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If Mother Nature were so inclined, she could wipe out humanity in an instant.
— Senku, Dr. STONE
Comic Books
Now, at this point, you might be getting indignant at what was done to me— forcibly taken from my idyllic life in a jungle paradise. Well, don't bother. Paradise is no paradise and chimps' lives in the wild are anything but idyllic. Mostly, it's a daily struggle for survival. We enjoyed most of modern society's ills — wars, famine, politics, murder and betrayal — with none of its comforts. Speaking strictly for myself, I'll take bubble baths in air-conditioned hotels over scratching bugs out of my fur in the dank jungle anytime.
— Detective Chimp, Day of Vengeance
The natural world knows no morality, no justice, no free will, no reason, no values, no obligations.
— Blast
Nature is beauty, but it is also predation.
— Storm, Storm (Vol. 1) #2
Fan Works
"...nature isn't passive [.] Nature fights. It scraps and claws and does everything it can to survive. There IS one thing that ties all living things together—the will to live. ...A nettle stings so that predators won't eat it. Plants send their seeds out on the wind, so that if they are dying in ground that cannot sustain them, at least their descendents can take root somewhere else and flourish. They take care of their children by changing and sending them somewhere new—would you do less for your own? Would you condemn all your innocent children to die, because you won't even risk as much as a dandelion?"
— Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, Choosing Life Verse
The Witch of Life is said to be a goddess of nature, adaptation, and natural cycles. She presides over her namesake in all its manifestations. She is a god of love, in a way, but not a god of mercy.
If she loves the deer as she would her own child, then the wolf which tears at its flesh is her child as well. Smallpox was her child, and the furor with which humankind fought and destroyed it was a part of the natural world as well, and she smiled upon the both of them and pronounced it all good.
If she loves the deer as she would her own child, then the wolf which tears at its flesh is her child as well. Smallpox was her child, and the furor with which humankind fought and destroyed it was a part of the natural world as well, and she smiled upon the both of them and pronounced it all good.
— Guide to the Zodiac
, a Homestuck fic
, a Homestuck fic"Compassion? Empathy towards species outside your own? Ethics? Morals? Laws? Those are things CIVILIZATION invented! You ponies brought them into being when you decided 'I will care about more than whether I live and reproduce.' You decided some things were greater then your own life! You decided some things were greater than passing off GENETIC legacies. You learned what love was when Celestia taught you how to care about something other than your DNA. The natural world? When did you last see parasprites and cockatrices have political debates? Nature's balance doesn't TOLERATE kindness Flutter-girl. The sick and hurt you care for? You go AGAINST nature's will when you step in and tend to them and heal them. They're SUPPOSED to die to make way for the superior survivors. But because you have an empathy sphere larger than the sun, you step in, you CHEAT Fluttershy, you break Darwin The Dragon's law and allow the 'weak' to thrive not making room for the 'strong.' Kindness goes AGAINST nature Fluttershy! You're as unnatural as me."
— Fluttercruel, Pony POV Series
Films - Live Action
"Nature is Satan's church."
—She, Antichrist
"Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing, they just screech in pain."
— Werner Herzog, Burden of Dreams
"The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control... and not the other way around."
— Ishiro Serizawa, Godzilla (2014)
"And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food."
— Werner Herzog (again), Grizzly Man
Literature
"The natural world has a place for everything. It's just that some of those things make me think that Nature isn't very fond of people."
— Martin Baker, InCryptid: Half-Off Ragnarok
"Most people would very much like to believe that humans invented the ambush. It makes them feel like we're special. Smart. Try telling that to the trapdoor spider, to the octopus, or to the wolf. They'll be delighted to hear how special you are, as they're draining the marrow from your bones."
— Jonathan Healy, InCryptid: Pocket Apocalypse
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law?
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed?
And love Creation's final law?
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed?
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H.
"It is because Nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilisation. One thinks of wild animals as savage, but the fiercest of them begins to look almost domesticated when one considers the viciousness required of a survivor in the sea; as for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror. There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by 'Mother Nature.' Each species must strive to survive, and that will do, by every means in its power, however foul—unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct."
— Gordon Zellaby, The Midwich Cuckoos
"I control all things that can be grown, nurtured. That includes the thorns."
— Cultivation, Oathbringer (third book of The Stormlight Archive)
"In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature's every-day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and, in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures."
— John Stuart Mill, On Nature
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
— Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden
You think civilization is some horrible, polluting human invention that separates us from the state of nature. But civilization doesn't separate us from nature, Ted. Civilization protects us from nature. Because what you see right now, all around you -(referring to a tribe of cannibals)- this is nature.
— Kenner, State of Fear
"I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."
— Lord Vetinari, Unseen Academicals
Music
People think nature is a rainbow, or a newborn,
Or an ocean, or a puppy, which denies the gory steak and mashers!
