Three Principles of the Covenant: Conference, Law, Sanctions", pp. 88-89

Thinking, War, Strong, Change