A Quote by Jack McDevitt

Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines.

Jack McDevitt

Quote Topics

Boundaries Charts Does Draw Existence Lines Minds Nature Save Small Small Minds

Quote Author

Jack McDevitt
American - Author
Born: April 14, 1935

So we draw lines around our property, our counties, our cities, our states, our countries. And, boy, do we act as if those lines are important. I mean, we go to war. We will kill and die to protect those boundaries. Nature couldn't give two hoots about our national boundaries.

David Suzuki

Boundaries are the lines we draw that mark off our autonomy and that of other people, that protect our privacy and that of others. Boundaries allow for intimate connection without dissolving or losing one's sense of self.

Amy Bloom

What's the Future? It's a blank sheet of paper, and we draw lines on it, but sometimes our hand is held, and the lines we draw aren't the lines we wanted.

John Marsden

Gods, religions and national boundaries are absolutely imaginary. They don't tend to exist. As soon as you pull back half a mile and look down at the Earth there are no national boundaries. There aren't even national boundaries when you get down and walk around. They're just imaginary lines we draw on maps. I just get fascinated by people who assume that things that are imaginary have no relevance to their lives.

Neil Gaiman

The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.

Isaac Newton

Divisions are imaginary lines drawn by small minds.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Art removes boundaries and makes the world brighter. It is the common language for people all over the world. But politics are the opposite completely. Politicians, their very meaning is based on the lines they draw.

Asghar Farhadi

What is necessary for 'the very existence of science,' and what the characteristics of nature are, are not to be determined by pompous preconditions, they are determined always by the material with which we work, by nature herself. We look, and we see what we find, and we cannot say ahead of time successfully what it is going to look like. ... It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.

Richard P. Feynman

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

Richard P. Feynman

You are allowed to draw lines even if your feelings are irrational. Part of the marvelous business of being an adult human is that you get to set your own boundaries for whatever reasons you like, without appending a sensible rationale to them.

Mallory Ortberg

[Barack] Obama can draw lines for himself and his country, not for other countries. We have our red lines, like our sovereignty, our independence, while if you want to talk about world red lines, the United States used depleted uranium in Iraq, Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza, and nobody said anything. What about the red lines ? We don't see red lines. It's political red lines.

Bashar al-Assad

At a fundamental level, as human beings, we are all the same; each one of us aspires to happiness and each one of us does not wish to suffer. This is why, whenever I have the opportunity, I try to draw people's attention to what as members of the human family we have in common and the deeply interconnected nature of our existence and welfare.