Imagine a world where temperatures rise to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Where’s there’s no escape from the sun, wind and dust. Imagine a world with almost no food or water. These are the conditions in one third of the lands of our planet. To live here demands the most extraordinary survival strategies. David Attenborough, Planet Earth s2e4: Deserts
It does sometimes rain the desert. Here in the American West, storms can strike with devastating force. After ten months of drought, millions of tonnes of water are dumped on the land in under an hour. ibid.
Locusts: an unstoppable force that devours everything in its path. But this devastation is about to get a lot worse. The locusts now transform into winged adults … They can take to the skies … A super-swarm of this scale may only appear once in a decade: this one extends over 200 miles and contains several billion individuals. ibid
Many people believe that they are attracted to God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man. William Ralph Inge
Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses. Here is an order, attributed to ‘God’ to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare to dishonour my Creator’s name by [attaching] it to this filthy book. Men and books lie. Only nature does not lie. Thomas Paine
I suspect that religion is simply a parasite on a much older moral sense ... But it is surely far more moral to do good things for their own sake rather than as a way of sucking up to God. Our true sense of right and wrong has nothing to do with religion. I believe there is kindness, charity and generosity in human nature. And I think there is a Darwinian explanation for this. Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The Virus of Faith, Channel 4 2006
It is no accident that we see green almost everywhere we look. It is no accident that we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life; no accident that we are surrounded by millions of other species, eating, growing, rotting, swimming, walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing, outpacing, outwitting ... We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection – the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, 2009
Mathematics seem to permeate Nature ... almost as if God is a master mathematician who has constructed the universe in mathematical forms. Horizon: A Mathematical Problem, BBC 1984
Could it be we somehow evolved religious belief as a survival mechanism? But if religious faith is somehow a by-product of evolution, does that mean belief in a God can be dismissed as a quirk of Nature? Horizon: God on the Brain, BBC 2003
During the next hundred years they concocted a new belief ... a belief in the divinity of Nature. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 11/13: The Worship of Nature, BBC 1969
At this point I reveal myself in my true colours as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos. Creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence. Forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance. And I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than an ideology. I believe that in spite of recent triumphs of science men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years. And in consequence we must still try to learn from history: history is ourselves ... I believe in courtesy ... And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters. Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals. And I value a society that makes their existence possible. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 13/13: Heroic Materialism
When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against Nature must lead to their own downfall. Adolf Hitler
Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in Nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought. Edward Teller, The Pursuit of Simplicity
The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation. Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 1928
This is the key of modern science and is the beginning of the true understanding of Nature. This idea. That to look at the things, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained, may lie a clue to one or another of a possible theoretical interpretation. Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, 1955
Nature has a great simplicity and, therefore, a great beauty. Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law
Cavendish probed the secrets of Nature with brilliant insights and meticulous experiments. Genius of Britain II: A Roomful of Brilliant Minds, Channel 4 2012
If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed. Annie Dillard
I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to Nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of sceptically and dictatorially. E B White
Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of Nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgements! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in Nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress. Friedrich Nietzsche
The supply of matter in the universe was never more tightly packed than it is now, or more widely spread out. For nothing is ever added to it or subtracted from it. It follows that the movement of atoms today is no different from what it was in bygone ages and always will be. So the things that have regularly come into being will continue to come into being in the same manner; they will be and grow and flourish so far as each is allowed by the laws of Nature. Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things
In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. John Milton, Of Education
Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of Nature. Neil deGrasse Tyson
One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made. That this is still the morning of creation. This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere. The dew is never all dried at once. A shower is for ever falling. Vapour is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming. On sea and continents and islands each in its turn as the round Earth rolls. John Muir
On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death ... Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony. John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf ch4 – Camping Among the Tombs 1916
Fresh beauty opens one’s eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty. John Muir
There is not a fragment in all Nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself. John Muir
None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild. John Muir
In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. John Muir
Keep close to Nature’s heart ... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. John Muir
One may as well dam for water tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man. John Muir