Natural History Quotes

• While my interest in natural history has added very little to my sum of achievement, it has added immeasurably to my sum of enjoyment in life.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Achievement, Littles, Natural

  Theodore Roosevelt (2014). “Forgotten Tales and Vanished Trails”, p.192, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.

  John Burroughs

  Museums, Funeral, Feelings

  John Burroughs (1904). “The Writings of John Burroughs: Indoor studies”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

  John Adams

  Education, Philosophy, War

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.264, Penguin

  75 Copy quote

  Show source

• "Nothing is ever lost" means that what we are now goes all the way back through natural history. We are biological organisms and not simply computerized brains. By focusing totally on the present, thinking only about science and computers, and forgetting four billion years of life on this planet, we are losing perspective on who and what we are.

  Robert Neelly Bellah

  Mean, Thinking, Years

  Source: blogs.ssrc.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Animal, Details, Adaptation

  Alfred Russel Wallace (1853). “A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro: With an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley”, p.83, London : Reeve and Company

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's the way to get young people. Once they see there are wonderful things to hunt for, to rediscover a species that was thought to be extinct or is extremely rare, to be the first to see a nest, to discover a new species unsuspected close to your home - these are things, I think, with a little education and excitement and the right kind of natural history would actually start a movement that makes going back to nature a profitable adventure.

  E. O. Wilson

  Home, Adventure, Thinking

  Source: blog.cleveland.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Long, Imagination, Bird

  Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”, p.21, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. Teach him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning around. Surely our innocent pleasures are not so abundant in this life, that we can afford to despise this or any other source of them.

  Thomas Huxley

  Education, Country, Art

  "On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences". Book by Thomas Huxley (p. 29), 1854.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I were beginning my career today, I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically, I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television, and I think if I were beginning today, I'd be there.

  David Attenborough

  Mean, Thinking, Careers

  "David Attenborough: 'I have been in a vehicle that was charged by a rhinoceros, and that was tiresome'". Interview with Kate Kellaway, www.theguardian.com. October 30, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The American Museum of Natural History is my son's absolute favorite place in the world! So we really, really, really love New York.

  Mark Teixeira

  New York, Son, Museums

  4 Copy quote

• Natural history is not equivalent to biology. Biology is the study of life. Natural history is the study of animals and plants-of organisms. Biology thus includes natural history, and much else besides.

  Marston Bates

  Science, Animal, Nomenclature

  Marston Bates (2014). “The Nature of Natural History”, p.7, Princeton University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Flower, Animal

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Natural History Essays”, p.28, Gibbs Smith

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The study of taxonomy in its broadest sense is probably the oldest branch of biology or natural history as well as the basis for all the other branches, since the first step in obtaining any knowledge of things about us is to discriminate between them and to learn to recognize them.

  Richard E. Blackwelder

  Knowledge, Science, Taxonomy

  13 Copy quote

• Biology can be divided into the study of proximate causes, the study of the physiological sciences (broadly conceived), and into the study of ultimate (evolutionary) causes, the subject of natural history.

  Ernst Mayr

  Science, Causes, Study

  Ernst Mayr (1982). “The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance”, p.67, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again—finally turning into an expectation—then theories are overturned.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Issues, Interesting, Expectations

  Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.136, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to a hidden mine filled with gems then easily gathered by conventional tools, not a shiny new space-age machine for penetrating previously inaccessible worlds.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Space, Discovery, Age

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “The Lying Stones of Marrakech”, p.318, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no counting the unsolved problems of Natural History.

  J. Arthur Thomson

  Science, Problem, Natural

  4 Copy quote

• Once we begin to speak of men mixing their labour with the earth, we are in a whole world of new relations between man and nature, and to separate natural history from social history becomes extremely problematic.

  Raymond Williams

  Men, Mixing, World

  Raymond Williams (2005). “Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays”, p.76, Verso

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Natural history is not about producing fables.

  David Attenborough

  Fables, Natural

  "Sir David Attenborough reveals a pacemaker and knee replacement surgery have given him a 'new lease of life'" by Claire Murphy, www.mirror.co.uk. November 6, 2016.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The philosophy that I have worked under most of my life is that the serious study of natural history is an activity which has far-reaching effects in every aspect of a person's life. It ultimately makes people protective of the environment in a very committed way. It is my opinion that the study of natural history should be the primary avenue for creating environmentalists.

  Roger Tory Peterson

  Philosophy, Hard Work, Science

  11 Copy quote

• A laboratory of natural history is a sanctuary where nothing profane should be tolerated. I feel less agony at improprieties in churches than in a scientific laboratory.

  Louis Agassiz

  Science, Agony, Church

  "Discovery: or, The spirit and service of science". Book by Sir Richard Gregory, 1st Baronet, p. 43, 1916.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The commonest forms of amateur natural history in the United States are probably gardening, bird watching, the maintenance of aquarium fish, and nature photography.

  Marston Bates

  Photography, Nature, Science

  Marston Bates (2014). “The Nature of Natural History”, p.265, Princeton University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rumour has it that the gardens of natural history museums are used for surreptitious burial of those intermediate forms between species which might disturb the orderly classifications of the taxonomist.

  David Lack

  Science, Garden, Museums

  David Lack (1947). “Darwin's Finches”, p.23, CUP Archive

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Go to the source for ideas, go to the Metropolitan Museum, find your inspiration in nature, go to the Museum of Natural History, but never rely on something that someone else has done.

  Van Day Truex

  Inspiration, Museums, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• Other thing about [Field Museum of Natural History] which inspired was that in a group of pots you wouldn't see a single example of this kind of pot. You would perhaps see a case with 20 different examples. So you realize that these pots could be repeated again and again, and each time there would be minor variations in them.

  Warren MacKenzie

  Museums, Different, Would Be

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

  Show source