Species Quotes - Page 39

• He [man] abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Animal, Men, Vanity

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• Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species.

  Prince Philip

  Country, Classic, Notorious

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• By 2050, at bio-extinction's current rate, between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of all species will have disappeared or be too few in numbers to survive. There'll be a few over-visited parks, the coral reefs will be beaten up, grasslands overgrazed. Vast areas of the tropics that have lost their forests will have the same damn weeds, bushes and scrawny eucalyptus trees so that you don't know if you're in Africa or the Americas.

  Stuart L. Pimm

  Weed, Numbers, Tree

  "Mass Extinction Not Inevitable". The Wired Interview, www.wired.com. March 20, 2004.

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• Islands are where species go to die.

  David Quammen

  Islands, Dies

  "The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions". Book by David Quammen, 1996.

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• It must be stressed that there is nothing insulting about looking at people as animals. We are animals, after all. Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a biological phenomenon dominated by biological rules, like any other species. Human nature is no more than one particular kind of animal nature. Agreed, the human species is an extraordinary animal; but all other species are also extraordinary animals, each in their own way, and the scientific man-watcher can bring many fresh insights to the study of human affairs if he can retain this basic attitude of evolutionary humility.

  Desmond Morris

  Attitude, Humility, Men

  Desmond Morris (1977). “Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior”

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• This is a unique aquarium in that a large portion of its collection features freshwater species, and it specializes in fish, amphibians and reptiles from the southwestern part of the country. The River Journey exhibit transports visitors from the Appalachian highlands through ponds, rivers and swamps, all the way to the seacoast. The recently added Ocean Journey exhibit allows visitors to sample a variety of saltwater environments.

  John Grant

  Country, Ocean, Unique

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• Vortices of pure energy can exist and, if my theories are right, can compose the bodily form of an intelligent species.

  Lord Kelvin

  Intelligent, Energy, Form

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• Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.

  Jack McDevitt

  Intelligent, Assuming, Individual

  "Infinity Beach". Book by Jack McDevitt, 2000.

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• A small species of pinus was much prized, and, when dwarfed in the manner of the Chinese, fetched a very high price; it is generally grafted on a variety of the stone pine.

  Robert Fortune

  Chinese, Stones, Variety

  Robert Fortune (2012). “A Journey to the Tea Countries of China: Including Sung-Lo and the Bohea Hills; with a Short Notice of the East India Company's Tea Plantations in the Himalaya Mountains”, p.329, Cambridge University Press

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• I see the mycelium as the Earth's natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate. Through cross-species interfacing, we may one day exchange information with these sentient cellular networks. Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape.

  Paul Stamets

  Fall, Data, Tree

  Paul Stamets (2011). “Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World”, p.31, Ten Speed Press

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• Fungi are the grand recyclers of the planet and the vanguard species in habitat restoration.

  Paul Stamets

  Restoration, Habitat, Vanguard

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• A strange thing happens when you interview a robot. You feel an urge to be profound: to ask profound questions. I suppose it’s an inter-species thing. Although if it is I wonder why I never try and be profound around my dog.
  ‘What does electricity taste like?’ I ask.
  ‘Like a planet around a star,’ Bina48 replies.
  Which is either extraordinary or meaningless - I’m not sure which

  Jon Ronson

  Dog, Stars, Profound

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• Chronic sexual predators [to Vachss, pedophiles] have crossed an osmotic membrane. They can’t step back to the other side - our side. And they don't want to. If we don't kill them or release them, we have but one choice. Call them monsters and isolate them.... I’ve spoken to many predators over the years. They always exhibit amazement that we do not hunt them. And that when we capture them, we eventually let them go. Our attitude is a deliberate interference with Darwinism - an endangerment of our species.

  Andrew Vachss

  Attitude, Years, Choices

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• Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live.

  Holmes Rolston III

  Book, Pages, Stewardship

  Holmes Rolston III (2012). “A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth”, p.131, Routledge

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• For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.

  Margaret Mead

  Conversation, Evolve, Humans

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• Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

  Edgar Degas

  Writing, Artist, Expression

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• I think the world is growing more psychedelic every day. I'm completely hopeful. . . . This is how it should be. This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for hyperspace.

  Terence McKenna

  Thinking, Hopeful, World

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• As a species we're fundamentally insane.

  Stephen King

  Insane

  "The Mist". www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems - climate crisis, species extinction, water and energy shortage - we surely do. But ultimately we knock them down.

  Peter Diamandis

  Motivation, Inspiration, Water

  "Abundance is our future". TED2012, www.ted.com. February 2012.

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• I think we're going to move from a Homo sapiens into a Homo evolutis: ... a hominid that takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of his species, her species and other species.

  Juan Enriquez

  Motivation, Moving, Inspiration

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• All other species on this planet are gene machines only. They don't imitate at all well; we alone are gene machines and meme machines as well.

  Susan Blackmore

  Motivation, Inspiration, Machines

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• Are we at some kind of evolutionary equipoise as a species? Or, are we destined to become something different - something, perhaps, even better adapted to the environment?

  Harvey V. Fineberg

  Motivation, Inspiration, Different

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• The software programs that make our body run ... were evolved in very different times. We'd like to actually change those programs. One little software program, called the fat insulin receptor gene, basically says, 'Hold onto every calorie, because the next hunting season may not work out so well.' That was in the interests of the species tens of thousands of years ago. We'd like to turn that program off.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Running, Motivation, Inspiration

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• My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species ... [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.

  Antony Flew

  Believe, Thinking, Dna

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• And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.

  Bill Joy

  Intelligent, Small Steps, Robots

  "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us" by Bill Joy, www.wired.com. April 1, 2000.

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