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Natural Order Quotes

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Natural Order Quotes

“I guess you can't compare humans to birds. Humans are rational beings. They're not just creatures without any sense of responsibility, ruled by drives and instincts, as our teachers at eloi school keep impressing upon us. Human beings are the pinnacle of creation, able to use rational, organized methods to place themselves outside nature, to control nature. But no sooner have they said that than they start evoking what is "natural," and to whom, and how such and such is the "natural order" of things.”

Human NatureInstinctNatural Order
Book:The Core of the Sun
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“People were so oversensitive to the supposed overfishing of sharks. As if it wasn't the height of hubris to decide that humanity needed to be put into the position of custodian to the height of apex predators. God had made man to fight and defeat his other creations. Why else would he have made his chosen children physically weak, but mentally strong? In the battle between man and shark, the shark should always have won. That it didn't, proved only that man was intended to be victorious and that he should be allowed to kill whatever he could before he, in turn, was killed.”

HumanityDominationSharksHubrisNatural OrderExceptionalismAnthropocentrismMoral Ambiguity
Book:Into the Drowning Deep
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“It is in fact an orderly community. The green plants are food for the plant eaters, which are food for the predators, and some of those predators are food for still other predators. And what's left over is food for the scavengers, who return to the earth nutrients needed by the green plants. It's a system that has worked magnificently for billions of years. Filmmakers understandably love footage of gore and battle, but any naturalist will tell you that the species are not in any sense at war with one another. The gazelle and lion are enemies only in the minds of the Takers. The lion that comes across a herd of gazelles doesn't massacre them as an enemy would. It kills one, not to satisfy its hatred of gazelles but to satisfy its hunger, and once it has made its kill the gazelles are perfectly content to go on grazing with the lion in the midst.”

CommunityNatural Order
Book:Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
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“I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop this disorder.”

LifeLawPoliticsDisorderNatural OrderDivine LawHuman Laws
Book:The Basic Political Writings
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“Riding out with the Old Surrey and Burstow Hunt, White recorded the first time he saw a kill with distanced fascination. The fox was dug out of a drain where it had taken refuge and thrown to the hounds. They tore it to pieces while a circle of human onlookers 'screeched them on'. The humans, White thought, were disgusting, their cries 'tense, self-conscious, and histerically animal'. But the hounds were not. 'The savagery of the hounds', he wrote, 'was deep-rooted and terrible, but rang true, so that it was not horrible like that of the human.”

CrueltyAnimalsHuntingHoundsNatural OrderHuman Cruelty
Book:H is for Hawk
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“I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.”

IfsMeanWholeOrderFeltNaturalPlanetsBrokenImportanceCommittedFleshRhythmSchemesPullingDisturbedJoggingNatural OrderLogging
Book:The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
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“The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God. But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.”

PeopleThinkingMenWantNeedsFirstsTwoDoneFactsHelpingOrderCoursesWishNaturalDivineMajorityHumanitarianPrimeAwkwardAssistancePositivelyProposeCompetentLives Of OthersNatural OrderGuillotine
Author:Isabel Paterson
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“When the family has been brought into its natural order, the individual can leave it behind him while still feeling the strength of his family supporting him. Only when the connection to his family is acknowledged, and the person's responsibility seen clearly and then distributed, can the individual feel unburdened and go about his personal affairs without anything from the past weighing him down or holding him back.”

FeelsPersonsHas BeensStillsFeelingsPastOrderIndividualNaturalBehindsResponsibilityConnectionsAffairWeighingNatural Order
Author:Bert Hellinger
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“Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.”

LittlesLongMatterHardOrderGirlNaturalBoysGrowing UpGrowingHairBaseballMalesCertaintyPantsLittle BoysSkirtsOnce Upon A TimeLong HairNatural OrderAbsolute CertaintyShort Hair
Author:Kenneth R. Miller
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“It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic, and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?”

TodayOrderForceNaturalBusinessPlanetsStructureInternationalDetermineCurrencyPrimalTotalityForces Of NatureNatural Order
Author:Paddy Chayefsky
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“Life is a continuous flux. Our nonhuman ancestors bred, generation after generation, and incrementally begat what we now deem to be the species homo sapiens - ourselves. There is nothing about our ancestral line or about our current biology that dictates how we will evolve in the future. Nothing in the natural order demands that our descendants resemble us in any particular way. Very likely, they will not resemble us. We will almost certainly transform ourselves, likely beyond recognition, in the generations to come.”

