A Quote by Roy Rappaport

Nature is seen by humans through a screen of beliefs, knowledge, and purposes, and it is in terms of their images of nature, rather than of the actual structure of nature, that they act. Yet, it is upon nature itself that they do act, and it is nature itself that acts upon them, nurturing or destroying them.

Roy Rappaport

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Act Acts Actual Beliefs Destroying Humans Images Itself Knowledge Nature Nurturing Purposes Rather Screen Seen Structure Terms Than Them Through

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Roy Rappaport
American - Anthropologist
March 25, 1926 - October 9, 1997

Nature has no reverence towards life. Nature treats life as though it were the most valueless thing in the world.... Nature does not act by purposes.

Erwin Schrodinger

Art does not imitate nature, but founds itself on the study of nature, takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz: The mind and soul of man.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Nature is man's inorganic body -- that is to say, nature insofar as it is not the human body. Man lives from nature -- i.e., nature is his body -- and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it is he is not to die. To say that man's physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.

Karl Marx

After decades of faithful study, ecologists have begun to fathom hidden likenesses among many interwoven systems. ...a canon of nature's laws, strategies, and principles... Nature runs on sunlight. Nature uses only the energy it needs. Nature fits form to function. Nature recycles everything. Nature rewards cooperation. Nature banks on diversity. Nature demands local expertise. Nature curbs excesses from within. Nature taps the power of limits.

Janine Benyus

A national park is not a playground. It's a sanctuary for nature and for humans who will accept nature on nature's own terms.

Michael Frome

we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. Nature speaking of nature to nature.

Susan Griffin

In our traditional culture, people have a very different view towards nature than in Western culture. We consider humans as part of nature. But in the West, they talk about protecting nature. That's a joke because nature doesn't care; it's humans who need to protect themselves.

Ma Yansong

Western artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift.

Brice Marden

But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing.

Baruch Spinoza

You are not copying nature, but responding to nature in full awareness, to the way nature expresses itself in that object.

Frederick Franck

Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle

The truth... When they have a similar structure to and are organized in as truthful a way as nature. When I look out of the window, then truth for me is the way nature shows itself in its various tones, colours and proportions. That's a truth and has its own correctness. This little slice of nature, and in fact any given piece of nature, represents to me an ongoing challenge, and is a model for my paintings.

Gerhard Richter

All nature's creatures join to express nature's purpose. Somewhere in their mounting and mating, rutting and butting is the very secret of nature itself.

Graham Swift

Architecture is the constant fight between man and nature, the fight to overwhelm nature, to possess it. The first act of architecture is to put a stone on the ground. That act transforms a condition of nature into a condition of culture; it's a holy act.

Mario Botta

Children have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they will care for it. Through the simple act of planting a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.

Judi Dench

Political rule is so natural and necessary to the human race that it cannot be withdrawn without destroying nature itself; for the nature of man is such that he is a social animal.

Robert Bellarmine

A Quote by Roy Rappaport

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