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Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

John Burroughs

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John Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: April 3
Died: 1921
Died: March 29
Essayist
Naturalist
Writer
Delaware County
New York
Literature
Religion
Eighteen
Science
Western
Done
Christianity
Years
Civilization
Hundred
Development

More quotes by John Burroughs

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Certainly in the United States, you have a constituency in the form of the weapons laboratories, and you also have the branches of the armed services that are involved with nuclear weapons deployment, especially the naval submarine operations and also the air force's land-based ICBM operations. So they have a big lobby in Washington.
John Burroughs
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Nature will not be conquered, but gives herself freely to her true lover - to him who revels with her, bathes in her seas, sails her rivers, camps in her woods, and with no mercenary ends, accepts all.
John Burroughs
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The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
John Burroughs
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For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment--the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country--no bluebird in spring!
John Burroughs
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My group, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, was one of the principle organizers. So, there was this campaign to support the United Nations General Assembly in asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the legality of threat or use of nuclear weapons.
John Burroughs
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All sounds are sharper in winter the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.
John Burroughs
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Nature comes home to one most when one is at home. The stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also.
John Burroughs
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Temperament lies behind mood behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture and finally the power of climate and environment and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.
John Burroughs
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One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth.
John Burroughs
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I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.
John Burroughs
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The International Court of Justice (a.k.a. World Court) is the judicial branch of the United Nations and in the early 1990's a campaign started and it was supported by civil society non-governmental groups around the world.
John Burroughs
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Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
John Burroughs
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A man’s life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.
John Burroughs
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To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies, a source of inspiration to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.
John Burroughs
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Without death and decay, how could life go on?
John Burroughs
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I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture.
John Burroughs
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One goes to Nature only for hints and half-truths. Her facts are crude until you have absorbed them or translated them ... It is not so much what we see as what the thing seen suggests.
John Burroughs
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The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.
John Burroughs
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The poor old earth which has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our awe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our senses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us.
John Burroughs
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In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.
John Burroughs