Biology Quotes - Page 16

• In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.

  Richard Preston

  Life, Simple, Thinking

  "The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story". Book by Richard Preston, www.dailymaverick.co.za. 1999.

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• [About a conference on Systematic Biology] Many interesting statements were made that apply directly to the work of taxonomists. In some cases the interest lay in the value of the suggestion and sometimes in the obvious need for rebuttal.

  Richard E. Blackwelder

  Science, Interesting, Systematic

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• Scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess.

  George Orwell

  Average, Lefties, Would Be

  "What is Science?". Tribune, orwell.ru. October 26, 1945.

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• My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Strong, Writing, School

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• When you look at biology, look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society, and other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role. We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships in nuclear families, and it’s tearing us apart.

  Erick Erickson

  Smart, Animal, People

  "All-Male Fox Panel Freaks Out About Female Breadwinners". www.huffingtonpost.com. May 30, 2013.

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• A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.

  Jacques Monod

  Science, Vision, Definitions

  Jacques Monod (1972). “Chance and necessity: an essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology”, Vintage

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• Altruism has always been one of biology's deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all sorts of signals as its individual self, choose to give up its life in aid of someone else?

  Lewis Thomas

  Giving Up, Animal, Self

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

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• Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.

  Albert Memmi

  Hands, Racism, Psychology

  Albert Memmi (2000). “Racism”, p.78, U of Minnesota Press

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• I like writing about biology, not doing it.

  Kary Mullis

  Writing

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• You know, I have a lot of books on my iPad, but when I try to read them, I find myself wandering off to play games. Those are books I'm interested in. I can't imagine what would have happened to me in college if my biology class had been on the same computer as "Words With Friends" and "Doom."

  Gail Collins

  Book, College, Games

  "Will Journalism Go the Way of Whaling?". Interview with David Brooks and Gail Collins, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. February 27, 2013.

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• Maybe everyone else thinks your aversion to food is cute- but not me. I've watched you watch Jill. Here's some tough love: you will never, ever have her body. Ever. It's impossible. She's Moroi. You're human. That's biology. You have a great one, one that most humans would kill for- and you'd look even better if you put on a little weight. Five pounds would be a good start. Hide the ribs. Get a bigger bra size

  Richelle Mead

  Cute, Love You, Thinking

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• Many differences are rooted in biology and reinforced through culture, so it's important to acknowledge that. Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.

  Dee Dee Myers

  Men, Differences, Important

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• I really wanted to be a doctor, until my freshman year of college when I realized that while I was good at chemistry and biology, I really wasn't feeling challenged by it.

  Marissa Mayer

  College, Doctors, Years

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• But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Inevitability Of Death, Found, Inevitability

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.127, Princeton University Press

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• It is now widely realized that nearly all the 'classical' problems of molecular biology have either been solved or will be solved in the next decade. The entry of large numbers of American and other biochemists into the field will ensure that all the chemical details of replication and transcription will be elucidated. Because of this, I have long felt that the future of molecular biology lies in the extension of research to other fields of biology, notably development and the nervous system.

  Sydney Brenner

  Lying, Numbers, Long

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• Art has this ability to allow you to connect back through history in the same way that biology does. I'm always looking for source material.

  Jeff Koons

  Art, Doe, Way

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• What politicians do not understand is that [Ian] Wilmut discovered not so much a technical trick as a new law of nature. We now know that an adult mammalian cell can fire up all the dormant genetic instructions that shut down as it divides and specializes and ages, and thus can become a source of new life. You can outlaw technique; you cannot repeal biology.
  Writing after Wilmut's successful cloning of the sheep, Dolly, that research on the cloning of human beings cannot be suppressed.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Life, Writing, Science

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• A sound Physics of the Earth should include all the primary considerations of the earth's atmosphere, of the characteristics and continual changes of the earth's external crust, and finally of the origin and development of living organisms. These considerations naturally divide the physics of the earth into three essential parts, the first being a theory of the atmosphere, or Meteorology, the second, a theory of the earth's external crust, or Hydrogeology, and the third, a theory of living organisms, or Biology.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Atmosphere, Sound

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• Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'

  Daniel Dennett

  Successful, Design, Evolution

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• My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.

  Richard Dawkins

  Philosophical, Sides, Interest

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• I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.

  Walter Isaacson

  Technology, Thinking, Innovation

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.539, Simon and Schuster

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• It looked like a biology lesson for gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets.

  Alastair Reynolds

  Snapshots, Lessons, Might

  Alastair Reynolds (2002). “Revelation Space”, p.406, Penguin

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• What was that?" Galladon demanded. "I think I just destroyed the biology section" Raoden replied with wonder.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Thinking, Wonder, Sections

  Brandon Sanderson (2011). “Elantris”, p.443, Hachette UK

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• The major credit I think Jim and I deserve ... is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold. Both of us had decided, quite independently of each other, that the central problem in molecular biology was the chemical structure of the gene. ... We could not see what the answer was, but we considered it so important that we were determined to think about it long and hard, from any relevant point of view.

  Francis Crick

  Science, Thinking, Discovery

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• As a chemist, I wanted to ask myself the question frustrated by biology: What is the minimal unit of matter that can undergo Darwinian evolution?

  Leroy Cronin

  Motivation, Inspiration, Frustrated

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