WayLifeLife IsOrderNaturalLinesGenerationsParticularDemandSpeciesCurrentsRecognitionEvolveBiologyAncestorHomo SapiensDescendantsFluxNatural Order
Author:Sam Harris
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“Regularity in Nature is not proof of the control of Nature by a Divine intelligence; it is rather the reverse. If something- call it matter, or ether, or x - exists, it must operate in accordance with its innate qualities; and so long as this x remains uncontrolled, its manifestations will continue unchallenged- in other words, there will be order. The same causes, the same results. That is the manifest signs of a natural order that knows nothing of God.”

IfsKnowsLongMatterOrderCausesNaturalResultsQualityDivineRemainsProofManifestationManifestReverseInnateRegularityNatural Order
Book:Essays in freethinking
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“In the natural order no matter what ideals may be theoretically possible, most people more or less live for themselves and for their own interests and pleasures or for those of their own family or group, and therefore they are constantly interfering with one another's aims, and hurting one another and injuring one another, whether they mean it or not.”

PeopleMayMeanMatterOrderInterestNaturalHurtPleasureGroupsIdealsAimNo Matter WhatInterfereNatural Order
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“One of the great errors organizations make is shutting down what is a natural, life-enhancing process-chaos. We are terrified of chaos. As a manager, it signals failure. But if you move out of control and into an appreciation of natural order, you understand that the only way a system changes is when it is far from equilibrium, when it moves from the 'quiet' we treasure and is confronted with the choice to die or reorganize. And you can't reorganize to a higher level unless you risk the perils of the path through chaos.”

IfsWayMovingOrderDiesChoicesProcessNaturalLevelsPathRiskHigherQuietOrganizationErrorsChaosAppreciationTreasureManagersTerrifiedSignalsPerilEquilibriumHigher LevelNatural OrderNatural LifeShutting DownSystems Change
Author:Margaret J. Wheatley
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“In a way, human beings have never been part of the natural order; we're not biological in the normal sense. Normal biological animals stop eating when they're not hungry and stop breeding when there is no sense in breeding. By contrast, human beings are what I think of as "biomythic" animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order. For a long time, our unnatural beahvior didn't threaten the natural world, but now it does.”

ThinkingWorldWayHumansLongDoeStoriesOrderNaturalHuman BeingsAnimalNormalEatingLong TimeHarmonyHungryControlledContrastNatural WorldUnnaturalBreedingNatural Order
Author:Sam Keen
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“The biblical authors wrote of God's sovereignty over His world, and of man's experiences within that world, using such modes of speech about the natural order and human experience as were current in their days, and in a language that was common to themselves and their contemporaries. This is saying no more than that they wrote to be understood. Their picture of the world and things in it is not put forward as normative for later science, andy more than their use of Hebrew and Greek is put forward as a perfect model for composition in these languages.”

MenWorldHumansUseOrderLanguageNaturalPerfectCommonSpeechModelsUnderstoodCurrentsGreekBiblicalCompositionSovereigntyHuman ExperienceSaying NoHebrewNatural Order
Author:J. I. Packer
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“I am grateful to the fossil fuel industry for bringing us the concentrated carbon that took us through the Industrial Revolution and through the technological revolution and brought us to the gateway of the renewable energy revolution, or what I call the sunlight revolution. But that is where we must part ways. It's the natural order.”

WayOrderEnergyNaturalRevolutionIndustryGratefulFuelSunlightTechnologicalCarbonFossilsFossil FuelRenewable EnergyGatewaysIndustrial RevolutionI Am GratefulNatural Order
Author:Mark Ruffalo
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“You can't anticipate history. It's only when you look back you see what the Romans did, and what various other empires did, what the British Empire did. We're now beginning to see the long shadow that it created, so one must be hopeful and say that what's going on in Asia, that what's going on in the Middle East, that all these various areas of conflict, that they will pass and move onto another area. But it would seem that the natural order of things is there is this cyclic behavior of destruction followed by a calm period.”

LooksLongSeemsMovingOrderNaturalMiddlePeriodsConflictBehaviorShadowAreasDestructionCalmVariousBritishEastHopefulEmpiresMiddle EastAsiaAnticipateBritish EmpireNatural OrderLong Shadows
Author:Roma Tearne
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“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

WorldWayOrderBornNaturalCareersTechnologyFiveNormalOrdinaryExcitingCome UpReactionsRevolutionaryThirtyFifteenNatural Order
Author:Douglas Adams
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