Species Quotes - Page 11

• There are millions of different species of animals and plants on earth--possibly as many as forty million. But somewhere between five and fifty BILLION species have existed at one time or another. Thus, only about one in a thousand species is still alive--a truly lousy survival record: 99.9 percent failure!

  David M. Raup

  Animal, Survival, Earth

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• In the beginning, there were bacteria.... [A] nearly universal assumption is that all subsequent life descended from the original life form through a continuous chain of ancestor-descendant pairs. This assumption looks good because all living organisms share biochemical traits. It is conceivable, of course, that life originated more than once on the early earth but that all except one life form died out early, leaving a single lineage as the ancestor of life as we know it. If this did happen, it was the first important species extinction.

  David M. Raup

  Leaving, Important, Earth

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• Indo-European peoples and Semitic peoples are today still completely different... Jews almost everywhere form a special society... Muslims (the Semitic spirit is today represented mainly by Islam) and the Europeans stand face to face like two beings of different species, having nothing common in the way of thinking and feeling...

  A. C. Cuza

  Thinking, Two, Feelings

  "Naţionalitatea în artă" ("Nationality in Art") by A. C. Cuza, Bucureşti: Cartea Romaneasca, 1905.

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• I am a big believer of what Darwin discovered in the Galapagos, proving that the species most responsive to change will survive over apparently stronger or more intelligent competitors.

  John Elkann

  Intelligent, Stronger, Bigs

  Letter to shareholders of Exor, April 2011.

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• In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, ... the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.

  Max Horkheimer

  Father, Opposites, Ideas

  Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.35, A&C Black

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• Night after night the nightingale came to beg for divine love, but though the rose trembled at the sound of his voice, her petals remained closed to him...Flower and bird, two species never meant to mate. Yet at length the rose overcame her fear and from that single, forbidden union was born the red rose that Allah never intended the world to know.

  Susan Kay

  Flower, Night, Two

  "Phantom". Book by Susan Kay, 1990.

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• The ruling British elite are like animals--not only in their morality, but in their outlook on knowledge. They are clever animals, who are masters of the wicked nature of their own species, and recognize ferally the distinctions of the hated human species. Nonetheless, obsessively dedicated to being such animals, they can not [sic] assimilate those qualities unique to true human beings.

  Lyndon LaRouche

  Clever, Animal, Unique

  Lyndon LaRouche (2016). “The Secrets Known Only To The Inner Elites”, p.169, Executive Intelligence Review

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• How can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that everytime a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning.

  Pentti Linkola

  Children, Independent, Men

  "The Doctrine Of Survival And Doctor Ethics", Personal website, www.penttilinkola.com. June 29, 2006.

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• We ourselves are part of a guild of species that lie within and without our bodies. Aboriginal peoples and the Ayurvedic practitioners of ancient India have names for such guilds, or beings made up (as we are) of two or more species forming one organism. Most of nature is composed of groups of species working interdependently.

  Bill Mollison

  Lying, Names, Two

  "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual". Book by Bill Mollison, 1988.

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• Too often, the pastoralist blames the weeds and seeks a chemical rather than a management solution; too seldom do we find an approach combining the sensible utilisation of grasshoppers and grubs as a valuable dried-protein supplement for fish or food pellets, and a combination of soil conditioning, slashing, and de-stocking or re-seeding to restore species balance.

  Bill Mollison

  Weed, Past, Balance

  "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual". Book by Bill Mollison, 1988.

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• We have intelligent species on our planet that we are not even trying to communicate with.

  Paul Watson

  Intelligent, Trying, Planets

  YouTube Channel "DoggyTV"/"Captain Paul Watson introduced by Persia White at Worldfest", www.youtube.com. June 30, 2006.

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• As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.

  Noam Chomsky

  Long, Survival, Nuclear

  "Thank you Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war" by Edward Wilson, www.theguardian.com. October 27, 2012.

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• By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.

  Carl Sagan

  Fate, Thinking, Other Worlds

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 13: "Who Speaks for Earth?", 1990.

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• Are the different species defined by paleontologists - Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and ourselves, Homo sapiens - all part of the same gene pool or not?

  Bryan Sykes

  Different, Pool, Genes

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• It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his own imagination; every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or powers of enduring.

  Samuel Johnson

  Mean, Reality, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.28

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• The Ocean Health Index is like the thermometer of the ocean. It will allow us to take the temperature to know what is going on at the global level, trying to integrate different impacts, including overfishing, invasive species, coastal development, and climate change.

  Enric Sala

  Ocean, Impact, Trying

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• My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts (as well as unable to take such a course of action) if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival. In either case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species.

  Carl Sagan

  Passion, Hands, Survival

  Carl Sagan, Jerald F. TerHorst, Allan J. Mayer, Sharon S. McKern, Laurence J. Peter (1980). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”

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• Ecology also teaches that all life on earth can be viewed as a competition among species for the solar energy captured by green plants and stored in the form of complex carbon molecules. A food chain is a system for passing those calories on to species that lack the pant's unique ability to synthesize them from sunlight.

  Michael Pollan

  Unique, Green Plants, Competition

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• If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

  Mark Kurlansky

  Men, Lakes, Sea

  Mark Kurlansky (1998). “Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World”, p.35, Penguin

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• There is an immense trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name 'Salmo Ferox'. I pull about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land him, and administer the coup de grace. Is this cruel? Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff.

  Arnold Gingrich

  Tired, Rivers, Lakes

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• Anglers may be divided into almost as many genera and species as the fish they catch, and engage in the sport from as many impulses.

  Thaddeus Norris

  Sports, Fishing, Rivers

  Thaddeus Norris (1864). “The American Angler's Book: Embracing the Natural History of Sporting Fish, and the Art of Taking Them. With Instructions in Fly-fishing, Fly-making, and Rod-making; and Directions for Fish-breeding. To which is Appended, Dies Piscatoriæ: Describing Noted Fishing-places, and the Pleasure of Solitary Fly-fishing”, p.29

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• There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Essence, Practice

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1801). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.”, p.345

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• The effect of the corporation, under the prevailing policy of the free, go-as-you-please method of organization and management, has been to drive the bulk of our people, other than farmers, out of property ownership; and, if allowed to go on as present, it will keep them out... The paramount problem is not how to stop the growth of property, and the building up of wealth, but how to manage it so that every species of property, like a healthy growing tree will spread its roots deeply and widely in the soil of a popular proprietorship.

  Peter S. Grosscup

  Building Up, Organization, Roots

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• It is astonishing to realise that the human species survived hundreds of thousands of years, more than 99 percent of its time on this planet, with a life expectancy of only eighteen years.

  Leonard Hayflick

  Years, Evolution, Planets

  Leonard Hayflick (1994). “How and why we age”

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• There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex behavioural patterns can be triggered by a tiny concentration of moleculas coursing through the bloodstream, and that different animals of the same species generate different amounts of these hormones, is something worth thinking about when it's time to judge such matters as free will, individual responsibility, and law and order.

  Carl Sagan

  Responsibility, Thinking, Animal

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