Understanding Nature Quotes

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing. ~ Marilyn Ferguson

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding. ~ John Locke

I believe that the mechanical model for understanding nature is a metaphor that science has got stuck on: this prevailing idea that humans are machines, biological robots with computer-like brains. This belief will, to the advanced species that we are evolving into, seem as absurd as the flat-earth theories that we scoff at now. ========== Revolution (Russell Brand) ~ Anonymous

A man's mind should be single to the glory of God in everything that he starts to accomplish. We should consider that of ourselves we can do nothing. We are the children of God. We are in darkness, only as God enlightens our understanding. We are powerless, only as God helps us. The work that we have to do here is of that nature that we cannot do it unless we have the assistance of the Almighty. ~ Lorenzo Snow

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding. ~ Francis Bacon

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato , interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato , looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge. ~ Wolfgang Pauli

Fanatics, as a class, have far more zeal than intellect and are fanatics only because they have. There can be no fanaticism but where there is more passion than reason; and hence, in the nature of things, movements originating in it run down in a short time by their folly and extravagance. ~ John C. Calhoun

NATURE FACTS: Nature will kill you and then make new things from you. ~ Unknown

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. Aristotle ~ Christine Zolendz

So what that the world is beautiful this morning? Enough of this wonder of nature crap. It almost killed me. ~ Sandra Gail Lambert

Indeed, a symptom of post-Holocaust trauma is that normative assumptions about the human species are questioned more than ever. Can human nature still be trusted? The breach of civilized values was too great - and in a nation that had produced so many significant philosophers, scientists, scholars, and artists. The intellectual shock - a secondary trauma, as it were - is not only that it happened but also that it happened with only scattered pockets of resistance and even a degree of cooperation among the cultured classes. ~ Jeffrey C. Alexander

Scientist are human. Unraveling the knots of Nature's mysteries is a reward in itself; but even so, scientists like to hear the applause of the audience ~ Isaac Asimov

Now that I have definitely begun to live I find myself more and more convinced that civilization with its trappings and artificialities is not so good as nature. ~ H.S. Ede

It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul. ~ Charles Dickens

We sat in the car
& the night dropped
down until the
only sounds were
the crickets &
the dance of our voices
& for a moment
the world became
small enough to
roll back & forth
between us. ~ Brian Andreas

Charity is salt in the wound. It is painful. The state gives charity with the bitter hatred of a victim to his blackmailer. The receiver of free money is subjected to harassment, insult, and profound humiliation. Newspapers are enlisted to heap scorn on the arrogant bastards who choose to beg instead of starve or let their children starve. It is made clear that the poor seek charity as a great and sordid chicanery in which they delight. And there are some who do. As there are people who take delight in sticking hot needles deep into their abdomens, swallow pieces of broken bottles. A special taste. Speaking for humanity in general, the poor accept charity with a shame and loss of self-respect that is truly pitiful. ~ Mario Puzo

The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon. ~ Jean Ingelow

For years I viewed my interaction with the Bible as a debit account: I had a need, so I went to the Bible to withdraw an answer. But we do much better to view our interaction with the Bible as a savings account: I stretch my understanding daily, I deposit what I glean, and I patiently wait for it to accumulate in value, knowing that one day I will need to draw on it. ~ Jen Wilkin

As I drift back into sleep, I can't help thinking that it's a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To weigh the evidence, always incomplete, and correctly intuit the whole, to see the world in a grain of sand, to recognize its beauty, its simplicity, its truth. It's as close as we get to God in this life, and reside in the glow of such brief flashes of understanding, fully awake, sometimes for two or three seconds, at peace with our existence. And then back to sleep we go. ~ Richard Russo

There is no War on Terrorism; it is The Great Game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all. ~ John Pilger

Unfortunately, little darlings, there is no such thing as a simple love story.The most transitory puppy crush is complex to the extent of lying beyond the far reaches of the brain's understanding. ~ Tom Robbins

If there could be . . . a cause determining a person to benevolence towards the whole world of mankind . . . exclusive of . . . love to God, . . . it cannot be of the nature of true virtue."42 ~ John Piper

It's disingenous for me to say that I wasn't trying to write a moral novel. By its very nature as a novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit steps into the political conversation. There's no way to avoid that. I can appreciate that readers are probably going to line up on one side of the novel or the other. I hope they go to those polar extremes, actually. ~ Dave Abrams

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile. ~ Mark Twain

Nature's music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions. ~ Mary Webb

No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems. ~ Arthur Erickson

I've had it with being nice, understanding, fair and hopeful. I feel like being negative all day. The chip on my shoulder could sink the QE2. I've got an attitude problem and nobody better get in my way ... I'm in a bad mood and the whole stupid little world is gonna pay! ~ John Waters

Don't let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world's already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world. ~ James Baldwin

The wave can live the life of a wave, but it can also do better. It can live every moment of its life deeply touching its nature of no-birth and no-death, that is, its nature as water. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Mr. Rochester continued to be blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near -- that knit us so very close; for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand. Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye. He saw nature -- he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of the field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam -- of the landscape before us; of the weather around us -- and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary conducting him where he wished to go; of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad -- because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance; he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Truth has nowhere to hide in the world.
Time has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Fate has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Nature has nowhere to hide in the world.
Reality has nowhere to hide in the stars.
God has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Land has nowhere to hide in the world.
Light has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Love has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Imagination has nowhere to hide in the world.
Science has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Spirituality has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Intelligence has nowhere to hide in the world.
Creation has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Life has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Silence has nowhere to hide in the world.
Sound has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Awareness has nowhere to hide in the universe.

The past has nowhere to hide in the world.
The present has nowhere to hide in the stars.
The future has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Chance has nowhere to hide in the world.
Destiny has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Eternity has nowhere to hide in the universe. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Science is the exploration of the experience of nature without psychedelics. And I propose, therefore, to expand that enterprise and say that we need a science beyond science. We need a science which plays with a full deck. ~ Terence McKenna

There was a time when I do not understand poetry. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

He promoted the education of the parish clergy and wrote: He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear. ~ Alfred The Great

In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are somtimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary. ~ Frank Herbert

Communism looked good on paper, you know' - but how many people who say that even know what communism looks like on paper? ~ T.J. Kirk

Divine is all Love in its essential nature, and Love is all Divine in its truthful expression. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others. ~ Terry Eagleton