Nature Quotes - Page 28

• Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Beauty, Beautiful, Simple

  Leonardo Da Vinci (1938). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”

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• You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!

  Utah Phillips

  Inspirational, Cutting, Usa

  "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere". Album by Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco, October 15, 1996.

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• To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us.

  Frans de Waal

  Science, Animal, Long

  "Are We in Anthropodenial?" by Frans de Waal, discovermagazine.com. July 1, 1997.

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• Wilderness itself is the basis of all our civilization. I wonder if we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness the right to live on?

  Margaret Murie

  Life, Civilization, Rivers

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• Blind nature will nearly always select the most probable, but man can let the most improbable become actual.

  Hans Jonas

  Life, Men, People

  Hans Jonas, Lawrence Vogel (1996). “Mortality and Morality: A Search for Good After Auschwitz”, p.157, Northwestern University Press

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• In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.

  Alistair Cooke

  Love, Life, Friendship

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• I think people perceive my creatures as absurd because they look different, but at the same time, they are a little bit familiar. I want people to feel a kind of empathy with them. When you think about it, all nature is kind of strange looking.. in fact, I'm a strange a looking creature.

  Patricia Piccinini

  Thinking, Differences, People

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• All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles... unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing... better than to follow nature.

  Caravaggio

  Life, Art, Work

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• To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

  Murray Bookchin

  Warrior, Breathing, Growth

  "Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future". Book by Murray Bookchin, 1990.

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• Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture.

  Rudolf von Laban

  Dance, Appreciation, Art

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• Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon. Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur.

  Jacque Fresco

  Hate, Learning, Law

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• These birds and animals and fish cannot speak, but they can suffer, and our God who created them, knows their sufferings, and will hold him who causes them to suffer unnecessarily to answer for it. It is a sin against their Creator.

  George Q. Cannon

  God, Animal, Creating

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• It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.

  Thomas Cole

  Rocks, Water, Tree

  Thomas Cole (1980). “The collected essays and prose sketches”

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• Slow Food unites the pleasure of food with responsibility, sustainability and harmony with nature.

  Carlo Petrini

  Food, Responsibility, Cooking

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• We feel the beauty of nature because we are part of nature and because we know that however much in our separate domains we abstract from the unity of Nature, this unity remains. Although we may deal with particulars, we return finally to the whole pattern woven out of these.

  Ernest Everett Just

  Beauty, Knowing, People

  Ernest Everett Just (1939). “The Biology of the Cell Surface”, Taylor & Francis

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• Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
  If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
  Would scarcely know that we were gone.

  Sara Teasdale

  Spring, Animal, Knowing

  Sara Teasdale (1920). “Flame and Shadow”, p.90, Рипол Классик

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• Not to sound too deep or weird, but I think that the times when you really appreciate surfing are the times you're really sort of becoming one with nature. Surfing's as raw of a sport as it gets.

  Kelly Slater

  Sports, Appreciation, Time

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• The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.

  Tom Regan

  Life, Animal, Use

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• Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Time, Science, Decision

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• It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

  Karl Marx

  Law, Different, Impossible

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• By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to water-falls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity : all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Song, Wall, Flower

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.159, The Floating Press

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• Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Motivational, Adventure

  Maya Angelou, Jeffrey M. Elliot (1989). “Conversations with Maya Angelou”

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• We inter-breath with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans. They are part of our own body.

  Nhat Hanh

  Rain, Ocean, Body

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  It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

  Ansel Adams

  Fighting, Government, Environmental

  "Playboy Interview: Ansel Adams". Interview with David Sheff, Playboy (p. 226), May 1, 1983.

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• What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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