#con

Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is — or should be — the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all — perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows." Essay on the Biological Sciences, in: Good Reading (1958) ↗

— Rachel Carson

#ecology #environment #nature #preservation #nature

He realized with sudden clarity that the power axis in a conflict shifted once your adversary had heard you plead for divine intervention while her hands and mouth and body brought you to screaming climax on her kitchen table. ↗

— Barbara Falkenrath

#humor-relationships #romance #relationship

All their teeth are yellow. No tooth-brush ever entered that convent. Brushing one's teeth is at the top of a ladder at whose bottom is the loss of one's soul. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#extremism #religion #teeth #religion

Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won, because people have ceased to consider religion so important as it was once thought to be. But in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution, which is not by any means confined to one party. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#persecution #politics #power #religion

I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay. ↗

— Sheri S. Tepper

#doctrine #narrow-mindedness #orthodoxy #prophecies #religion

My religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and pandeism. ↗

— Alfred Tennyson

#deism #pandeism #pantheism #religion #spirituality

As for logic and internal consistency, these mundane rules do not apply to sacred writings and never have... ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#jubal #religion #rules #religion

Okay, that's intensely interesting," Duvall said. "So you're a priest of the Forshan religion? Which schism?" "The leftward schism, and no, not a priest." "Couldn't handle the celibacy?" "Leftward priests aren't required to be celibate," Dahl said, "but considering I was the only human at the seminary, I had celibacy thrust upon me, if you will." "Some people wouldn't let that stop them," Duvall said. "You haven't seen a Forshan seminary student up close," Dahl said. "Also, I don't swing xeno. ↗

— John Scalzi

#religion

humanity suffers terribly from the demons it has created over lengths of time. we learn from nothing that we do. we create religions, heritage, race, traditions, then they all in turn become our stumbling blocks from becoming one. we suffer from the creations of our own inability to interpret history. the only thing we have succeded on is seperation.we are not that different from one another as we think we are. but we are too corrupted to break our deconstruction. ↗

— Jeffrey Fischer

#nihilism #society #religion

Foresight of phenomenon and power over them depend on knowledge of their sequences, and not upon any notion we may have formed respecting their origin or inmost nature. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#foresight #knowledge #nature