#nature

It was the merit of Gestalt psychology to make us aware of the remarkable performance involved in perceiving shapes. Take, for example, a ball or an egg: we can see their shapes at a glance. Yet suppose that instead of the impression made on our eye by an aggregate of white points forming the surface of an egg, we were presented with another, logically equivalent, presentation of these points as given by a list of their spatial co-ordinate values. It would take years of labour to discover the shape inherent in this aggregate of figures - provided it could be guessed at all. The perception of the egg from the list of co-ordinate values would, in fact, be a feat rather similar in nature and measure of intellectual achievement to the discovery of the Copernican system. ↗

— Michael Polanyi

#nature

I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it. ↗

— David Attenborough

#nature #science #nature

We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#freethinking #religion #science #spirituality #nature

A large section of the idling classes of England get their incomes by believing that Jesus was born of a virgin and that Jonah swallowed a whale; and with the progress of science they were naturally finding this more and more difficult. A school of ingenious Bible-twisters arose, to invent symbolical and literary meanings for fairy tales, in order that people who no longer believed could continue with good conscience to collect the salaries of belief. ↗

— Upton Sinclair

#nature

There is no symbolism to these fish, as Hemingway wrote. A cabezon is just a cabezon; a garibaldi, a garibaldi. But what wonderful stories they tell us about life in the ocean! ↗

— Susan J. Tweit

#life

Like nature, like life. The storm will pass. The night will end. Spring will come. ↗

— Carol Morgan

#nature #patience #life

Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. ‘What is the egg to the eagle?’ he asked me… ↗

— Bernard Cornwell

#human-nature #living #perspective #quote #quotes

I want to be a simple man with simple thoughts Because it's hard to find them in the world....but easy to Believe ↗

— Riyadh Razzaq

#human-nature #life #life-philosophy #mystery-of-life #philosophy

Dengan petualangan kecil itu dia jadi bisa belajar banyak tentang hakikat hidup. ↗

— Gola Gong

#alam #balada-si-roy #hidup #life #nature

Nature's what it's all about, but our people have been brainwashed into thinking that life is a cell phone against your head and the TV on a beer commercial with hot chicks. ↗

— Tim Dorsey

#cell-phones #chicks #commercials #hot-chicks #life