#nature

All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place. ↗

— Edward W. Said

#human-society #interpretation #knowledge #nature

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#reading #nature

I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#nature #restless #restlessness #nature

He never seemed to grasp the immense mutability of human nature, nor to appreciate that behind every nondescript face lay a wild and unique hinterland like his own. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#uniqueness #nature

We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#nature

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it. ↗

— Jacques-Yves Cousteau

#ocean #nature

Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#nature

I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers. ↗

— Piers Anthony

#storytelling #nature

When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie. ↗

— Criss Jami

#honesty #human-nature #lying #man #penalize

It seemed to Caleb, the nature of human being revolved around one empirical truth: we want what we cannot have. For Eve, it was the fruit of the forbidden tree. For Caleb, it was Livvie. ↗

— C.J. Roberts

#nature