Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Nothing is unnatural if it does not violate physical laws.
In plain terms
If something can happen physically, it is natural.
What can you take from it?
Possibility defines naturalness.

Where it applies

  • scientific inquiry
  • ethics
  • innovation

Putting it to work

  • explore possibilities
  • question norms

Questions to consider

  • What counts as natural?
  • Does possibility imply acceptability?

Another view

Some things are physically possible but ethically unnatural.

More from Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  1. The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

    Permalink to quote #35
  2. I wish, sir, you would practice this without me. I can't stay dying here all night.

    Permalink to quote #37
  3. A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.

    Permalink to quote #34

Related quotes

  1. Of late, men seem to have been possessed by an incomprehensible impulse to strip themselves of everything with which nature has endowed them in order to make t…

    Eugene DelacroixEugene Delacroix quote #2
  2. The end and aim of the Cynic philosophy, as indeed of every philosophy, is happiness, but happiness that consists in living according to nature, and not accord…

    JulianJulian quote #5
  3. Whence do you have it that the terrestrial globe is so heavy? For my part, either I do not know what heaviness is, or the terrestrial globe is neither heavy no…

    Galileo GalileiGalileo Galilei quote #9