Natural Enemies Quotes & Sayings

Fathers and sons are natural enemies. Look at any species. Shark, sees his father in the water, he's not thinking, Hey dad, wassup ? He's thinking, Back off, old man, this surfer carcass is mine. Of course, when his girlfriend swims up and she's like, Way, you know, there's enough surfer for everybody. You and your dad need to frenzy together more. Leave you father a thigh. — Christopher Titus

What about the truth?" Ethan asked. "In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies. I would think a former employee of the federal government could grasp that concept." Ethan — Blake Crouch

You know, Jacob, if it weren't for the fact that we're natural enemies and that you're also trying to steal away the reason for my existence, I might actually like you. — Stephenie Meyer

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking. — Jessamyn West

The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end. — Robert Altman

Stop making such a big deal about lard. It is no less healthy than other fats, and it is more delicious. Nothing makes as flaky or as delicious biscuits or piecrust as ones made with part lard. And there is simply nothing better for frying. You eat the rest of the animal (including parts that are likely much more offensive), so buy a tub of fresh lard to keep in your refrigerator. Use it and be proud that you are working to bust a stupid stigma about a completely natural ingredient. Don't engage the lard enemies, as more often than not, they have no fucking idea what they are talking about. Go beat your head against a wall instead. You'll end up happier. — John Currence

The only 'natural enemies' are those who take one's very nature as an offence. — Simon May

I don't view prosecutors and attorneys as natural enemies ... Though their roles are oppositional, the two simply have different roles to play in pursuit of the larger purpose, realizing the rule of law ... This is not to deny that the will to win drives those efforts ... Rather, it is simply to insist that ultimately, neither the accused nor society is served unless the integrity of the system is set above the expedient purposes of either side. — Sonia Sotomayor

Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies ... despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level. — Paul Shepard

[L]ife is a system of geological and biological cooperation. Certainly, the system contains fights: birds against worms, snails against lettuce, and spiders against flies. But these fights are contained in the sense that they do not get out of hand, that no one species is the permanent victor. Man alone is trying to eliminate his natural enemies in the conviction that he is, or should be, the supreme species. — Alan W. Watts

All love tends to become like that which it loves. God loved man; therefore He became man. For nine months her own body was the natural Eucharist, in which God shared communion with human life, thus preparing for that greater Eucharist when human life would commune with the Divine. Mary's joy was to form Christ in her own body; her joy now is to form Christ in our souls. In this Mystery, we pray to become pregnant with the Christ spirit, giving Him new lips with which He may speak of His Father, new hands with which He may feed the poor, and a new heart with which He may love everyone, even enemies. — Fulton J. Sheen

The precepts "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you" ... are born from the Gospel's profound spirit of individualism, which refuses to let one's own actions and conduct depend in any way on somebody else's acts. The Christian refuses to let his acts be mere reactions - such conduct would lower him to the level of his enemy. The act is to grow organically from the person, "as the fruit from the tree." ... What the Gospel demands is not a reaction which is the reverse of the natural reaction, as if it said: "Because he strikes you on the cheek, tend the other" - but a rejection of all reactive activity, of any participation in common and average ways of acting and standards of judgment. — Max Scheler

When I recall my teachers at school, I realise that half of them were abnormal ... We pupils of old Austria were brought up to respect old people and women. But on our professors we had no mercy; they were our natural enemies. The majority of them were somewhat mentally deranged, and quite a few ended their days as honest-to-God lunatics! ... I was in particular bad odor with the teachers. I showed not the slightest aptitude for foreign languages - though I might have, had not the teacher been a congenital idiot. I could not bear the sight of him. — Adolf Hitler

Works for me. For the ones we love, today we're allies. Tomorrow we resume our natural order of mortal enemies. Gentlemen, and I use that term loosely for all of us, have we an accord? (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Our greater beastliness lies not in a penchant for brute force,but in our greater corruption, nihilism, and decadence; in our servitude to the
overwhelming systems we create; in the sociopathic rationalism we adopt to master natural forces and to compete with the machines we build;and in the scientistic idolatry that co-opts the religious impulse. Of course the ancients resorted more to brute force: they lacked the infrastructure to punish their enemies and victims in a safer, more
sophisticated fashion, with advanced legal regimes and mass-produced, maximum security prisons; with engineered propaganda for social conditioning; and with economic, cyber, and drone warfare. We channel our aggression with more sophisticated instruments, but the use of those instruments doesn't ennoble us. — Benjamin Cain

I think academics and intellectuals are the natural enemies of imagination and intelligence. — Steve Merrick

As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world. — Lev Manovich

Dolphins and sharks are natural enemies. Dolphins are like, "Quit eating us," and sharks are like, "Stop smiling all the time, you morons. — Dan Florence

