Nature Quotes

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"

E. B. White, Writer

"What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on"

Jacques Yves Cousteau, Explorer

"The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature. We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters... and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult"

Jacques Yves Cousteau, Explorer

"If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of the same universe at a succeeding moment"

Henri Poincare, Mathematician

"If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living"

Henri Poincare, Mathematician

"If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words"

Fran Lebowitz, Journalist

"An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather"

Washington Irving, Writer

"We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power... the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave"

Patrick Henry, Politician

"The mystery is what prompted men to leave caves, to come out of the womb of nature"

Stephen Gardiner, Architect

"Road testing the effects of regulation on European business must become second nature to the European Union"

John Hutton, Educator

"The rehabilitation of order as a universal principle, however, suggested at the same time that orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular"

Rudolf Arnheim, Artist

"Modem science, then, maintains on the one hand that nature, both organic and inorganic, strives towards a state of order and that man's actions are governed by the same tendency"

Rudolf Arnheim, Artist

"The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven"

William Ellery Channing, Writer

"None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue"

Mary Astell, Writer

"If you will investigate all the Indian troubles, you will find that there is something wrong of this nature at the bottom of all of them, something relating to the supplies, or else a tardy and broken faith on the part of the general government"

George Crook, Soldier

"It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature"

Christopher Morley, Author

"I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all"

Michelangelo, Artist

"Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive"

Margaret Mead, Scientist

"Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language"

Alfred North Whitehead, Mathematician

"In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness"

Ivan Turgenev, Novelist

"Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home"

John Dewey, Philosopher

"Sensitive, responsive, eagerly welcomed everywhere, the drama, holding the mirror up to nature, by laughter and by tears reveals to mankind the world of men"

George P. Baker

"Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poet

"Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe"

Susan Sontag, Author

"Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all"

Michael J. Fox, Actor

"Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

"Looking back, there is nothing wrong with that peace, love and equality that the hippies espoused. In many ways, we have regressed because they were into organic food, back to nature, make love not war, be good to all men, share and share alike - which is what many are talking about now"

Imelda Staunton, Actress

"The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature"

James Thurber, Comedian

"And yet there are some magnificent things from Freud, profound insights into the nature of man"

Chaim Potok, Author

"Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature"

Chaim Potok, Author

"When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans - an avian flu pandemic"

Barack Obama, President

"I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay"

Bob Dylan, Musician

"Nature is wont to hide herself"

Heraclitus, Philosopher

"Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced"

Marquis de Sade, Novelist

"If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death"

Alexander Smith, Poet