The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
Interpretation
Nature laws guide actions but require an initiating cause to produce effects.
This quote emphasizes the distinction between laws and the agents that act upon those laws. While natural laws provide a framework for understanding the world, they do not execute actions or create results on their own; instead, a cause must engage with these laws in order to produce tangible outcomes, similar to how architectural guidelines do not construct buildings by themselves without the intervention of skilled architects and builders.
In practice
This quote could be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of causality and agency in scientific contexts.
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science [and politics]; and disputes that are carried on from age to age, without being brought to issue.
It appears evident, therefore, that those actions only can truly be called virtuous, and deserving of moral approbation, which the agent believed to be right, and to which he was influenced, more or less, by that belief.
Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned.
What seest thou else_x000D_ _x000D_ In the dark backward and abysm of time?
The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.
Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of a ll Utopias - boredom.
The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.
Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.
People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
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