Is it not fear that drives atrocity? It is natural enough to hate our enemies. Of course it is. How could anybody kill another person unless they had learned to hate them? But when you are afraid of them too, terrified by them rather, isn't that when atrocity begins? Scared beyond reason. We call it the Terror always. For you it's the Red Terror. For the Republicans it's the White Terror. But actually the real terror is in the hearts of those who commit the atrocity. — David Ebsworth

Maybe this is why so many serial killers work in pairs. It's nice not to feel alone in a world full of victims or enemies. It's no wonder Waltraud Wagner, the Austrian Angel of Death, convinced her friends to kill with her. It just seems natural. You and me against the world ... — Chuck Palahniuk

Let me once more assert that Mr Malison was not a bad man. The misfortune was, that his notion of right fell in with his natural fierceness; and that, in aggravation of the too common feeling with which he had commenced his relations with his pupils, namely, that they were not only the natural enemies of the master, but therefore of all law, theology had come in and taught him that they were in their own nature bad - with a badness for which the only set-off he knew or could introduce was blows. Independently of any remedial quality that might be in them, these blows were an embodiment of justice; for "every sin," as the catechism teaches, "deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to come." The master therefore was only a co-worker with God in every pandy he inflicted on his pupils. I do not mean that he reasoned thus, but that such-like were the principles he had to act upon. — George MacDonald

The rapture will neutralize natural death; God's enemies will be begging for a way out of the world. — Felix Wantang

Comedians and Feminists are natural enemies. Because stereotypically speaking, feminists can't take a joke and comedians can't take criticism. — Louis C.K.

If we want justice for minorities and cooled wars with our natural enemies, whether human or nonhuman, we must first come to terms with the minority wand the enemy in ourselves and in our own hearts, for the rascal is there as much as anywhere in the 'external' world - especially when you realize that the world outside your skin is as much yourself as the world inside. — Alan Watts

If someone asked, 'Would you prefer to be thought of as St. Michael as opposed to the devil,' I might say St. Michael. But that choice is not really there, because you are in an environment in which you have natural predators and enemies. — Michael Ashcroft

Most cats do not approach humans recklessly. The possibility of concealed weapons, clods or sticks, tend to make them reserved. Homeless cats in particular-with some justification, unfortunately-consider humans their natural enemies. Much ceremony must be observed, and a number of diplomatic feelers put out, before establishing a state of truce. — Lloyd Alexander

I learned that female professors and departmental secretaries are the natural enemies of the academic world, as I was privileged to overhear discussions of my sexual orientation and probable childhood traumas from ten to ten-thirty each morning through the paper-thin walls of the break room located adjacent to my office. By these means I learned that although I was in desperate need of a girdle, I was better off than one of the other female professors, who would never lose all that baby weight by working all of the time. As — Hope Jahren

But time and distance are love's natural enemies. — Nicola Yoon

I have met Jackie Chan about 6 times up 'til now ... and even though many people think we are natural enemies, I personally think he is a cool bloke and would honestly love to work with him in a film one time - that would a well brilliant movie! — Jet Li

The effectiveness of an author turns chiefly upon his getting the reputation that he should be read. But by practicing various arts, by the operation of chance, and by certain natural affinities, this reputation is quickly won by a hundred worthless people: while a worthy writer may come by it very slowly and tardily. The former possess friends to help them; for the rabble is always a numerous body which holds well together. The latter has nothing but enemies; because intellectual superiority is everywhere and under all circumstances the most hateful thing in the world, and especially to bunglers in the same line of work, who want to pass for something themselves. This being so, it is a prime condition for doing any great work
any work which is to outlive its own age, that a man pay no heed to his contemporaries, their views and opinons, and the praise or blame which they bestow. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The eagle had two natural enemies: storms and serpents. He embraced the storm, waiting on the rock for the right thermal current and then using that to carry him higher. While other birds were taking cover, the eagle was soaring. An eagle would never fight against the storms of life. — Karen Kingsbury

Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don't insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don't let me hear a word about the rest — Alfred De Vigny

Prevne was crawling with agents, he went, even if you went to buy a newspaper your identification was checked. "Easier to have it tattooed on, like you," said Kasimir, "Move your foot, Stefan." - "Move your fat rump, then." - " Oh, mine are German numbers, out of date. A few more wars and I'll run out of skin." --- "Shed it, then, like a snake."---No, they go right down to the bone." --- Shed your bones, then," Stefan said, *be a jellyfish. Be an amoeba. When they pin me down, I bud off. Two little spineless Stefans where they thought they had one MR 64100282A. Four of them, eight, sixteen thirty-two sixty-four a hundred and twenty-eight, I would entirely cover the surface of the globe were it not for my natural enemies. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Stereotypically speaking feminists can't take a joke. ::audience boo:: See? — Louis C.K.

