Homo Sapiens Quotes - Page 3

Perhaps the most mysterious of all mammals is the male Homo sapiens. Indeed, many anthropologists classify the group as a subspecies.

Patricia Marx

Mammals, Males, Groups

"Gifts for Him" by Patricia Marx, www.newyorker.com. November 26, 2007.

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The number of people in the world engaged in this search for catastrophic impactors totals one or two dozen. How long into the future are you willing to protect Homo sapiens on Earth? Before you answer that question, take a detour to Arizona's Meteor Crater during your next vacation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Vacation, Two, Numbers

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That there is a continuous link from humans to gorillas, with the intermediate species merely long dead, is beyond the understanding of speciesists. Tie the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece of insensible embryonic tissue, and its life suddenly leaps to infinite, incomputable value.... Self-styled pro-lifers, and others that indulge in footling debates about exactly when in its development a foetus becomes human, exhibit the same discontinuous mentality. Human, to the discontinuous mind, is an absolutist concept. There can be no half measures. And from this flows much evil.

Richard Dawkins

Self, Indulge In, Ties

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... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal,has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.

Ellen Glasgow

Beauty, Normal, Labels

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Are we absolutely certain that Becky Albertalli didn't just steal the diary of a hilariously observant teenage boy? Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a pitch-perfect triumph of wit and wordplay that feels timelessly, effortlessly now.

Tim Federle

Teenage, Boys, Perfect

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Human beings are not inevitable, and our brief existence is not preordained to be extended into the distant future. If Homo sapiens is to have a continued presence on earth, humankind will reevaluate its sense of place in the world and modify its strong species-centric stewardship of the planet. Our collective concepts of morality and ethics have a direct impact on our species' ultimate fate.

Jeff Schweitzer

Atheist, Strong, Fate

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Homo sapiens Yuck You contemporary fools laugh at religious and political lies spewed by sociopaths, lies that tether you forever to poverty and mediocrity. Yet, when your ears come upon the truth, the facts of life, you hide your faces and cry, not able

Bobby Miller

Religious, Lying, Laughing

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We're all homos. Homo sapiens.

Michael Scott

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I think we're going to move from a Homo sapiens into a Homo evolutis: ... a hominid that takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of his species, her species and other species.

Juan Enriquez

Motivation, Moving, Inspiration

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Surely one zoo in the world should have the courage to draw the ultimate conclusion about our ancestry? A cage with Homo Sapiens in all its varying forms, perhaps then we would understand ourselves better. The question of course is whether the other animals would approve of it.

Cees Nooteboom

Zoos, Animal, Should Have

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It must be stressed that there is nothing insulting about looking at people as animals. We are animals, after all. Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a biological phenomenon dominated by biological rules, like any other species. Human nature is no more than one particular kind of animal nature. Agreed, the human species is an extraordinary animal; but all other species are also extraordinary animals, each in their own way, and the scientific man-watcher can bring many fresh insights to the study of human affairs if he can retain this basic attitude of evolutionary humility.

Desmond Morris

Attitude, Humility, Men

Desmond Morris (1977). “Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior”

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We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction.

Stephen Jay Gould

Nature, Animal, Diversity

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There's no particular evidence that any of the lower mammals or any of the other animals have any interest in aesthetics at all. But Homo sapiens does, always has and always will.

Jock Sturges

Artist, Animal, Mammals

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Possibly, over the course of time, the brain capacity of homo sapiens will have made such great progress, that complications as contained in this game can be fathomed instantly with a shrug and a smile. Then, not only will the game of chess have ceased to exist, but also will the remembrance of frequently missed objectives elicit pity, as a reaction to the shortcomings of a lower organized form of life.

Lodewijk Prins

Games, Remembrance, Brain

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Every culture from the Egyptians to the Mayans to the American Indians to the Bedouins created bestiaries that enabled them to express their relationship with nature. Ashes and Snow is a 21st-century bestiary filled with species from around the world. Nature’s orchestra includes not just Homo sapiens but elephants, whales, manatees, eagles, cheetahs, orangutans, and many others.

Gregory Colbert

Elephants, Eagles, Whales

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The paradox of the human condition is expressed more in education than elsewhere in human culture, because learning to learn has been and continues to be Homo Sapiens' most formidable evolutionary task... It must also be clear that we will never quite learn how to learn, for since Homo Sapiens is self-changing, and since the more culture changes the faster it changes, man's methods and rate of learning will never quite keep pace with his need to learn.

Jules Henry

Men, Self, Experience

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When homo sapiens is changing, it will not be by the whole race gaining simultaneously whatever qualities better fit it for survival, but rather by certain types of mankind proving superior to the rest in survival value, so that they contribute a larger proportion to the later generations, and in so doing drag the average qualities of humanity in the same direction.

Charles Galton Darwin

Race, Average, Humanity

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My own diagnosis of my problem is a simpler one. It's that I share 50 per cent of my genome with a banana and 98 per cent with a chimpanzee. Banana's don't do psychological consistency. And the tiny part of us that's different - the special Homo sapiens bit - is faulty. It doesn't work. Sorry about that.

Sebastian Faulks

Sorry, Consistency, Special

Sebastian Faulks (2007). “Engleby: A Novel”, Doubleday Books

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With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate except Homo sapiens habitually destroys members of his own species.

Anthony Storr

Humanity, Rodents, Members

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If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially peabrained dinosaurs.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Moon, Skeletons, Museums

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It is of man's essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose ... Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge.

Henri Bergson

Men, Essence, Definitions

Henri Bergson (2012). “The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics”, p.67, Courier Corporation

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Spoken language clearly differentiates Homo sapiens from all other creatures. None but humankind produces a complex spoken language, a medium for communication and a medium for introspective reflection.

Richard Leakey

Communication, Reflection, Language

Richard Leakey (2008). “The Origin Of Humankind”, p.125, Hachette UK

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Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

Richard Leakey

Long, Goal, Firsts

"The Origin of Humankind". Book by Richard Leakey, 1994.

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The language of art is powerful to those who understand it, and puzzling to those who do not. What we do know is that here was the modern human mind at work, spinning symbolism and abstraction in a way that only Homo sapiens is capable of doing.

Richard Leakey

Art, Powerful, Symbolism

Richard Leakey (2008). “The Origin Of Humankind”, p.124, Hachette UK

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For better or worse, man is the tool-using animal, and as such he has become the lord of creation. When he is lord also of himself, he will deserve his self-chosen title homo sapiens.

William Ralph Inge

Animal, Men, Self

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