Nature Domination Quotes

...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.

I think we suffer from certain alienation. We live on this planet, but we somehow have an idea that we're elevated from it, that we're not nature. We're a creature that manages nature and is superior and does whatever it wants. That creates a separation between humanity and the rest of the planet.

Y'know, Nature's unpredictable -- that's why we had to tame her. Maybe we went too far, but in principle we made the right decision.

Take possession of the air, submit the elements, penetrate the last redoubts of nature, make space retreat, make death retreat.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

Having rationally endeavored to control nature, is he not now becoming the slave of the objects which he makes?

The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.

Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that has cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.

The century would seek to dominate nature as it had never been dominated, would attack the idea of war, poverty and natural catastrophe as never before. The century would create death, devastation and pollution as never before. Yet the century was now attached to the idea that man must take his conception of life out to the stars.

If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

The progress and civilisation of the human race simply mean controlling this nature.