Organisms Quotes - Page 20

• I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Spiritual, Men, Rights

  Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, www.columbia.edu. December 29, 1930.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ants are more like the parts of an animal than entities on their own. They are mobile cells, circulating through a dense connective tissue of other ants in a matrix of twigs. The circuits are so intimately interwoven that the anthill meets all the essential criteria of an organism.

  Lewis Thomas

  Animal, Cells, Essentials

  "The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher". Book by Lewis Thomas, 1974.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism.

  Maxim Gorky

  Mean, Skins, Disease

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing can better express the feelings of the scientist towards the great unity of the laws of nature than in Immanuel Kant's words: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe: the stars above me and the moral law within me."... Would he, who did not yet know of the evolution of the world of organisms, be shocked that we consider the moral law within us not as something given, a priori, but as something which has arisen by natural evolution, just like the laws of the heavens?

  Konrad Lorenz

  Stars, Law, Two

  "On Aggression" by Konrad Lorenz, (Ch. XII), 1963.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.

  William S. Burroughs

  Sex, Pain, Animal

  9 Copy quote

• What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.

  John Steinbeck

  Song, Men, Keys

  "The Log from the Sea of Cortez". Book by John Steinbeck. Chapter 4, 1951.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Past, Quirky

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Words change their meanings, just as organisms evolve. We would impose an enormous burden on our economy if we insisted on payment in cattle every time we identified a bonus as a pecuniary advantage (from the Latin pecus , or cattle, a verbal fossil from a former commercial reality).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Latin, Reality, Bonus

  Stephen Jay Gould (2002). “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory”, p.1070, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them", this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts--that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Mean, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• We as a culture are forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very, very deep connection and contact with nature. You can’t divorce civilization from nature - we totally depend on it.

  James Balog

  Divorce, Civilization, Connections

  57 Copy quote

• We do not realize how deeply our starting assumptions affect the way we go about looking for and interpreting the data we collect. We should recognize that nonhuman organisms need not meet every new definition of human language, tool use, mind, or consciousness in order to have versions of their own that are worthy of serious study. We have set ourselves too much apart, grasping for definitions that will distinguish man from all other life on the planet. We must rejoin the great stream of life from whence we arose and strive to see within it the seeds of all we are and all we may become.

  Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

  Men, Order, Data

  Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger Lewin (1996). “Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind”, Wiley

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• To operate а tank as a crew, it's not about five individuals. It has to be one organism, composed of five people.

  David Ayer

  People, Tanks, Individual

  Source: collider.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Diversity, Firsts, Certain

  Phillip E. Johnson (2000). “Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law and Culture”, Intervarsity Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The principal result of my investigation is that a uniform developmental principle controls the individual elementary units of all organisms, analogous to the finding that crystals are formed by the same laws in spite of the diversity of their forms.

  Theodor Schwann

  Science, Law, Diversity

  29 Copy quote

• For man also, in health and sickness, is not just the sum of his organs, but is indeed a human organism.

  Walter Rudolf Hess

  Men, Sickness, Organs

  8 Copy quote

• To prove that tuberculosis is caused by the invasion of bacilli, and that it is a parasitic disease primarily caused by the growth and multiplication of bacilli, it is necessary to isolate the bacilli from the body, to grow them in pure culture until they are freed from every disease product of the animal organism, and, by introducing isolated bacilli into animals, to reproduce the same morbid condition that is known to follow from inoculation with spontaneously developed tuberculous material.

  Robert Koch

  Animal, Growth, Tuberculosis

  Robert Koch (1987). “Essays of Robert Koch”, Praeger Pub Text

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am much occupied with the investigation of the physical causes [of motions in the Solar System]. My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork ... insofar as nearly all the manifold movements are carried out by means of a single, quite simple magnetic force. This physical conception is to be presented through calculation and geometry.

  Johannes Kepler

  Mean, Science, Simple

  4 Copy quote

• A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence suggests, exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life, studying them could revolutionise biology, medicine and biotechnology.

  Paul Davies

  Medicine, Numbers, Exotic

  "Fly me to Mars. One-way" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2009.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [chemistry]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem. For the further analysis of these phenomena which are in flux and flow, the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.

  John Jacob Abel

  Science, Animal, Atoms

  John Jacob Abel, Otto Folin, Theobald Smith (1915). “Experimental and chemical studies of the blood: with an appeal for more extended chemical training for the biological and medical investigator”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• However, on many occasions, I examined normal blood and normal tissues and there was no possibility of overlooking bacteria or confusing them with granular masses of equal size. I never found organisms. Thus, I conclude that bacteria do not occur in healthy human or animal tissues.

  Robert Koch

  Health, Science, Animal

  Robert Koch (1987). “Essays of Robert Koch”, Praeger Pub Text

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence, --the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all.

  Emma Goldman

  Struggle, Mean, Men

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.25, Sheba Blake Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world of organisms, of animals and plants, is built up of individuals. I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual-of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities.

  Marston Bates

  Science, Animal, Thinking

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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Order, Dull, Causes

  Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.98, W. W. Norton & Company

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Space is an environment of emptiness. It offers no possibility for natural adaptation to any living organism - and particularly not to the highly sophisticated creature, man. Yet man has the ability to resolve this paradox through his intellectual power and creative faculties.

  Hubertus Strughold

  Men, Medicine, Space

  7 Copy quote

• We need to abandon the economist's notion of the economy as a machine, with its attendant concept of equilibrium. A more helpful way of thinking about the economy is to imagine it as a living organism.

  Paul Ormerod

  Thinking, Needs, Machines

  "The Death of Economics". Book by Paul Ormerod, 1994.

  45 Copy quote

  Show source