Species Quotes - Page 12

• The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to explain table manners or road safety or gardening, only sex. Anyway, it was bad Darwinism. Taking the example of a monkey and applying it to yourself misses the point that animal behaviour is made for the benefit of the species, not as an excuse for the individual. Being incapable of sustaining a stable pair and supporting children is really not in the interests of our species. Neither is it really in the best interests of the philanderer.

  A. A. Gill

  Cheating, Sex, Children

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• It is almost impossible to convince people who are under the influence of ideological bigotry that whose whom they regard as belonging to the enemy species are human.

  Louis J. Halle

  People, Enemy, Atheism

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• To discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods. They need but common sense. They have only to look within themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their obvious interests, to consider the object of society and of each of the members who compose it, and they will easily understand that virtue is an advantage, and that vice is an injury to beings of the species.

  Jean Meslier

  Men, Common Sense, Atheism

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• To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage.

  James Randi

  Atheism, Littles, Preference

  James Randi (1987). “The Faith Healers”

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• Yes, the natural sciences are telling us a great deal about human origins, the origins of our species the origins of our minds; we're on our way to explaining a large part of it. I'll accept an answer provided only by such means as obtaining and exploring, analyzing and arguing over the evidence - not because of a scribe's myopic view of the subject written 500 years before the birth of Christ!

  E. O. Wilson

  Mean, Views, Years

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• The rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself is actually a good example of an inexpedient development caused entirely by competition between members of the same species. Human beings of today are attacked by so-called manager diseases, high blood pressure, renal atrophy, gastric ulcers, and torturing neuroses: they succumb to barbarism because they have no more time for cultural interests.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Business, Men, Blood

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• You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. Of course, I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.

  Frans de Waal

  Animal, Hands, Design

  "Frans de Waal on Political Apes, Science Communication, and Building a Cooperative Society". Interview with Eric Michael Johnson, blogs.scientificamerican.com. July 11, 2011.

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• For more than a century, people have often thought that the conclusion to draw from Darwin's vision is that Homo sapiens, our species - and we're just animals too, we're just mammals - that there is nothing morally special about us. I myself don't think this follows at all from Darwin's vision, but it is certainly the received view in many quarters.

  Daniel Dennett

  Animal, Thinking, Views

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• I think that what one can see from a Darwinian account is how the addition of culture in our species turns us into a very special sort of animal, an animal that can be a moral agent in a way that no other animal can be.

  Daniel Dennett

  Thinking, Animal, Special

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• Why does evolution matter? There is so much about the evolution of life, the development of life on Earth that should rivet the attention of everyone to understand where we've come from and where we might be going. We need to understand the world around us if we are to succeed as a species on the planet.

  Sylvia Earle

  Doe, Needs, Attention

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA" Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• The diversity of life on Earth, generally, is astonishing. But despite those large numbers, it's also important to recognize that every species, one way or another, is vulnerable to extinction. And in our time on Earth... our impact on the diversity of life has been profound.

  Sylvia Earle

  Impact, Numbers, Profound

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA" Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives – and may even extend our stay on Earth.

  Alex Steffen

  Animal, Race, Air

  "The Next Green Revolution" by Alex Steffen, www.wired.com. May 1, 2006.

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• The war between authors and publishers has been a conflict of ages. On the one side, the publisher has been looked upon as a species of Wantley dragon, whose daily food was the brain and blood of hapless writers. ... On the other side, the author has been considered, like Shelley, 'an eternal child,' in all that relates to practical matters, and a terrible child at that, - incapable of comprehending details, and unreasoanably dissatisfied with results.

  Mary Abigail Dodge

  Children, War, Dragons

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• I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Believe, Punishment

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• I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Strong, Art, Believe

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.1, Zondervan

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• There is a brotherliness about a drinking person, which is coldly lacking in the straight and narrow enemies of drink; the difference between the two is more marked than nationality or belief: it is an opposite species altogether. It is against the unwritten laws of congeniality for them to mix. For me, a man who does not drink is distinctly indecent.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Drinking, Men, Law

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• The creative process ignites our imagination, and I believe that that same imagination is what will propel us forward with issues of social change. I do think we have to acknowledge that we are a very capitalistic and consumptive nation, and that talk about conservation or issues of sustainability is never going to be popular with the dominant culture because it means checks and balances on an economy that is reserved for the dollar, rather than an economy that honors and respects spiritual resources and the right of all life to participate on the planet, not just our species.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Spiritual, Believe, Mean

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• It's just as hard for man to break the habit of thinking of himself as central to the species as it was to break the habit of thinking of himself as central to the universe. He sees himself quite unconsciously as the main line of evolution, with a female satellite revolving around him as the moon revolves around the earth. This not only causes him to overlook valuable clues to our ancestry, but sometimes leads him into making statements that are arrant and demonstrable nonsense.

  Elaine Morgan

  Moon, Men, Thinking

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• I believe the deeply rooted semantic confusion between 'man' as a male and 'man' as a species has been fed back into and vitiated a great deal of the speculation that goes on about the origins, development, and nature of the human race.

  Elaine Morgan

  Believe, Men, Race

  Elaine Morgan (1973). “The descent of woman”

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• The rationale which accompanies that imposition of male authority euphemistically referred to as 'the battle of the sexes' bears a certain resemblance to the formulas of nations at war, where any heinousness is justified on the grounds that the enemy is either an inferior [part of the] species or really not human at all.

  Kate Millett

  Sex, War, Enemy

  Kate Millett (2016). “Sexual Politics”, p.46, Columbia University Press

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• deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive.

  Harriet Lerner

  Games, Deception, Way

  Harriet Lerner (2009). “The Dance of Deception: Pretending and Truth-Telling in Women's”, p.19, Harper Collins

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• We're smart enough to know we need to live in groups to survive, but we're still animals and we needs lots of room. In the case of the male of the species we also probably need that-guy-over-there's space. And his wife and cow, too.

  Julia Phillips

  Smart, Men, Animal

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• In nature, creatures never ended the lives of others except to survive. To women, abortion was self-defense and preservation of the species. Abortion was not a fancy borne out of the female mind. Abortion was instinct beyond ideas. Abortion was fear (the cat that devours its litter when a predator nears).

  Ana Castillo

  Cat, Self, Ideas

  Ana Castillo (1990). “Sapogonia: (an Anti-romance in 3/8 Meter)”, Bilingual Press

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• any mystery writer is both magician and moralist ... two species of artist in short supply.

  Sue Grafton

  Artist, Two, Mystery

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• Many species reciprocate, but only humans gossip, and much of what we gossip about is the vale of other people as partners for reciprocal relationships.

  Jonathan Haidt

  People, Gossip, Partners

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