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The power to perform is derived in toto from the inanimate world, however many elaborate metamorphoses it may undergo, and through however many organisms, vegetable and animal, it may pass before it reaches man.

— Frederick Soddy Matter, Energy, Consciousness and Spirit (1919)

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More quotes by Frederick Soddy

Chemistry has been termed by the physicist as the messy part of physics, but that is no reason why the physicists should be permitted to make a mess of chemistry when they invade it.

The world that is dead vitally and spiritually is not dead physically.

Matter, Energy, Consciousness and Spirit (1919)

The path hewn by knowledge through ignorance points two ways in the direction of the absolute unattainable truth. Man has always tended to confound these two classes of the ultimately unknowable.

Matter, Energy, Consciousness and Spirit (1919)

There is no life—body, mind or soul...— no birth, growth or even existence, without a continuous supply and expenditure of energy.

Matter, Energy, Consciousness and Spirit (1919)

The self-contained organism is not comprehensible, but the combination of an inanimate mechanism and an external will is more intelligible.

Matter, Energy, Consciousness and Spirit (1919)

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Frederick Soddy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.