George Wald Quotes

Quotes about:

• There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God.... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.

  George Wald

  Philosophy, Believe, Years

  47 Copy quote

• Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.

  George Wald

  War, Hiroshima And Nagasaki, Bombs

  67 Copy quote

• It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

  George Wald

  Science, Knowing, Way

  48 Copy quote

• A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

  George Wald

  Wisdom, Science, Knowing

  Foreword to L. J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment (1958)

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• Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.

  George Wald

  Special, Generations, Alternatives

  53 Copy quote

• I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.

  George Wald

  Molecules, Good Company, Company

  29 Copy quote

• Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.

  George Wald

  Taken, Years, Civilization

  52 Copy quote

• I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.

  George Wald

  Believe, Generations, Want

  20 Copy quote

• The great questions are those an intelligent child asks and, getting no answers, stops asking.

  George Wald

  Children, Intelligent, Asking

  7 Copy quote

• Every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet; and that is about three billion years.

  George Wald

  Life, Science, Years

  7 Copy quote

• Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.

  George Wald

  Science, Balance, Nuclear

  "A Generation in Search of a Future". George Wald's speech at an anti-war teach-in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (March 4, 1969); published in Chicago Journalism Review by Ron Dorfman, May 1969.

  9 Copy quote

• Four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the "organic" molecules that constitute living organisms on a planet, and the nuclei of these same elements interact to generate the light of its star. Then the organisms on the planet come to depend wholly on that starlight, as they must if life is to persist. So it is that all life on the Earth runs on sunlight. [Referring to photosynthesis]

  George Wald

  Life, Running, Stars

  22 Copy quote

• One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.

  George Wald

  Believe, Tasks, Generations

  7 Copy quote

• Science goes from question to question; big questions, and little, tentative answers. The questions as they age grow ever broader, the answers are seen to be more limited.

  George Wald

  Science, Growth, Age

  4 Copy quote

• I tell my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective.

  George Wald

  Trying, Unattainable, Students

  9 Copy quote

• When it comes to the origin of life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!

  George Wald

  Believe, Philosophical, Origin Of Life

  9 Copy quote

• Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

  George Wald

  Science, Editing, Choices

  5 Copy quote

• We living things are a late outgrowth of the metabolism of our galaxy. The carbon that enters into our composition was cooked in a remote past in a dying star. The waters of ancient seas set the pattern of ions in our blood. The ancient atmospheres moulded our metabolism.

  George Wald

  Stars, Past, Ions

  5 Copy quote

• The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one. It can give us no protection - only the doubtful satisfaction of retaliation...

  George Wald

  Giving, Use, Bombs

  "A Generation in Search of a Future". George Wald's speech at an anti-war teach-in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (March 4, 1969); published in Chicago Journalism Review by Ron Dorfman, May 1969.

  10 Copy quote

• Our business is with life, not death.

  George Wald

  Business

  4 Copy quote

• Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.

  George Wald

  Death, Science, Long

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• I have often had cause to feel that my hands are cleverer than my head. That is a crude way of characterizing the dialectics of experimentation. When it is going well, it is like a quiet conversation with Nature. One asks a question and gets an answer, then one asks the next question and gets the next answer. An experiment is a device to make Nature speak intelligibly. After that, one only has to listen.

  George Wald

  Nature, Science, Hands

  7 Copy quote

• We already know enough to begin to cope with all the major problems that are now threatening human life and much of the rest of life on earth. Our crisis is not a crisis of information; it is a crisis of decision of policy and action.

  George Wald

  Rest Of Life, Decision, Earth

  55 Copy quote

• Faced with a new mutation in an organism, or a fundamental change in its living conditions, the biologist is frequently in no position whatever to predict its future prospects. He has to wait and see. For instance, the hairy mammoth seems to have been an admirable animal, intelligent and well-accoutered. Now that it is extinct, we try to understand why it failed. I doubt that any biologist thinks he could have predicted that failure. Fitness and survival are by nature estimates of past performance.

  George Wald

  Future, Science, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• Not all living creatures die. An amoeba, for example, need never die; it need not even, like certain generals, fade away. It just divides and becomes two new amoebas.

  George Wald

  Life, Death, Science

  4 Copy quote

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