"Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations". cca. 121–180 AD)
"As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of a net is an independent, isolated thing, he is mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series of a interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes." (Gautama Buddha)
"Omnia vivunt, omnia inter se conexa"
"Everything is alive; everything is interconnected." (Cicero)
"It is thus that in the universe everything is connected; it is itself but an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing one from the other." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)
"Nature, displayed in its full extent, presents us with an immense tableau, in which all the order of beings are each represented by a chain which sustains a continuous series of objects, so close and so similar that their difference would be difficult to define. This chain is not a simple thread which is only extended in length, it is a large web or rather a network, which, from interval to interval, casts branches to the side in order to unite with the networks of another order." (Comte Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, "Les Oiseaux Qui Ne Peuvent Voler", Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux Vol. I, 1770)
"All knowledge is profitable; profitable in its ennobling effect on the character, in the pleasure it imparts in its acquisition, as well as in the power it gives over the operations of mind and of matter. All knowledge is useful; every part of this complex system of nature is connected with every other. Nothing is isolated. The discovery of to-day, which appears unconnected with any useful process, may, in the course of a few years, become the fruitful source of a thousand inventions." (Joseph Henry, "Report of the Secretary" [Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1851], 1852)
"All Nature is linked together by invisible bonds and every organic creature, however low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary to the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life." (George P Marsh, From Man and Nature, 1864)
"Brightness and freshness take possession of the mind when it is crossed by the light of principles, shewing the facts of Nature to be organically connected." (John Tyndall, "Six Lectures on Light Delivered in America in 1872-1873" 3rd Ed., 1901)
"When we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." (John Muir, "My First Summer in the Sierra", 1911)
"The hosts of living organisms are not random creatures, they can be classified in battalions and regiments. Neither are they isolated creatures, for every thread of life is inter-twined with others in a complex web." (John A Thomson, "The System of Animate Nature" Vol. 1, 1920)
"This whole electric universe is a complex maze of similar tensions. Every particle of matter in the universe is separated from its condition of oneness, just as the return ball is separated from the hand, and each is connected with the other one by an electric thread of light which measures the tension of that separateness." (Walter Russell, "The Secret of Light", 1947)
"We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are a part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity." (Maria Montessori, "To Educate the Human Potential", 1947)
"In fact, it is empirically ascertainable that every event is actually produced by a number of factors, or is at least accompanied by numerous other events that are somehow connected with it, so that the singling out involved in the picture of the causal chain is an extreme abstraction. Just as ideal objects cannot be isolated from their proper context, material existents exhibit multiple interconnections; therefore the universe is not a heap of things but a system of interacting systems." (Mario Bunge, "Causality: The place of the casual principles in modern science", 1959)
"We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as an organization. This would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive interdependencies." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "Robots, Men and Minds", 1967)
"[...] everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything has numberless causes. The entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is because the world is as it is." (Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", 1973)
"We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet." (James Lovelock, "Gaia: A new look at life on Earth", 1981)
"If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex). [...] Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be." (Murray Bookchin, "The Ecology of Freedom", 1982)
"The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term 'ecological' is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature." (Fritjof Capra & Gunter A. Pauli," Steering business toward sustainability", 1995)
"Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behaviour of the whole." (Murray Gell-Mann, 1997)
"All living organisms must feed on continual flows of matter and energy: from their environment to stay alive, and all living organisms continually produce waste. However, an ecosystem generates no net waste, one species' waste being another species' food. Thus, matter cycles continually through the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)
"When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of a great order, a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in our body was once a part of previous bodies-living or nonliving-and will be a part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. We share not only life's molecules but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. Arid since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. We belong to the universe, we are at home in it, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)
"Nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else. Everything is intrinsically connected, irrevocably interdependent, interactive, interwoven into the fabric of all of life." (Neale D Walsch, "Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue", 2003)
"In our Gaian world, everything is connected to and influences everything else." (Tim Flannery, "The Weather Makers", 2005)
"We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time." (Ervin László,"Cosmos: A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole-World", 2010)
"I understand that everything is connected, that all roads meet, and that all rivers flow into the same sea." (Paulo Coelho, "Aleph", 2011)
"Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)
"All living systems are networks of smaller components, and the web of life as a whole is a multilayered structure of living systems nesting within other living systems - networks within networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)
"In other words, the web of life consists of networks within networks. At each scale, under closer scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arange these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid fashion. But this is a human projection. In nature there is no 'above' or 'below', and there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)
