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

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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
Talking
Fixed
Free
Rate
Ascribing
Science
Intelligence
Disobeying
Kind
Laws
Potentiality
People
Unless
Obeying
Either
Atoms
Law
Nonsense
Talk
Obedience

More quotes by Samuel Butler

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A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
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The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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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.
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Life is one long process of getting tired.
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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
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An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
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Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
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Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
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He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
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Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime
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Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
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A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
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The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
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