Species Quotes - Page 25

• Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of.

  Max Stirner

  Men, Ideals

  "The Ego and Its Own (1844)". Book by Max Stirner. Dover edition, p. 182, 2005.

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• MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic; their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine?

  Wilhelm Reich

  Animal, Men, Peaceful

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.]

  Will Cuppy

  Country, Europe, Snakes

  "How to Become Extinct". Book by Will Cuppy, 1941.

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• A true community consists of individuals - not mere species members, not couples - respecting each others individuality and privacy while at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally - free spirits in free relation to each other - and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; noone says the individual.

  Valerie Solanas

  Couple, Hippie, Community

  "SCUM Manifesto". P. 7, 1967.

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• Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment , for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Real, Order, Judgement

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.353, Harvard University Press

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• Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Art, Philosophy, Struggle

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.72, Harvard University Press

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• What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?

  Brian Aldiss

  Animal, Hundred, Miles

  "Greybeard". Book by Brian Aldiss, 1964.

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• In brief, our genetic heritage is at odds with our genetic future. For the first time in human history, the qualities it takes to survive as a species are compatible with the qualities it takes to love.

  Warren Farrell

  Odds, Quality, Heritage

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• For the first time in human history the psychology that is a prerequisite for intimacy has become the psychology that is a prerequisite for species survival.

  Warren Farrell

  Psychology, Survival, Firsts

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

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• As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs , then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

  Jacques Derrida

  Believe, Ideas, Differences

  Jacques Derrida (1978). “Writing and Difference”, p.285, University of Chicago Press

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• There's one bright spot in the generally gloomy picture know as the Pacific Conflict Zone. According to my calculations, by the year 2500 or so we should have killed off every last member of our species who is stupid enough to take part in so futile a pastime as this war between "ideals," and with luck they won't have left their genes behind because they'll typically have been killed at an age when society thinks they're too young to assume the responsibility of childbearing. After that we may get some peace and quiet for a change.

  John Brunner

  War, Stupid, Responsibility

  "Stand on Zanzibar". Book by John Brunner, 1968.

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• I believe that we are a story-driven species and that we understand how things are put together, in the context of narrative. It's a shame that science hasn't been taught that way, in a long time. It's usually the fact completely devoid of any human experience or any idea of how the scientist came to that conclusion.

  Ann Druyan

  Believe, Ideas, Long

  "Neil deGrasse Tyson and Executive Producer Ann Druyan Talk COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY, Public Appetite for Science, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. March 17, 2014.

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• As a species, we tend to lie quite a bit - to ourselves and to each other. It's a primate thing. So, a reason to go into a career in science and technology, or to learn more about these subjects, is to become a more powerful person.

  Ann Druyan

  Powerful, Lying, Technology

  "Neil deGrasse Tyson and Executive Producer Ann Druyan Talk COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY, Public Appetite for Science, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. March 17, 2014.

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• Society never progresses because the majority one day wakes up and says, “Let’s do things differently.” The majority didn’t wake up and say, “Oh, let’s just free the slaves.” ... Society always progressed because a relatively small group of people — usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their time — had a better idea and articulated another way. That’s simply how evolution works; it’s the mutation — the member of the species who does things differently - that points the way to the future because they’re better adapted for survival.

  Marianne Williamson

  Ideas, People, Survival

  "Marianne Williamson on Consciousness, Women and Politics". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 9, 2012.

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• I am passionate about many things but conserving our planet and its species is a high priority of mine.

  Richard Branson

  Priorities, Passionate, Planets

  "Q&A With Sir Richard Branson: Dialogues on the Environment". Interview with Mark Tercek, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 28, 2013.

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• Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Space, Existence, Time And Space

  Alfred Russel Wallace (1875). “Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection: A Series of Essays”, p.5

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• Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another... The most precious gift that a lover could bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union, it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Spiritual, Party, Personality

  "Last and First Men" by Olaf Stapledon, Dover Books, (pp. 102, 112), 1930.

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• Someone who thinks well of himself is said to have a healthy self-concept and is envied. Someone who thinks well of his country is called a patriot and is applauded. But someone who thinks well of his species is regarded as hopelessly naïve and is dismissed.

  Alfie Kohn

  Country, Thinking, Self

  Alfie Kohn (2008). “The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life”, p.3, Basic Books

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• Human beings any one of us, and our species as a whole are not all-important, not at the center of the world. That is the one essential piece of information, the one great secret, offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature or patch of night sky.

  Bill McKibben

  Ocean, Night, Sky

  Bill McKibben (1989). “The end of nature”, Random House Inc

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• The ideal is to be obtained by selecting and assembling in one whole the beauties and perfections which are usually seen in different individuals, excluding everything defective or unseemly, so as to form a type or model of the species.

  William Fleming

  Perfection, Different, Sculpture

  William Fleming, Charles Porterfield Krauth (1860). “The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral and Metaphysical: With Quotations and References; for the Use of Students”, p.230

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• Power is just using energy in a wise way to get things done. Power has been misinterpreted to mean getting my way on the backs of other people. Getting whatever I want, forgetting that there are other beings and species and energies involved.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Wise, Mean, People

  "Modern Feminism & Spirituality". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.eomega.org. May 8, 2012.

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• It is our genetic nature as a species to believe as young children that our parents and elders are right. We watch them to see what's what. Later on we can judge for ourselves and rebel if need be, but when we're just months old, or a year or two, and a parent looks at us with impatience, or disgust, or disdain, or just leaves us there to cry and doesn't answer us even though we're longing to be embraced and nurtured, we assume that something must be wrong with us. Unfortunately, at that age it's impossible to think there might be something wrong with them.

  Jean Liedloff

  Children, Self Esteem, Believe

  "An Interview with Jean Liedloff" by Chris Mercogliano, www.continuum-concept.org.

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• A wedding is earth and water and a species of irreducible light and the flat belly of a harbor and a mango about to ripen and fall into gravity's caress and the waves subsiding and resuming their concerto in a minor key and the rush hour canceled by the stun of auspicious beginnings.

  Mark McMorris

  Fall, Keys, Light

  Mark McMorris (2003). “The Blaze of the Poui: Poems”, p.69, University of Georgia Press

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• Nature actually works through intense cooperation. There is competition in nature , but it thrives through cooperation. We don't teach this to our kids. It's actually a violent ideology. It's why kids go into school and bully each other and god forbid do things even worse. Cooperation will become the marching orders of the human species or we're not going to make it.

  Tom Shadyac

  School, Kids, Order

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• Of all the doctors I have known, psychoanalysts, a congregation of lay priests with bible, rites, and the faithful, constitute the most sinister, the most ridiculous, the most unwholesome of the species.

  Antonio Lobo Antunes

  Doctors, Faithful, Ridiculous

  "Knowledge of Hell". Book by Antonio Lobo Antunes, 2008.

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