Substance Quotes - Page 29

• Fermentation is the exhalation of a substance through the admixture of a ferment which, by virtue of its spirit, penetrates the mass and transforms it into its own nature.

  Andreas Libavius

  Spirit, Virtue, Mass

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• Darkness is where we begin and where we end. We don't usually see light traveling in darkness of space because we only can see its reflection on substance.

  Ala Bashir

  Reflection, Light, Space

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• Why should we try for space travel? It cannot be a substance of any kind that can be expected to pay. It can only be something intangible, not involving haulage, which is at the same time more valuable. There is something like that: Knowledge.

  Willy Ley

  Space, Trying, Pay

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• The shape of the heaven is of necessity spherical; for that is the shape most appropriate to its substance and also by nature primary.

  Aristotle

  Future, Heaven, Shapes

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “On the Heavens”, p.48, Aeterna Press

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• Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile . . . I like to work with it so that you feel it physically, so you feel the presence of light inhabiting a space.

  James Turrell

  Powerful, Light, Space

  James Turrell, Julia Brown, Craig E. Adcock, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.) (1985). “Occluded front, James Turrell”, Lapis Pr

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• Thus the radio elements formed strange and cruel families in which each member was created by spontaneous transformation of the mother substance: radium was a "descendant" of uranium, polonium a descendant of radium.

  Eve Curie

  Mother, Science, Elements

  Ève Curie (1937). “Madame Curie: a biography”

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• And by the influence of heat, light, and electrical powers, there is a constant series of changes; matter assumes new forms, the destruction of one order of beings tends to the conservation of another; solution and consolidation, decay and renovation, are connected; and whilst the parts of the system continue in a state of fluctuation and change, the order and harmony of the whole remain unalterable.

  Humphry Davy

  Change, Science, Animal

  "The Collected Works: Discourses delivered before the Royal Society".

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• If anyone should doubt whether the electrical matter passes through the substance of bodies, or only over along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken through his own body, will probably convince him.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Taken, Glasses, Doubt

  Benjamin Franklin, William Temple Franklin, William Duane (1834). “Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin”, p.258

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• The here, the now, and the individual, have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet, and - from time immemorial - the woman. In the small circle of the home she has never quite forgotten the particular uniqueness of each member of the family; the spontaneity of now; the vividness of here. This is the basic substance of life. These are the individual elements that form the bigger entities like mass, future, world. We may neglect these elements, but we cannot dispense with them. They are the drops that make up the stream. They are the essence of life itself.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Women, Home, Artist

  "Gift from the Sea".

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• Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Mean, Caring

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• In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics...For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.

  Polybius

  Children, War, Men

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• ... numbers have neither substance, nor meaning, nor qualities. They are nothing but marks, and all that is in them we have put into them by the simple rule of straight succession.

  Hermann Weyl

  Simple, Numbers, Simplicity

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Riemanns geometrische Ideen, ihre Auswirkung und ihre Verknüpfung mit der Gruppentheorie”, p.44, Springer-Verlag

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• Under this law (Controlled Substances Act) a bureaucrat-usually not elected-decides whether or not a substance is dangerous and how dangerous that substance is. There's no more messing around with legislatures, presidents, or other bothersome formalities. When MDMA (ecstasy) was made illegal in 1986, no elected official voted on that. It was done "in house." People are now in jail because they did something that an administrator declared was wrong.

  Peter McWilliams

  Law, Jail, People

  Peter McWilliams (1996). “Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

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• Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.

  Noam Chomsky

  Kentucky, Political, Drug

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Language and Politics”, p.738, AK Press

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• The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Mean, People, Voting

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• Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.

  Dan Simmons

  Truth, Powerful, Skeletons

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.239, Spectra

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• Carbon dioxide is natural, it is not harmful, it is a part of Earth's lifecycle. And yet we're being told that we have to reduce this natural substance, reduce the American standard of living, to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in Earth.

  Michele Bachmann

  Environmental, Arbitrary, Earth

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• By 'God', I understand, a substance which is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else [...] that exists. All these attributes are such that, the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. So, from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists.

  Rene Descartes

  Powerful, Independent, Intelligent

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• These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and make the deep unconscious dynamics available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviors to a depth that cannot be matched by any other methods and tools available in modern mainstream science. In emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.

  Stanislav Grof

  Unique, Emotional, Personality

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• At long last, we may be returning to the original two-sided sense of the word virus, which originally signified either a life-giving substance or a deadly venom. Viruses are indeed exquisitely deadly, but they have provided the world with some of its most important innovations. Creation and destruction join together once more.

  Carl Zimmer

  Origin Of Life, Two, Long

  Carl Zimmer (2012). “A Planet of Viruses”, p.94, University of Chicago Press

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• Almost all people suffer some form of intense inner pain at some times in their lives. The suffering might be depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or suicidal thoughts and it results from the battles we wage against our thoughts as we futilely try to get rid of our historie.

  Steven C. Hayes

  Pain, Self Esteem, Suicidal

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• The cell, over the billions of years of her life, has covered the earth many times with her substance, found ways to control herself and her environment, and insure her survival.

  Albert Claude

  Cells, Years, Survival

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• The prevailing attitude towards nature is that form of heresy which denies substance and, in doing so, denies the rightfulness of creation. We have said - to the point of repletion, perhaps - that man is not to take his patterns from nature; but neither is he to waste himself in seeking to change her face.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Attitude, Men, Patterns

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences”, p.171, University of Chicago Press

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• Triumphs against the natural order of living exact unforeseen payments. At the same time that man attempts to straighten a crooked nature, he is striving to annihilate space, which seems but another phase of the war against substance. We ignore the fact that space and matter are shock absorbers; the more we diminish them the more we reduce our privacy and security.

  Richard M. Weaver

  War, Men, Order

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.155, University of Chicago Press

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• The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one's own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence - as inoffensively as possible - like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow - the philosopher, the artist, the believer.

  Ernst Junger

  Artist, Safety, Political

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