#sm

These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. ↗

— John Muir

#greed #nature #nature

I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people’s lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women’s faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#crime #nature-s-right-to-kill #regret #revolver #smile

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#darwinism #eugenics #natural-selection #planned-parenthood #population-control

Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#man #philosophy #nature

But I was naturally suspicious; it comes from working too closely with the police for too long. Cynicism is so contagious. ↗

— Laurell K. Hamilton

#police #suspicious #nature

My biggest objection to Marxism has been the presumption that industry should exist at all. I think the unstoppable juggernaut which is global warming demonstrates that processing natural materials on an industrial scale is a suicidal practice. ↗

— David David Katzman

#industry #marx #marxism #nature

The more I work with Nature and totemism, the more church is everywhere. ↗

— S. Kelley Harrell

#shamanism #totemism #nature

Although he assumed she’d naturally submit to him, he obviously believed she was still her own person. A strong person. ↗

— Cherise Sinclair

#erotic #erotic-romance #nature

Another aspect inviting contemplation is the fact that the affective tone of any feeling depends on the type of contact that has caused its arising. Once this conditioned nature of feelings is fully apprehended, detachment arises naturally and one's identification with feelings starts to dissolve. ↗

— Anālayo

#detachment #feeling #meditation #sutra #nature

Essentially, I'm a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose. But one of the reasons I'm attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism, is because naturally, I'm the guy that would not turn the other cheek - but, when people see you're attracted to that, they think you are that. ↗

— Bono

#nature