Organisms Quotes - Page 19

• If you want to study one of these strange organisms, you had better have a good justification. It's not good to say I want to study gene organisation in some obscure insect that no one's ever heard about.

  Thomas Cech

  Want, Strange, Study

  "Funding above and beyond scientific research". EMBO reports Interview, embor.embopress.org. September 2001.

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

  G. Ledyard Stebbins

  Groups, Evolution, Biologist

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• The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.

  Ilya Prigogine

  Zero, Knowledge, Would Be

  "100,000 Galaxies: What quest for alien 'supercivilizations' really tells us" by Michael Guillen, www.foxnews.com. April 25, 2015.

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• In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual.

  Douglas J. Futuyma

  Political, Population, Evolution

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• A savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.

  John Ciardi

  Race, Civilization, Savages

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• 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

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• I have found the study of organisms to be a truly exciting experience, always interesting and sometimes humbling.

  Edward T. Hall

  Interesting, Study, Sometimes

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• Many of the earth's habitats, animals, plants, insects and even micro-organisms that we know to be rare may not be known at all by future generations. We have the capability and the responsibility to act; we must do so before it is too late.

  Dalai Lama

  Nature, Responsibility, Animal

  The Dalai Lama (2009). “Worlds in Harmony”, p.42, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lying, Healthy, Absence

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.693, GENERAL PRESS

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• Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Book, Creativity, Cutting

  "The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insiders Secrets from Hollywood's Top Writers". Book by Karl Inglesias (p. 4), 2001.

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• The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, hand-carts, and bicycles which fearlessly find their way amidst the turmoil, with foot-passengers winding in and out, and covering the sidewalks with their multitude, give the effect of a single monstrous organism, which writhes swiftly along the channel where it had run in the figure of a flood till you were tired of that metaphor. You are now a molecule of that vast organism.

  William Dean Howells

  Running, Tired, Science

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• A living organism must be studied from two distinct aspects. One of these is the causal-analytic aspect which is so fruitfully applicable to ontogeny. The other is the historical descriptive aspect which is unravelling lines of phylogeny with ever-increasing precision. Each of these aspects may make suggestions concerning the possible significance of events seen under the other, but does not explain or translate them into simpler terms.

  Gavin de Beer

  Science, Two, Historical

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• I would like you to show me, if you can, where the line can be drawn between an organism and it's environment. The environment is in you. It's passing through you. You're breathing it in and out. You and every other creature.

  Wendell Berry

  Breathing, Lines, Environment

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• Man is not an organism; he is an intelligence served by organs.

  W. D. Hamilton

  Men, Organs

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• No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.

  Gregory Bateson

  Levels, Matter, Conscious

  Gregory Bateson (1972). “Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology”, p.143, University of Chicago Press

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• Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.

  George C. Williams

  Numbers, Variation, Theory

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• Society is an organism which obeys the immutable law of progress; and change, judicious and cautious change, is necessary for the well being, and indeed the preservation of the social system.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Change, Law, Progress

  Swami Vivekananda (2001). “Prabuddha Bharata: Or Awakened India”

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• We know from biology that new forms of organisms simulate their primitive form as closely as possible at first, even though obliged to exist under changed internal and external conditions.

  Wilhelm Ostwald

  Firsts, Biology, Form

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• In specific circumstances the period of aging decline can set in earlier in a particular organ than in the organism as a whole which, in a certain general or theoretical sense, is left a cripple or invalid.

  Wilhelm Ostwald

  Aging, Periods, Certain

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• That the variability of an organism to a certain extent is a constant and certain condition of life we admit, otherwise there would be no distinguishable individuals of a species.

  Richard Owen

  Would Be, Individual, Certain

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• Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners.

  Daniel Dennett

  Life, Spring, Perspective

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• Splitting and gradual divergence of genera is exemplified very well and in a large variety of organisms.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Wells, Splitting, Divergence

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• You are one miniscule piece of a never-ending cycle. In fact, you're not even a piece. You're just a holder for billions and billions of other pieces. Whether that's organic components, living organisms inside your body, bacteria or whatever it is, you're just part of the soup of the universe, so just try to enjoy what's good about it.

  Joe Rogan

  Mma, Trying, Pieces

  "Renaissance Man". Interview with Steph Daniels, www.sbnation.com. May 15, 2014.

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• The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune.

  Friedrich Engels

  Mean, Organization, Paris

  Letter to Philipp Van Patten, www.marxists.org. April 18, 1883.

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• In my opinion, neither organisms nor organizations evolve slowly and surely into something better, but drift until some small change occurs which has immediate and overwhelming significance. The special role of the human being is not to wait for these favorable accidents but deliberately to introduce the small change that will have great significance.

  Edwin Land

  Small Changes, Organization, Waiting

  "Generation of Greatness : The Idea of a University in an Age of Science". Edwin Land's Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, groups.csail.mit.edu. May 22, 1957.

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