Species Quotes - Page 32

• Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this--one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

  David Mitchell

  Fighting, Order, Soul

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• Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes; but one does not fall in love. A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Girl, Falling In Love, Kissing

  P. G. Wodehouse (2012). “Something New: Or, Something Fresh”, p.107, The Floating Press

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• Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degrees—which would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival value at all.

  Daniel Quinn

  Diversity, Community, Survival

  "Ishmael". Book by Daniel Quinn, 1992.

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• [A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

  Daniel Quinn

  Order, Support, Community

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• No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.

  Daniel Quinn

  Expression, Law, World

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.145, Bantam

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• Fortunately for me, I ran across some girls I could get along with so I could enjoy high school life okay, but it must be awful for kids who don't get along with anybody. We're different from our parents, a completely different species from our teachers. And kids who are one grade apart you are in a different world altogether. In other words, we're basically surrounded by enemies and have to make it on our own.

  Natsuo Kirino

  Girl, Teacher, School

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• Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made... If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes... For a single genus, a single name.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Knowledge, Science, Names

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• What nature does in the course of long periods we do every day when we suddenly change the environment in which some species of living plant is situated.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Nature, Science, Long

  "Philosophie Zoologique". Book by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1809), Vol. I, p. 226; translation by Hugh Elliot, "Zoological Philosophy: An Exposition with Regard to the Natural History of Animals", p. 109, 1914.

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• Among the innumerable Footsteps of Divine Providence to be found in the Works of Nature, there is a very remarkable one to be observed in the exact Balance that is maintained, between the Numbers of Men and Women; for by this means it is provided, that the Species may never fail, nor perish, since every Male may have its Female, and of a proportionable Age.

  John Arbuthnot

  Mean, Men, Numbers

  "The Correspondence of Dr. John Arbuthnot".

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• No species ... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history ... The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.

  E. O. Wilson

  Survival, Mind, Technique

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• The fundamental problem in the origin of species is not the origin of differences in appearance, since these arise at the level of the geographical race, but the origin of genetic segregation. The test of species-formation is whether, when two forms meet, they interbreed and merge, or whether they keep distinct.

  David Lack

  Science, Race, Two

  David Lack (1947). “Darwin's Finches”, p.129, CUP Archive

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• [Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!

  Adam Sedgwick

  Horse, Science, Games

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• It is better to have a few forms well known than to teach a little about many hundred species. Better a dozen specimens thoroughly studied as the result of the first year's work, than to have two thousand dollars' worth of shells and corals bought from a curiosity-shop. The dozen animals would be your own.

  Louis Agassiz

  Teaching, Knowledge, Science

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• It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion.

  David Hume

  Knowledge, Science, Numbers

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.1066, Delphi Classics

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• [The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Knowledge, Independent, Science

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• Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion.

  Charles Lyell

  Science, Escaping, Extinction

  Sir Charles Lyell (1853). “Principles of geology ; or, The modern changes of the earth and its inhabitants considered as illustrative of geology”, p.696

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• As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Self, Ethics

  Arthur C. Clarke (2011). “Voices from the Sky”, p.87, Hachette UK

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• About two million years ago, man appeared. He has become the dominant species on the earth. All other living things, animal and plant, live by his sufferance. He is the custodian of life on earth, and in the solar system. It's a big responsibility.

  George Wald

  Life, Responsibility, Science

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• The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine ... bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 ... this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Butterfly, Air, Hands

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• It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.

  Charles Darwin

  Success, Science, Men

  Charles Darwin (2003). “On the Origin of Species”, p.440, Broadview Press

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• We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken 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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• Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world. The dragons are all dead and the lance grows rusty in the chimney corner. ... About the only sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against those ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love

  Hans Zinsser

  War, Adventure, Science

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• Upon this subject, the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes--useful labour, useless labour and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labour rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of it's just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Work, Fall, Class

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.412, Wildside Press LLC

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• I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species . . . and to disperse the families I have an aversion.

  George Washington

  Slavery, Aversion, Kind

  Jay A. Parry, Andrew M. Allison, George Washington (1991). “The real George Washington”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.

  Richard Dawkins

  Space, Islands, Religion

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