Species Quotes - Page 3

• I might be an endangered species.

  Waylon Jennings

  Peace, Special, Might

  Song: Endangered Species

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• We don't have to go to wild places to find wildlife. A surprisingly wide range of species can be found in our sities and towns, from familiar animals like the raccoon to more exotic ones like the mountain lion.

  Roger Tory Peterson

  Nature, Animal, Wild Places

  Sarah Landry, Roger Tory Peterson (1998). “Peterson First Guide to Urban Wildlife”, p.3, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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• Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.

  Aldous Huxley

  War, Unique, Men

  Aldous Huxley (1937). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization”, p.100, Transaction Publishers

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• As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.

  Richard Louv

  Falling In Love, Art, Children

  Richard Louv (2012). “The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age”, p.9, Algonquin Books

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• It is the hope of those who work toward the breakout from planet Earth that the establishment of permanent, self-sustaining colonies of humans off-Earth will ... make human life forever unkillable, removing it from the endangered species list, where it now stands on a fragile Earth overarmed with nuclear weapons. Second, the opening of virtually unlimited new land areas in space will reduce territorial pressures and therefore diminish warfare on Earth itself.

  Gerard K. O'Neill

  Space, Self, Land

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• The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science.

  Francis Galton

  Science, Development, Spirit

  Francis Galton (2015). “Memories of My Life”, p.211, Routledge

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• Looking back now on the whole sexual scene we can see that our species has remained much more loyal to its basic biological urges than we might at first imagine. Its primate sexual system with carnivore modifications has survived all the fantastic technological advances remarkably well.

  Desmond Morris

  Sex, Loyal, Might

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

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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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• We of course have our problems, to say the least, in comportment towards ourselves and our environment, but admittance to the cosmos and the spatial infinity and temporal immortality it provides may well be just the remedy for these age-old problems. Access to the boundless resources of the universe may once and for all puncture the pressure of population and politics of scarcity which have generated war, oppression, and plagued our species from the start.

  Paul Levinson

  War, Space, Age

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• There is nothing biologically unusual about a homosexual act of pseudocopulation. Many species indulge in this, under a variety of circumstances.

  Desmond Morris

  Indulge In, Unusual, Homosexuality

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

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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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• ...the nervous systems of other animals were not artificially constructed - as a robot might be artificially constructed - to mimic the pain behavior of humans. A capacity to feel pain obviously enhances a species' prospects of survival...it is surely unreasonable to suppose that nervous systems that are virtually identical physiologically, have a common origin and a common evolutionary function, and result in similar forms of behavior in similar circumstances should actually operate in an entirely different manner on the level of subjective feelings.

  Peter Singer

  Pain, Animal, Feelings

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• It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.

  Meshell Ndegeocello

  Dust, Black, Gone

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• Natural selection does not give any preference at all to anything that, in the long run, could be advantageous for the species but blindly rewards everything that, momentarily, affords greater procreative success.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Running, Long, Giving

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• In a city a man may feel second to none. But alone in the immensity of the universe, among all the creatures that preceded man and built up the human species, even a most fervent atheist will wonder if Darwin found the visible road but not the invisible mechanism.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  God, Atheist, Men

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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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• We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands.

  Carl Sagan

  Taken, Hands, Firsts

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.47, Ballantine Books

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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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• In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority...and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.

  Edmund Burke

  Exercise, Numbers, People

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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 find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in such emotional turmoil. Does sex have to be taken so seriously?

  P. D. James

  Sex, Taken, Emotional

  P. D. James (2011). “Devices and Desires”, p.158, Vintage

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• If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Book, Men

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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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• Whether many people realize it yet or not, man, the Inferior Animal, has by now proved himself incapable of keeping his own species - and others - alive for very much longer. So the earth has begun its own plan to set things right.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Men, Animal, People

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