Richard Leakey Quotes

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To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony.

Richard Leakey

Arrogance, Intelligence, Would Be

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Humans become human through intense learning not just of survival skills but of customs and social mores, kinship and social laws-that is, culture.

Richard Leakey

Law, Skills, Survival

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To me it's a question of being able to look backward and give the present a root... To give meaning to where we are today, we need to look at where we have come from.

Richard Leakey

Roots, Giving, Needs

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For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.

Richard Leakey

Creativity, Science, Years

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In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term.

Richard Leakey

Might, Protection, Easier

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It's the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause

Richard Leakey

Race, Numbers, Next

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Spoken language clearly differentiates Homo sapiens from all other creatures. None but humankind produces a complex spoken language, a medium for communication and a medium for introspective reflection.

Richard Leakey

Communication, Reflection, Language

Richard Leakey (2008). “The Origin Of Humankind”, p.125, Hachette UK

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The whole story is about change. We are very lucky that the earth's history is recorded in fossilized remains. And we can see the changes. Unfortunately, there will always be gaps in our knowledge, but there is no doubt that we and everything living today has evolved.

Richard Leakey

Doubt, Atheism, Lucky

Interview, content.time.com. April 11, 1999.

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Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

Richard Leakey

Long, Goal, Firsts

"The Origin of Humankind". Book by Richard Leakey, 1994.

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The greatest problem we face is the growing number of people living in poverty. The related sense of hopelessness has to be impacting on every part of environmental management.

Richard Leakey

Numbers, People, Environmental

Interview, content.time.com. April 11, 1999.

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The world's five thousand extant languages are products of our shared ability, but the five thousand cultures they create are separate from each other.

Richard Leakey

Culture, World, Language

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Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well.

Richard Leakey

Needs, Fruit, Nutrition

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The language of art is powerful to those who understand it, and puzzling to those who do not. What we do know is that here was the modern human mind at work, spinning symbolism and abstraction in a way that only Homo sapiens is capable of doing.

Richard Leakey

Art, Powerful, Symbolism

Richard Leakey (2008). “The Origin Of Humankind”, p.124, Hachette UK

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My father used to say that, through culture, humans effectively domesticated themselves.

Richard Leakey

Father, Culture, Evolution

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Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task.

Richard Leakey

Discovery, Long, Tasks

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Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris', thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to.

Richard Leakey

Father, Paris, Skulls

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I have been raised to believe in freedom of thought and speech. If a minority wishes to accept that position it's their right. What I fear is that this minority may seem to be larger than it truly is. What is strange is that there are still people who believe the world is not a globe.

Richard Leakey

Believe, People, Atheism

Interview, content.time.com. April 11, 1999.

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It seems inconceivable that a species of human could possess fully modern language and not be fully modern in all other ways, too. For this reason, the evolution of language is widely judged to be the culminating event in the emergence of humanity as we know it today.

Richard Leakey

Humanity, Events, Today

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I ... believe the study of human history remains important and should not be banned. We should ensure that any archaeological studies are conducted with sensitivity and respect. Reburying relics, in my view, does not help anyone go anywhere.

Richard Leakey

Believe, Views, Important

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The problem of the apes is not a shortage of money, it is a shortage of strategy. Let us devote our minds... the one thing we have more of than other apes... and let's secure their future.

Richard Leakey

Mind, Apes, Problem

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Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.

Richard Leakey

Nature, Culture, World

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It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three quarters of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million, as Erwin (Terry Erwin, the Smithsonian Institute) estimates, then, working as they have in the past, insect taxonomists have ten thousand years of employment ahead of them. Ghilean Prance, director of the Botanical Gardens in Kew, estimates that a complete list of plants in the Americas would occupy taxonomists for four centuries, again working at historical rates.

Richard Leakey

Taken, Past, Garden

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We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man.

Richard Leakey

Men, Light, Connections

"A Wealth of Human Fossils Could Soon Be Destroyed". Interview with Stefan Aust and Thilo Thielke, www.spiegel.de. October 27, 2005.

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To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.

Richard Leakey

Men, Important, Fossils

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Climate change: We have never faced a more critical time on our planet

Richard Leakey

Climate, Planets, Critical

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Born: December 19, 1944
Occupation: Politician
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