Species Quotes - Page 21

• Abuse is an indirect species of homage.

  William Hazlitt

  Abuse, Indirect, Homage

  William Hazlitt, William Ernest Henley (1904). “The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: Fugitive writings”

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• There are never victories in conservation. If you want to save a species or a habitat, it's a fight forevermore. You can never turn your back.

  George Schaller

  Fighting, Victory, Habitat

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• Nor are we the culmination of evolution, except in the sense that there has never been another species so bizarrely ingenious that it could create both iambic pentameter and plutonium.

  David Quammen

  Plutonium, Evolution, Culmination

  David Quammen (2014). “Monster Of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind”, p.17, Random House

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• The extreme self-sacrifice characteristic of group-selected species such as ants and bees can often be found among soldiers.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Sacrifice, Often Is, Self

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• People are largely ignorant of the interests of the human species.

  Ibn Khaldun

  People, Ignorant, Interest

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• It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.

  David Brin

  Past, Paradise, Replacements

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• How many people on Earth serve people? And how many people on Earth serve the Earth? The difference in the numbers must be enormous. It would reveal that the Earth is definitely not the primary concern of the human species. This might be fatal both to the Earth and to humanity. Please, leaders of the Earth and the nations, wake up to this potentially fatal disparity.

  Robert Muller

  Differences, Numbers, People

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• For as to the dispersing of Books, that Circumstance does perhaps as much harm as good: Since Nonsense flies with greater Celerity, and makes greater Impression than Reason; though indeed no particular species of Nonsense is so durable. But the several Forms of Nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and Men are always under the Dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism.

  David Hume

  Book, Men, Wickedness

  David Hume, J. Y. T. Greig (2011). “The Letters of David Hume:”, p.239, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the "mutations" of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly.

  B. F. Skinner

  Different, Mutation, Culture

  B.F Skinner (2012). “Science And Human Behavior”, p.434, Simon and Schuster

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• It amazes me to witness the masochism with which some journalists characterize their industry as a dying species. The future belongs to citizen journalism and blogs.

  Mathias Dopfner

  Dying, Citizens, Journalism

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• That's precisely the reason we need less paper and more concrete political decisions - the protection of endangeres species is not some luxury item by Gucci or Hermès, for people who have no problems.

  Klaus Topfer

  Luxury, People, Decision

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Responsibility, Our World

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 6: "Traveller's Tales", 1990.

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• As many glaciers are melting and icy tundras are decaying, there's an unprecedented amount of woolly mammoth material that's becoming dislodged from the ice. Not just mammoth, but all kinds of fossils from the past. What occurred to me was, had anyone tried to pinpoint the first case of human-induced extinction? What was the first time we as species pushed another one to oblivion? I would argue that's probably going to be one of the defining moral problems of the century, human-induced extinction. And I really wanted to know, when did we first cross that barrier?

  Dario Robleto

  Past, Ice, Becoming

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I was reading about how countless species are being pushed toward extinction by man's destruction of forests. . . . Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

  Bill Watterson

  Reading, Thinking, Intelligent

  Calvin and Hobbes (comic strip), 8 Nov. 1989

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• The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the ''productive'' man a yet higher species.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Jealousy, Betrayal, Creativity

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.97, Cambridge University Press

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• The email of the species is deadlier than the mail.

  Stephen Fry

  Email, Mail

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• Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Pain, Children, Rights

  "Trayvon Martin Case Reminds Us: Never Be Silent" by Ingrid Newkirk, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 17, 2012.

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• You're looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animals with extremely small heads whose name is Man...Very tiny undeveloped brain; comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself 'Samuel Conrad'. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat- as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found the Twilight Zone.

  Rod Serling

  Running, Twilight, Animal

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• The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Self, Complacency

  "The Revolt of the Masses". Book by José Ortega y Gasset. Chapter XI: "The Self-Satisfied Age", 1929.

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• A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked... . We as black people, we as people, we as the human species have got to get used to the fact we're not going to be right most of the time, not even when our intentions are good. We've got to go naked and see what happens.

  Nikki Giovanni

  People, Black, Naked

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• If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner. Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another --cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Children, Hands, Play

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool Memories”, p.116, Verso

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• I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.

  Ezra Pound

  Way, Pressure, Months

  Ezra Pound (1958). “Pavannes and Divagations”, p.55, New Directions Publishing

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• Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species.

  Carl Sagan

  Emotional, Curiosity, Problem

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.81, Ballantine Books

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• Books tap the wisdom of our species -- the greatest minds, the best teachers -- from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient.

  Carl Sagan

  Teacher, Book, Mind

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• Sexual behavior in our species goes through three characteristic phases: pair formation, precopulatory activity, and copulation, usually but not always in that order. The pair-formation stage, usually referred to as courtship, is remarkably prolonged by animal standards.

  Desmond Morris

  Animal, Order, Three

  Desmond Morris (1986). “The illustrated naked ape: a zoologist's study of the human animal”, Crown Pub

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