In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
Camille PagliaRead
There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation alter nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nature has a powerful and unchanging presence, unaffected by human actions.
In this quote, Camille Paglia reflects on the resilience and dominance of nature, suggesting that human actions, even destructive ones like nuclear war, are insignificant in the grand scheme of the natural world. She emphasizes that nature will inevitably recover and continue its processes, regardless of our interventions. The quote serves as a reminder of our place within the larger ecosystem and the enduring strength of nature itself.
Themes
NatureResilienceHuman ActionsNuclearEnvironmentEnergyCosmos
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about environmental preservation, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of respecting nature.
More from Camille Paglia
All quotes βEvery month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
Camille PagliaRead
Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
Camille PagliaRead
The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.
Camille PagliaRead
We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.
Camille PagliaRead
Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.
Camille PagliaRead
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If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.
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Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.
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Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important.
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I never before knew the full value of trees....What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.
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Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure.
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I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
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