The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured
especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised. — E. O. Wilson

It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there. — Charles Dickens

I've singled out the humanities and the sciences because they are regarded as natural opposites, even natural enemies. But this is oversimplifying to make a point. Between English at one end of the spectrum and chemistry at the other are many subjects, like economics, that are a mystery to both camps. — William Zinsser

I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other. — Thomas Jefferson

Commerce and art are natural enemies. And also, the enemy of good is great. And the enemy of great is good, so there's this huge juggling that's going on all the time. — David Foster

A man who tries to make the workmen believe that their employers are their natural enemies is indeed the worst enemy of workmen. For the employees of yesterday are the employers of today, and the employees of today can and will partly be the employers of tomorrow. — William J.H. Boetcker

What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christians come together because they have all been loved by Jesus himself. They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake. — D. A. Carson

Accountants and economists are natural enemies. One views trees, the other forests, and the visions are usually at odds, as they should be. — Robert Ludlum

In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies. I would think a former employee of the federal government could grasp that concept. — Blake Crouch

The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true? — Alexis De Tocqueville

In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food — Lord Acton

first settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go back to nature for information. — Thomas Paine

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. — Daniel Quinn

Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way. — John Steinbeck

Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world that poses no threat? — Peter Watts

Devastation could arise insidiously, rather than suddenly, through unsustainable pressure on energy supplies, food, water and other natural resources. Indeed, these pressures are the prime 'threats without enemies' that confront us. — Martin Rees

At this moment the headmaster found Master Wesendonck's tall pile of books slipping from his grasp. He juggled frantically with them for a moment and then, to the infinite joy of the boarders and day boys, they crashed to the ground in all directions. A bevy of form masters rushed forward to the rescue. Master Wesendonck, realising with immense presence of mind that his natural enemies were for once in their proper place, grovelling on the floor, stood still and did nothing. — Angela Thirkell

The savage hatred I feel for crowds is getting worse, natural enemies that they are of imagination and of thought. — Isabelle Eberhardt

We tend to think of heroes only in terms of violent combat, whether it's against enemies or a natural disaster. But human beings also perform radical acts of compassion; we just don't talk about them, or we don't talk about them as much. — Diane Ackerman

The natural state of mankind ... and I know that this is a controversial idea ... is freedom ... And the proof is the lengths to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it once lost. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try again, against all odds, against all prejudices. — John Quincy Adams

Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities. As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow. — Aleister Crowley

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it - to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse. — H.L. Mencken

Great architecture has only two natural enemies: water and stupid men. — Richard Nickel

Anyway, it's unthinkable! Dragons and knights are born enemies. They need to be enemies just like dogs hate cats, cats hate mice and mice hate scientists. Without somebody to hate where would all the hate go? The hate would just boil up inside you, eat away and cause you to have indigestion then a heart attack. We need to release the anger, and we release it on dragons who release it back on us. We slay them and they roast us. It is the natural order of things, Emma. — Elias Zapple

May 27, 1941
Sunday we encountered specimens of the rarely appearing yellow lady's slipper. This orchis is fragilely beautiful. One tends to think of it almost as a phenomenon, without any roots or place in the natural world. And yet it, too, has had its tough old ancestors which have eluded fires and drought and freezes to pass on in this lovely form the boon of existence. If a plant so delicately lovely can at the same time be so toughly persistent and resistant to all natural enemies, can we doubt that hopes for a better an more rational world may not also withstand all assaults, be bequeathed from generation to generation, and come ultimately to flower?
President Roosevelt says he has not lost faith in democracy; nor have I lost faith in the transcendent potentialities of LIFE itself. One has but to look about him to become almost wildly imbued with something of the massive, surging vitality of the earth. — Harvey Broome

What simpletons we are! Whatever our natural age, how childish we are in spiritual things! What great simpletons we are when we first believe in Christ! We think that our being pardoned involves a great many things which we afterwards find have nothing whatever to do with our pardon. For instance, we think we shall never sin again. We fancy that the battle is all fought; that we have got into a fair field, with no more war to wage; that in fact we have got the victory, and have only just to stand up and wave the palm branch; that all is over, that God has only got to call us up to himself and we shall enter into heaven without having to fight any enemies upon earth. Now, all these are obvious mistakes. Though the text has a great meaning, it does not mean anything of this kind. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Besides, humans aren't prey. They are our natural enemies. They are to be avoided. — Cynthia Leitich Smith

It is a known fact that the sheep that give us steel wool have no natural enemies. — Gary Larson

I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding. — H.L. Mencken

The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very
friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious. — H.L. Mencken

There is an outpouring of international sympathy and aid when any area of the world is struck by an earthquake, a flood, or a devastating fire. [...] When we look with justifiable pride at our generous responses to those suffering a natural disaster, we might also pause to reflect on how it happens that our sympathy can be so easily changed to hatred. How is it that we will predictably reach out to help a given people at one time and, when our country labels the same people enemies, we will reluctantly or enthusiastically kill millions of them? — Nel Noddings