Biologist Quotes - Page 2

• Biologists now pretty universally regard vitalism as a vestige of a bygone age.

  Elliott Sober

  Age, Regard

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man is not made for space. But with the help of biologists and medical doctors, he can be prepared and accommodated.

  Wernher von Braun

  Men, Space, Doctors

  37 Copy quote

• The biologist passes. The frog stays the same.

  Jean Rostand

  Frogs

  5 Copy quote

• I'm a biologist who has been interested in the biological roots of cognitive phenomena.

  Francisco Varela

  Roots, Has Beens, Cognitive

  "From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela's exploration of the biophysics of being" by D. Rudrauf, Biol Res 36: 27-65, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 coined the term ‘meme’ for a unit of cultural imitation.

  Matt Ridley

  Imitation, Memes, Term

  Matt Ridley (2010). “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves”, p.5, HarperCollins UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I grew up amongst biologists.

  Margaret Atwood

  Grew Up, Grew

  "Margaret Atwood Remixes Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a Prison Drama". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September, 2016.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientists generally, not just evolutionary biologists, don't take much for granted.

  Noam Chomsky

  Granted, Scientist

  Source: libcom.org

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I became an actor at a very young age, but I also had a deep respect for nature and I think I was sort of a little biologist when I was younger. I watched documentaries on rainforest pollution and the loss of species and habitats for animals around the world. It affected me in a very hardcore, emotional way when I was younger. So, later in life I wanted to continue that path more and investigate and learn more about ecological issues.

  Leonardo DiCaprio

  Loss, Emotional, Thinking

  21 Copy quote

• Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

  Alan Watts

  Eye, Phones, Meditation

  42 Copy quote

• I have spent a lot of time arguing that the theory of group selection is not the stupid, pernicious doctrine that many biologists once claimed it to be. The theory is not just conceptually coherent; there are adaptations out there in nature (like reduced virulence in some viruses) that evolved because there was group selection.

  Elliott Sober

  Stupid, Groups, Viruses

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, Grew Up, Know How

  "Margaret Atwood: 'I have a big following among the biogeeks. "Finally! Someone understands us!"'". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. August 24, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there were biologists among the extremophiles organisms that live in extreme conditions, they would surely classify themselves as normal and any life that thrived in room temperature as an extremophile.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Science, Normal, Rooms

  4 Copy quote

• I will never become a horse trainer, a biologist, a person competent with a hammer. My loves were my loves.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Horse, Hammers, Trainers

  "Of Amplitude There Is No Scraping Bottom: An Interview with Jane Hirshfield". Interview with Rebecca Olson, tinhouse.com. March 16, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm actually very scared of sharks. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was young, which may not have been compatible with that fear.

  Gillian Anderson

  Marine, Sharks, May

  "X-Files Archive: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in conversation". Interview with Nick De Semlyen, www.empireonline.com. January 1, 2013.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Le biologiste passe, la grenouille reste.
  The biologist passes, the frog remains.

  Jean Rostand

  Frogs, Facts, Grenouille

  6 Copy quote

• If I could have been a marine biologist I would have, but I didn't have that kind of intelligence. Numbers were never my strong point.

  Nicolas Cage

  Strong, Marine, Numbers

  11 Copy quote

• I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life until I graduated high school.

  Cobie Smulders

  School, Marine, Bahamas

  54 Copy quote

• No biologist has actually seen the origin by evolution of a major group of organisms.

  G. Ledyard Stebbins

  Groups, Evolution, Majors

  7 Copy quote

• I have a theory that evolutionary biologists are more vain than particle physicists.

  Robin Ince

  Vain, Theory, Physicist

  4 Copy quote

• Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle.

  Jared Diamond

  Air, Bird, Design

  12 Copy quote

• As an evolutionary biologist, I have learned over the years that most people do not want to see themselves as lumbering robots programmed to ensure the survival of their genes. I don't think they will want to see themselves as digital computers either. To be told by someone with impeccable scientific credentials that they are nothing of the kind can only be pleasing.

  John Maynard Smith

  Thinking, Years, People

  14 Copy quote

• A high place of honor, although doubtless one to be obtained only after enduring the pangs of a prolonged crucifixion, awaits that philosophical biologist, or that philosopher sufficiently acquainted with scientific biology, who subjects the modern doctrine of evolution to a thoroughly critical analysis, with a view to detect and to estimate its metaphysical assumptions.

  George Trumbull Ladd

  Philosophical, Views, Critical Analysis

  4 Copy quote

• Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems.

  Pierre-Paul Grasse

  Knowledge, Objectivity, Agreement

  "Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation" by Pierre-Paul Grasse, Academic Press, (p. 7), 1977.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.

  John Maynard Smith

  Wind Blowing, Boeing, Steps

  "The Problems of Biology". Book by John Maynard Smith, p. 49, 1986.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am of course getting angry if biologists try to use the general concept 'chance' in order to explain phenomena which are so typical for living organisms as, for instance, those appearing in the biological evolution.

  Wolfgang Paul

  Order, Trying, Typical

  6 Copy quote