Natural Vs Artificial Quotes & Sayings

Hobbes is not an absolutist precisely because he is an authoritarian. His scepticism about the power of reasoning, which applied no less to the 'artificial reason' of the Sovereign than to the reasoning of the natural man, together with the rest of his individualism, separate him from the rationalist dictators of his or any age. Indeed, Hobbes, without being himself a liberal, had in him more of the philosophy of liberalism than most of its professed defenders — Efraim Podoksik

I consider it presumption in anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised; and no one can safely pronounce that if women's nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men's, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves. — John Stuart Mill

Grace is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation; or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them "elegant" animals would be absurd. — Richard Whately

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. — Socrates

Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity. — Joseph Addison

Marriage is not a natural phenomenon. It is artificial, arbitrary. And when it disappears you cannot do anything to bring it back. You can pretend, but that pretension makes you a hypocrite. And your pretension cannot deceive the woman, because she has known your love and the pretension cannot become the substitute. The only way is to separate - in friendship, because you have given each other so much. — Rajneesh

My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence; me, I study natural stupidity. — Amos Tversky

I guess with artificial intelligence, just like with natural intelligence, there can be a way-creepy side. — Dean Koontz

History ... may be regarded as an artificial extension and : broadening of our memories and may be used to overcome the natural bewilderment of all unfamiliar situations. — James Harvey Robinson

The consideration of man's body has not changed to meet the new conditions of this artificial environment that has replaced his natural one. The result is that of perceptual discord between man and his environment. The effect of this discord is a general deterioration of man's body, the symptoms of which are termed disease. — Hilton Hotema

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation. — Agnes Repplier

Artificial selection turned the wolf into the shepherd, and the wild grasses into wheat and corn. In fact, almost every plant and animal that we eat today was bred from a wild, less edible ancestor. If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only ten or fifteen thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of life. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The moral and political principles that govern men are derived from three sources: revelation, natural law, and the artificial conventions of society. With regard to its main purpose, there is no comparison between the first and the others; but all three are alike in that they all lead towards happiness in this mortal life. — Cesare Beccaria

We only invented the word organic because we made things inorganic.
We only invented the word natural because we made things unnatural.
We only invented the word permaculture because we made agriculture. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

What does natural mean?
Means non-artificial. Made by nature.
But nature can't make things. It's not a person.
Nature is the things that aren't made by people.
But we're made by people, so what does that make us? Are we artificial? — Rob Davis

A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It's all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. — Jon Ronson

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

I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man's spiritual growth. — Rachel Carson

In several sections, both natural in the banks of the Mississippi and its numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, I observed erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried in strata at different heights, one over the other. — Charles Lyell

The conventional, and painfully artificial, separation of the human realm from the natural other is bound to perish, albeit over a period of time, until we are obliged to learn how to cultivate our gardens under the most demanding conditions. — John Burnside

The quality of his being one with the people, of having no artificial or natural barriers between him and them, made it possible for him to be a leader without ever being or thinking of being a dictator. — Frances Perkins

[F]or Zen there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control. The constructive powers of the human mind are no more artificial than the formative actions of plants or bees, so that from the standpoint of Zen it is no contradiction to say that artistic technique is discipline in spontaneity and spontaneity in discipline. — Alan W. Watts

If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What would shopping this way mean in the supermarket? Well, imagine your great grandmother at your side as you roll down the aisles. You're standing together in front of the dairy case. She picks up a package of Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt tubes - and has no idea what this could possibly be. Is it a food or a toothpaste? And how, exactly, do you introduce it into your body? You could tell her it's just yogurt in a squirtable form, yet if she read the ingredients label she would have every reason to doubt that that was in fact the case. Sure, there's some yogurt in there, but there are also a dozen other things that aren't remotely yogurtlike, ingredients she would probably fail to recognize as foods of any kind, including high-fructose corn syrup, modified corn starch, kosher gelatin, carrageenan, tricalcium phosphate, natural and artificial flavors, vitamins, and so forth. — Michael Pollan

Before we work on artificial intelligence, why don't we do something about natural stupidity? — Steve Polyak

Wilderness is a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man. — Aldo Leopold

A materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a 'natural group' ... What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a 'natural group.' A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one ... — Monique Wittig

Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp - all others but liars! — Herman Melville

Incidental by-products of alterations in other traits? Belyaev strongly leaned toward the latter view, because of a phenomenon known as "pleiotropy": a single gene affecting multiple traits. Pleiotropy means that selection - whether natural or artificial - for one trait can affect many others. This is why evolutionary biologists make a distinction between selection for and selection of.9 — Anonymous

Greed for the things money can buy ("natural wealth") is a bad thing, but it is finite. You can only enjoy a finite amount of food or drink, houses or cars, or even sex. But greed for money ("artificial wealth") is infinite. You can always want more. It's like a drug: you have to have higher and higher doses of it to give you the same "buzz" you used to get from little bits of it. And this never stops. It is Hell's false infinite. — Peter Kreeft