Mammals Quotes - Page 4

• Cats, dogs, and some I mean, birds, many species of mammals, they also have the sort of potential to show affection firstly because of the biological factor.

  Dalai Lama

  Dog, Mean, Cat

  Source: www.kpbs.org

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• The urgency to mate persists in all people as in all other mammals because of the evolutionary drive to continue the species, the inborn imperative for genes to reproduce and hormonal differences that evolved over millions of years.

  Lynn Margulis

  Years, Differences, People

  "A Woman's Worth: 1857 Letter Echoes Still; Some Basic Disputes Over Feminism Persist" by Patricia Cohen, www.nytimes.com. July 18, 1998.

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• We belong to that order of mammals, the primates, distinguished by its propensity for repeated single litters, intense parental care, long life-spans, late sexual maturity, and a complex and extensive social existence... Our protracted biological and psychological helplessness, which extends well into the third year of life, intensifies the bond between infant and parents, making possible a sense of generational continuity. In contrast to other primates these bonds are not obliterated after sexual maturity.

  Louise J. Kaplan

  Maturity, Order, Years

  Louise J. Kaplan (1995). “Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood”, Touchstone Books

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• There is part of a structure in which every species is related to every other species. And they're built up on species, like a pyramid. The simpler cell organisms, and then the more complicated ones, all the way up to the mammals and birds and so forth. We call it 'developing upward'... The whole thing depends on every part of it. And we're taking out the stones from the pyramid.

  W. S. Merwin

  Cells, Pyramids, Bird

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• The reptiles had taken over the city. Once again they were the dominant form of life. Looking up at the ancient impassive faces, Kerans could understand the curious fear they roused, rekindling archaic memories of the terrifying jungles of the Paleocene, when the reptiles had gone down before the emergent mammals, and sense the implacable hatred one zoological class feels towards another that usurps it.

  J. G. Ballard

  Memories, Taken, Animal

  J. G. Ballard (1965). “The Drowned World and the Wind From Nowhere”

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• I've accepted the fact that there's a beginning and end to everything. All species are born, evolve, and then die off. We're going through the 6th great extinction and the large mammals are going first and, you know what - we're large mammals!

  Yvon Chouinard

  Firsts, Facts, Beginnings And Ends

  "Don of the Dirtbags: An Interview with Yvon Chouinard". The Vertical Interview, theusualmontauk.com. October 22, 2016.

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• The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art or sat slothfully by while they destroyed. We have passed this stage.... Here in the U.S. we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy our forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at best it looks as if our people were awakening.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Art, Air, Rivers

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• It only takes twenty generations of selective breeding to create large differences or appearance and behavior in other mammals.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Differences, Twenties, Generations

  Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.233, Basic Books

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• But human borders mean nothing to air, water, windblown soil or seeds or migrating fish, birds or mammals.

  David Suzuki

  Mean, Air, Water

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• We are like dogs, cats, cows, rats ... What separates us from them and from the remaining matches against mammals is negligible. To have the same diseases. Rats spread plague like us, but we are just as contagious as them. And the dogs get diabetes, like we do, and get cancer, like us. And age, like us. And die, like us. Why then the biblical claim that man is the king of creation? Perhaps because only man has developed spoken language, the words, wherein lies its prodigious ability to lie.

  Fernando Vallejo

  Dog, Kings, Cancer

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• Ruthless and arrogant though power can appear, it is only ever held by mere mammals who excrete and yearn, and who suffer from insomnia and insecurity. These mammals are also necessarily vain in the ­extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Power, Insomnia, Insecurity

  Christopher Hitchens (2001). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• One of the best gifts you can give a poet is to present them with field guides - to rocks, to stars, to birds, to wildflowers, to trees and bushes, to butterflies, to reptiles and amphibians. Because when you look at anything long enough to be able to identify it, you see far more clearly and you make a tiny beginning at understanding the life, the place, the history of that bird or rock or mammal.

  Marge Piercy

  Stars, Butterfly, Rocks

  Source: margepiercy.com

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• There are 400,000 species of beetles on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Planets, Species, Beetles

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• A Panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a Panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry, and, sure enough, finds an explanation. Panda. Large black and white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

  Lynne Truss

  Confused, Black And White, Gun

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, November 6, 2003.

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• The role of dissident is not, and should not be, a claim of membership in a communion of saints. In other words, the more fallible the mammal, the truer the example.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Democracy, Saint, Roles

  Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.94, Basic Books

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• It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion. The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Loss, Sharks, Lakes

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.15, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• The large shiny black forehead of the first whale was no more than two yards from us when it sank beneath the surface of the water, then we saw the huge blue-black bulk glide quietly under the raft right beneath our feet. It lay there for some time, dark and motionless, and we held our breath as we looked down on the gigantic curved back of a mammal a good deal longer than the raft.

  Virginia Woolf

  Time, Dark, Blue

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• I like to think
  (it has to be!)
  of a cybernetic ecology
  where we are free of our labors
  and joined back to nature,
  returned to our mammal
  brothers and sisters,
  and all watched over
  by machines of loving grace.

  Richard Brautigan

  Brother, Thinking, Grace

  Richard Brautigan (1989). “Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America ; The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster ; And, In Watermelon Sugar”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We may have charted all the continents on the planet, and we may have discovered all the mammals, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing left to explore on Earth.

  Nathan Wolfe

  Mean, Earth, May

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• Why were there far more species of domesticated animals in Eurasia than in the Americas? The Americas harbor over a thousand native wild mammal species, so you might initially suppose that the Americas offered plenty of starting material for domestication.

  Jared Diamond

  Animal, Might, Starting

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• When an eighty-five pound mammal licks your tears away, then tries to sit on your lap, it's hard to feel sad.

  Kristan Higgins

  Dog, Trying, Tears

  Kristan Higgins (2012). “Catch of the Day”, p.75, HQN Books

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• Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet - who was only another male mammal - is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Art, Dancing, Alcohol

  "Cartoon Debate: The case for mocking religion". www.slate.com. February 04, 2006.

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• One week ago I said that cloning of mammals was years away... it is fun to be alive at this point in history.

  Anders Sandberg

  Fun, Science, Years

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• Man, the most complicated of the animals, has a relatively short gestation period. Beyond that, he will be born, unlike most mammals, in a ridiculously helpless state.

  Willard Gaylin

  Animal, Men, Gestation Period

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• Suppose that you want to teach the 'cat' concept to a very young child. Do you explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with retractible claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I'll bet not. You probably show the kid a lot of different cats, saying 'kitty' each time, until it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by abstraction from experience.

  Ralph P. Boas, Jr.

  Children, Cat, Kids

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