Organisms Quotes - Page 22

• Reproduction is so primitive and fundamental a function of vital organisms that the mechanism by which it is assured is highly complex and not yet clearly understood. It is not necessarily connected with sex, nor is sex necessarily connected with reproduction.

  Havelock Ellis

  Sex, Fundamentals, Function

  Havelock Ellis (2013). “Psychology of Sex: The Biology of Sex—The Sexual Impulse in Youth—Sexual Deviation—The Erotic Symbolisms—Homosexuality—Marriage—The Art of Love”, p.7, Butterworth-Heinemann

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• Beespittle, droppings, hairs
  of beefur: all become honey.
  Virulent micro-organisms cannot
  survive in honey.

  Denise Levertov

  Hair, Honey, Dropping

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.213, New Directions Publishing

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• A city grows like an organism. It is a structure of living and working together a mix of functions.

  Jaime Lerner

  Cities, Working Together, Structure

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• fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism.

  Thomas Nagel

  Ifs And, Consciousness, States

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mortal Questions”, p.166, Cambridge University Press

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• Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Talking, Privilege

  "Crime and Punishment". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866.

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• Nature has put itself the problem how to catch in flight light streaming to the earth and to store the most elusive of all powers in rigid form. To achieve this aim, it has covered the crust of earth with organisms which in their life processes absorb the light of the sun and use this power to produce a continuously accumulating chemical difference. ... The plants take in one form of power, light; and produce another power, chemical difference.

  Robert Mayer

  Differences, Light, Use

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• The steady states of the fluid matrix of the body are commonly preserved by physiological reactions, i.e., by more complicated processes than are involved in simple physico-chemical equilibria. Special designations, therefore, are appropriate:—“homeostasis” to designate stability of the organism; “homeostatic conditions,” to indicate details of the stability; and “homeostatic reactions,” to signify means for maintaining stability.

  Walter Bradford Cannon

  Mean, Simple, Special

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• It is the relationship between the physical environment and the environed organism, between physiography and ontography (to coin a term), that constitutes the essential principles of geography today.

  William Morris Davis

  Today, Principles, Essentials

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• You could not have evolved a complex system like a city or an organism - with an enormous number of components - without the emergence of laws that constrain their behavior in order for them to be resilient.

  Geoffrey West

  Order, Law, Cities

  "The Sameness of Organisms, Cities, and Corporations". Interview with Ben Lillie, blog.ted.com. July 26, 2011.

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• The problem that we, as living organisms, face - and not we only, humans, but any living organism faces - is the management of life.

  Antonio Damasio

  Faces, Management, Problem

  "The Evolving Minds Of Humans". "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. November 12, 2010.

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• In seeking to avoid evil, humanity is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts. It is our ingenuity, rather than our animal nature, that has given our fellow creatures such a bitter earthly fate.

  Ernest Becker

  Fate, Exercise, Animal

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• Every living body continuously eliminates feces, it rejects what is not serviceable to the assimilating organism: what man despises, what arouses his disgust, what he calls evil, are excrements.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Evil, Body

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• Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Simple, Brain, Nervous

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• So if hunger provokes wailing and wailing brings the breast; if the breast permits sucking and milk suggests its swallow; if swallowing issues in sleep and stomachy comfort, then need, ache, message, object, act, and satisfaction are soon associated like charms on a chain; shortly our wants begin to envision the things which well reduce them, and the organism is finally said to wish.

  William H. Gass

  Sleep, Issues, Wish

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• Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

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• At this point, an urgent question arises: [...] Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being, one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism? Briefly, is the division of labor, at the same time that it is a law of nature, also a moral rule of human conduct; and, if it has this latter character, why and in what degree?

  Emile Durkheim

  Character, Law, Division Of Labor

  "De la division du travail social (The Division of Labor in Society)". Book by Emile Durkheim (p. 41 in 1947 translation of George Simpson), 1893.

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• Man is an organism, not a mechanism; and the mechanical pacing of his life does harm to his human responses, which naturally follow a kind of free rhythm.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Doe, Kind

  Richard M. Weaver, Ted J. Smith (2000). “In defense of tradition: collected shorter writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• The loss of India would mark and consummate the downfall of the British Empire. That great organism would pass at a stroke out of life into history.From such a catastrophe there could be no recovery.

  Lord Randolph Churchill

  Recovery, Loss, India

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• Ageing is very rare. We only see it in humans and laboratory animals and in zoo animals and in our pets. Basically, organisms that are protected from the external world. Once you create that protection, you live long enough to see ageing.

  S. Jay Olshansky

  Zoos, Animal, Long

  "The Time Of Our Lives" (Part 1), www.abc.net.au. May 24, 2007.

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• The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists.

  Alan Watts

  Soul, Body, Language

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• We're at a point in time which is analogous to when single-celled organisms were turning into multi-celled organisms. So we're the amoebas.

  Danny Hillis

  Motivation, Inspiration

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• It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.

  Antony Flew

  Thinking, Firsts, Evolution

  "Atheist finds 'God' after 50 years" by Laura Smith, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2004.

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• My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species ... [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.

  Antony Flew

  Believe, Thinking, Dna

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• Single cells analyze thousands of stimuli from the microenvironment they inhabit. The more awareness an organism has of its environment, the better its chances for survival. When cells band together they increase their awareness exponentially. Division of labor among the cells in the community offers an additional survival advantage. The efficiency it enables more cells to live on less. Evolution is based on an instructive, cooperative interaction among organisms and their environment enables life forms to survive and evolve in a dynamic world.

  Bruce H. Lipton

  Teamwork, Cells, Division Of Labor

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• Chiropractic embraces the science of life, the knowledge of how organisms act in health and disease, and also the art of adjusting the neuroskeleton.

  Daniel D. Palmer

  Art, Disease, Adjusting

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