"Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow."
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Soil quotes
Soil
242 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Soil quotes (page 2 of 13)
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"There is too little public recognition of how much we all depend upon farmers as stewards of our soil, water and wildlife resources."
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"Let every hindrance to joy become the soil out of which joy blossoms."
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"The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds."
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"Is it reasonable to suppose that we can apply a broad-spectrum insecticide to kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect ... without also killing the 'good' insects whose function may be the essential one of breaking down organic matter and maintaining healthy soil?"
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"Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition... these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit."
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"Earthworms are the intenstines of the soil."
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"I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question - that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, - I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation."
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"Until you commit your goals to paper, you have intentions that are seeds without soil."
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"The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics."
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"Consider what each soil will bear, and what each refuses"
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"[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government."
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"Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer."
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"Iraq is not occupied, but there are foreign forces on its soil, which is different."
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"Literature, properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mound of countless generations, and not from any top dressing capriciously scattered over the surface."
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"Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding."
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"But if our hopes are betrayed, if we are forced to resist the invasion of our soil, and to defend our threatened homes, this duty, however hard it may be, will find us armed and resolved upon the greatest sacrifices."
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"I would rather be tied to the soil as a serf... than be king of all these dead and destroyed."
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"All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil."
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"Our native soil draws all of us, by I know not what sweetness, and never allows us to forget."
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