Nature quotes

Nature

3.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

3.7K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside nature — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Nature quotes (page 44 of 183)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Nature

"Nature does not complete things. She is chaotic. Man must finish, and he does so by making a garden and building a wall."

Read quote 8 likes
Galileo Galilei Astronomer, Physicist
Nature

"It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand."

Read quote 8 likes
Karl Kraus Playwright, Journalist
Nature

"Progress celebrates victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it."

Read quote 8 likes
Karl Marx Philosopher, Economist
Nature

"We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned."

Read quote 8 likes
Karl Marx Philosopher, Economist
Nature

"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."

Read quote 8 likes
Isaac Newton Mathematician, Physicist, Astronomer
Nature

"Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions."

Read quote 8 likes
Francis Bacon Philosopher, Statesman
Nature

"Let every student of nature take this as his rule, that whatever the mind seizes upon with particular satisfaction is to be held in suspicion."

Read quote 8 likes
Francis Bacon Philosopher, Statesman
Nature

"Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out."

Read quote 8 likes
Francis Bacon Philosopher, Statesman
Nature

"For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others."

Read quote 8 likes
Helen Keller Author, Activist
Nature

"What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!"

Read quote 8 likes
Nikos Kazantzakis Novelist, Playwright
Nature

"If only we know, boss, what the stones and rain and flowers say. Maybe they call-call us-and we don't hear them. When will people's ears open, boss? When shall we have our eyes open to see? When shall we open our arms to embrace everything-stones, rain, flowers, and people? What do you think about that, boss? And what do your books have to say about that?"

Read quote 8 likes
James Joseph Sylvester Mathematician
Nature

"I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty ... as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize."

Read quote 8 likes