Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

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“Nature, body, mind go to death, not we. We neither go nor come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It is the eternal and unchangeable Reality.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Understanding human nature is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing it can we know God. It is also a fact that the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing God can we understand human nature.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who else is the enemy of Nature but he who mistakes himself for more intelligent than Nature, though it is the highest school for all of us?”
Paracelsus (1493–1541) said by 1541 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In philosophical anthropology, … where the subject is man in his wholeness, the investigator cannot content himself, as in anthropology as an individual science, with considering man as another part of nature and with ignoring the fact that he, the investigator, is himself a man and experiences this humanity in his inner experience in a way that he simply cannot experience any part of nature.”
Martin Buber (1878–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your own nature will triumph. We are all born with our natures... And I think back over my life and I realize that my own nature -the core me- essentially hasn't changed over all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel the same way I did when I woke up at the age of five.”
Douglas Coupland (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?”
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“L’amour est le plus joli larcin que la Société ait su faire à la Nature ; mais la maternité, n’est-ce pas la Nature dans sa joie ? Un sourire a séché mes larmes.”
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The author had not followed the precedents of any other artist, nor has he been able to copy Nature itself.. ..He who departs from Nature will surely merits high esteem, since he has to put before thee yes of the public forms and poses which have existed previously in the darkness and confusion of an irrational mind..”
Francisco Goya (1746–1828) said by 1828 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world implies contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature and culture, instinct and morality, sexuality and achievement become incompatible as a result of the split in the human structure. The unity and congruity of culture and nature, work and love, morality and sexuality, longed for from time immemorial, will remain a dream as long as man continues to condemn the biological demand for natural (orgastic) sexual gratification.”
Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What draws us to him so closely is that he combined a disillusioned estimate of human nature sufficient to launch twenty little cynics, with a craving for love and sympathy urgent enough to turn a weaker nature into a benign sentimentalist.”
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Aussi, les demeures disposées des deux côtés du chenal faisaient penser à des sites de la nature, mais d'une nature qui aurait créé ses œvres avec une imagination humaine.”
Marcel Proust (1871–1922) said by 1922 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And it’s completely not necessary for anyone to make mistake because everyone’s Self is Total Knowledge, Veda. Veda is Total Knowledge, and Veda is the nature of the Self, and bliss is the nature of the Self. And even in the outside world everyone wants to move in the direction of greater joy.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.”
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man has long talked somewhat arrogantly about the conquest of nature; now he has the power to achieve his boast. It is our misfortune-it may well be our final tragedy-that this power has not been tempered with wisdom, but has been marked by irresponsibility; that there is all too little awareness that man is part of nature, and that the price of conquest may well be the destruction of man himself.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach.”
Le Corbusier (1887–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man’s being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it.”
José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The author of human nature impressed it with certain sensitive aptitudes and mental powers, so that apprehension, reflection or understanding could no otherwise be exerted or produced in the compound nature of man, but in the order prescribed by the creator.”
Ethan Allen (1738–1789) said by 1789 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive.”
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units.”
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity.”
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world. Of those three components only one, the medium, is material.”
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Hans Hofmann (1963) by William Chapin Seitz, p. 15
“Chaos has her moods and whims, that’s all. As I told you, she cannot remain stable. It is in her nature to be forever changing.” “While it is in the nature of Law,” Alisaard explained, “to be forever fixed. The Balance is there to ensure that neither Law nor Chaos ever gain complete ascendancy, for the one offers sterility while the other offers only sensation.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“More and more as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature about us.”
George Washington Carver (1864–1943) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How to Search for Truth, letter to Hubert W. Pelt (1930-02-24)
“(Why have there been so few really great women writers?) EW: Well, I think there have been not a few great women writers, of course, Jane Austen. I don't see how anyone could have a greater scope in knowledge of human nature and reveal more of human nature than Jane Austen. Consider Virginia Woolf. The Brontës. Well, you know as many as I do: great women writers. (1972)”
Eudora Welty (1909–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our mind, by virtue of a certain finite, limited capability, is by no means capable of putting a question to Nature that permits a continuous series of answers. The observations, the individual results of measurements, are the answers of Nature to our discontinuous questioning.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) by Walter Moore
“The nature of the infant is not just a new permutation-and-combination of elements contained in the natures of the parents. There is in the nature of the infant that which is utterly unknown in the natures of the parents.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921)
“My concern is with the rhythms of nature.. .I work inside out, like nature.”
Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Leonhard Emmerling (2003) Jackson Pollock: 1912-1956 Taschen, p. 48
“Conservatives believe that human nature is what makes us imperfectible. Liberals believe that human nature can be changed and perfected.”
Mike Rosen (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We might have a chance now to rebuild it all with what we have left. We might have learned that we can exist only as a part of nature, not apart from nature.”
Jane Roberts (1929–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Society is a system of inherited forms reducing our humiliating passivity to nature. We may alter these forms, slowly or suddenly, but no change in society will change nature.”
Camille Paglia (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of western culture is a distortion of reality. But reality should be distorted; that is, imaginatively amended. The Buddhist acquiescence to nature is neither accurate about nature nor just to human potential.”
Camille Paglia (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the Seventies, women runners, developing amenorrhea and calcium-related shin splints, were the first to realize that nature is hovering over us, ready to shut down our systems if our fetus-feeding fat reserve drops below a certain percentage of body weight. In other words, in nature's eyes we are nothing but milk sacs and fat deposits.”
Camille Paglia (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Israel is a dream come true, and as a dream come true it is flawed, very flawed, and sometimes dangerously flawed or painfully flawed. But this is in the nature of dreams, not necessarily in the nature of Israel.”
Amos Oz (1939–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We attain to heaven by using this world well, though it is to pass away; we perfect our nature, not by undoing it, but by adding to it what is more than nature, and directing it towards aims higher than its own.”
John Henry Newman (1801–1890) said by 1890 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.”
Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being a physicist, my father was a great believer in progress, but he also loved nature. He was a photographer, and outside of taking the occasional family photographs, all he did was photograph nature. He loved birds. That meant a lot to me growing up. Healthy progress also means we have to be concerned for the environment. That may have something to do with what I believe about farming.”
Dave Matthews (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nay, who knows, Phaedrus, if the efforts of humans in their search for God, the observances, the prayers they essay, their obstinate will to discover the most efficacious… who knows if mortals will not finally discover a certitude—or an incertitude—stable and in exact conformity with their nature, if not with the very nature of God?”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier’s occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (11 August 1890)
“The fear of uncertainty is our basic trouble. Uncertainty is the very nature of meaning and the very nature of being, for meaning is always context-dependent. We do not know the context that might come, and this is why we can never be certain that our meanings will be correct and give us security. So if you cannot live with this fact of uncertainty, some distortion is taking place already.”
David Bohm (1917–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.”
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) said by 1751 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Viscount Bolingbroke
“Whatever in Christ had the nature of satisfaction, was by virtue of His suffering or humiliation; whatever had the nature of merit, was by virtue of His obedience or righteousness.”
Jonathan Edwards (theologian) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of superperson. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.”
Simone Weil (1909–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 140 (1972 edition)
“I think there's a compelling nature about talking. People like to talk. In creating wiki, I wanted to stroke that story-telling nature in all of us. Second, and perhaps most important, I wanted people who wouldn't normally author to find it comfortable authoring, so that there stood a chance of us discovering the structure of what they had to say.”
Ward Cunningham (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One’s words are a gift to the community. For the wiki nature to take whole, you have to let go of your words. You have to be okay with that. This goes into the name, called refactoring. To collaborate on a work, one must trust. The reason the cooperation happens is we are people and it is deep in our nature to do things together.”
Ward Cunningham (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man, servant and interpreter of Nature, does and understands only as much as he has observed of the order of Nature, either in reality or in mind; he neither knows nor can do more.”
William Whewell (1794–1866) said by 1866 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s some who say magic came from nature, and with men destroying nature right and left, there’s not enough of it left.”
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why does love, even such love as he claims to practise, need the spectacle of beauty to bring it to life? What, in the abstract, do shapely legs have to do with love, or for that matter with desire? Or is that just the nature of nature, about which one does not ask questions?”
J. M. Coetzee (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source