Quote

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

Samuel Butler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Samuel Butler
Age: 66 †
Born: 1835
Born: December 4
Died: 1902
Died: June 18
Farmer
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
Writer
Notts
Cellarius
Law
Nonsense
Talk
Obedience
Talking
Fixed
Free
Rate
Ascribing
Science
Intelligence
Disobeying
Kind
Laws
Potentiality
People
Unless
Obeying
Either
Atoms

More quotes by Samuel Butler

Image
Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
Samuel Butler
Image
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel Butler
Image
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler
Image
If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
Samuel Butler
Image
Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.
Samuel Butler
Image
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
Samuel Butler
Image
Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
Samuel Butler
Image
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
Samuel Butler
Image
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
Samuel Butler
Image
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Samuel Butler
Image
He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel Butler
Image
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Samuel Butler
Image
We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
Samuel Butler
Image
Let man be true and every god a liar.
Samuel Butler
Image
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
Samuel Butler
Image
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
Samuel Butler
Image
Letters are like wine if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
Samuel Butler
Image
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
Samuel Butler
Image
Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.
Samuel Butler
Image
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
Samuel Butler