Or an ocean, or a puppy, which denies the gory steak and mashers!
— Aesop Rock, "Churro"
To all things housed in her silence
Nature offers a violence
The bear that keeps to his own line
The wolf that seeks always his own kind
The world that hardens as the harsher winter holds
The parent forced to eat its young before it grows
Every bird, gone unheard
Starving where the ground has froze
The winter sunrise, red on white
Like blood upon the snow...
Nature offers a violence
The bear that keeps to his own line
The wolf that seeks always his own kind
The world that hardens as the harsher winter holds
The parent forced to eat its young before it grows
Every bird, gone unheard
Starving where the ground has froze
The winter sunrise, red on white
Like blood upon the snow...
Mythology and Religion
''The wing of the ostrich beats joyously;
are her pinions and plumage like the stork’s?
She leaves her eggs on the ground,
letting them warm in the dirt,
Forgetting they may be crushed underfoot,
or trampled by a wild beast.
Her young are cruelly abandoned as if they were not hers;
her labor is in vain for lack of concern.
For God deprived her of wisdom,
gave her no share of understanding,
Else she would soar on high,
scoffing at the horse and its rider.
are her pinions and plumage like the stork’s?
She leaves her eggs on the ground,
letting them warm in the dirt,
Forgetting they may be crushed underfoot,
or trampled by a wild beast.
Her young are cruelly abandoned as if they were not hers;
her labor is in vain for lack of concern.
For God deprived her of wisdom,
gave her no share of understanding,
Else she would soar on high,
scoffing at the horse and its rider.
Tabletop Games
Selesnya thinks nature is a pretty plaything. True nature would rip their faces off and wear their skins as trophies.
Video Games
Today's foe is tomorrow's food... man, nature is unforgiving.
— Alph, Pikmin 3 the first time you feed an enemy corpse to the Onion for more Pikmin.
Web Animation
"Take it from me, a fellow genius, nature is no picnic up close."
— Blitzo, Helluva Boss
Web Original
This is maybe 30 wasps against 30,000 bees and the 30,000 bees do not stand a chance.
Behold the hornets systematically seize them with huge, wicked jaws and literally fucking cut them apart, one by one by one by fucking one. In three hours, there are piles of limbs and heads and just fucking bits of things that could possibly have been alive at one point, and the hornets have stormed the hive and flown away with all the bee's children. Who will then be eaten.
Nature is fucking hardcore.
Behold the hornets systematically seize them with huge, wicked jaws and literally fucking cut them apart, one by one by one by fucking one. In three hours, there are piles of limbs and heads and just fucking bits of things that could possibly have been alive at one point, and the hornets have stormed the hive and flown away with all the bee's children. Who will then be eaten.
Nature is fucking hardcore.
Mother Nature has things uglier than bullets in her arsenal
"I just don't understand this idea that nature is some entity that wants all of us to live long and prosper but humans are corrupting and perverting it into this horrible abomination that we have these days. It's so incredibly sad. Every day you walk outside and you're not mauled by an animal? That is you defying nature's course. Every day a baby is born without polio, that is you slapping nature in the face."
— Cr1TiKaL
Western Animation
"OHHH THAT LITTLE RAT-LOOKIN' THING JUST GOT ATE! DAMN, NATURE, YOU SCARY!"
— Television Commentator, Family Guy
"And so, the endless circle of life comes to an end, meaningless and grim. Why did they live, and why did they die? No reason."
"Oh, so mother nature needs a favor? Then maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she is losing? Then I say: hard cheese!"
— Mr. Burns, The Simpsons
Stan: All we ever heard growing up was "save the rainforest. The rainforest is fragile."
Kyle: Yeah, fragile my ass!
Kyle: Yeah, fragile my ass!
— South Park, "Rainforest Schmainforest"
Real Life
"Nature is not lyrical and nice; beneath the peace is violence."
— Andrew Wyeth
"Even nature is grim. Never look up anything about the biology or natural habits of the weasel family, unless you want to hear about surplus killing, spree killing, lining dens with the skins of kills, male on female mating violence, and forced mating of immature kits that don’t even have their adult fur. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has nothing on these critters.
I’ve read recently about how trees communicate by chemical messaging through their root system, and that’s all hunky dory and touchy feely new agey. But on the other hand, if you’ve ever seen a pine tree, notice how grass doesn’t grow near it, because they literally poison the soil for grass. Or notice how most of their growing or reproductive strategies are basically designed to screw over other trees. It turns out that Trees are belligerent assholes!"
I’ve read recently about how trees communicate by chemical messaging through their root system, and that’s all hunky dory and touchy feely new agey. But on the other hand, if you’ve ever seen a pine tree, notice how grass doesn’t grow near it, because they literally poison the soil for grass. Or notice how most of their growing or reproductive strategies are basically designed to screw over other trees. It turns out that Trees are belligerent assholes!"
