Quotes
Quotes about Nature
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan Swan was heard; To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.
Man is by nature a political animal.
Man is by nature a civic animal.
A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.
They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that "one man is as good as another;" a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory.
Man's chief enemy is his own unruly nature and the dark forces put up within him.
If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature isâand why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.
Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.
It is the nature of slavery to render its victims so abject that at last, fearing to be free, they multiply their own chains. You can liberate a freeman, but you cannot liberate a slave.
Against nature and within nature there is no freedom.
Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.
Exclusive property is a theft against nature. [Fr., La propriete exclusive est un vol dans la nature.]
A piece of simple goodness--a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature--a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.
Father! no prophet's laws I seek,-- Thy laws in Nature's works appear;-- I own myself corrupt and weak, Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear.
Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.
From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the evil in its nature.
There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased, The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Prosperity can change man's nature; and seldom is any one cautious enough to resist the effects of good fortune. [Lat., Res secundae valent commutare naturam, et raro quisquam erga bona sua satis cautus est.]
Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris It is human nature to hate a person whom you have injured.
There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though none in particular are ill-natured.
Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.
Because they know not the forces of nature, and in order that they may have comrades in their ignorance, they suffer not that others should search out anything, and would have us believe like rustics and ask no reason...But we ask in all things a reason must be sought.
We envy those whose possessions or achievements are a reflection on our own. They are our neighbors and equals. It is they, above all who make plain the nature of our failure.
Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
