Species Quotes - Page 21

• The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.

  E. O. Wilson

  Reality, Thinking, Understanding

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• For the person and for the species love is the form of behavior having the highest survival value.

  Ashley Montagu

  Love Is, Survival, Behavior

  Ashley Montagu (1970). “The Direction of Human Development”, New York : Hawthorn Books

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• The program of the ruling elite in Orwell's 1984 was: "A foot stamping on a human face forever!" This is naive and optimistic. No species could survive for even a generation under such program. This is not a program of eternal, or even long-range dominance. It is clearly an extermination program.

  William S. Burroughs

  Optimistic, Feet, Long

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.479, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Abuse is an indirect species of homage.

  William Hazlitt

  Abuse, Indirect, Homage

  William Hazlitt, William Ernest Henley (1904). “The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: Fugitive writings”

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• Every day we, as a species, do so much to destroy Creation's ability to give us life. But that Creation continues to do everything in its power to give us life anyway. And that's true love.

  Julia Hill

  Giving, Creation, Ability

  "The Legacy of Luna". Book by Julia Butterfly Hill, April 1, 2000.

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• A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for a man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species.

  John Stuart Mill

  Men, Population, May

  John Stuart Mill (1849). “Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy”, p.313

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• There are never victories in conservation. If you want to save a species or a habitat, it's a fight forevermore. You can never turn your back.

  George Schaller

  Fighting, Victory, Habitat

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• Nor are we the culmination of evolution, except in the sense that there has never been another species so bizarrely ingenious that it could create both iambic pentameter and plutonium.

  David Quammen

  Plutonium, Evolution, Culmination

  David Quammen (2014). “Monster Of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind”, p.17, Random House

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• The Democrats talked about putting people first. Well, they put people first unless you happen to be a spotted owl or a giant garter snake or some other endangered species and then that seems to have priority. Obviously, you take the bald eagle and things of that sort, of course you're going to make sure that they are saved and that they can live and you're going to take every precaution that you can. But others - we just need a little flexibility.

  Dan Quayle

  Eagles, Snakes, People

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• The extreme self-sacrifice characteristic of group-selected species such as ants and bees can often be found among soldiers.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Sacrifice, Often Is, Self

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• People are largely ignorant of the interests of the human species.

  Ibn Khaldun

  People, Ignorant, Interest

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• It is the hard-boiled employer, not the soft-hearted species, that incites most of our strikes and does most ot endanger the harmonious progress of democracy.

  B. C. Forbes

  Democracy, Progress, Doe

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• I believe in sensuality. I believe in sex. I believe in the survival of the species. I like aspects of things that are ethereal, but I like the reality of nature and embracing the way nature works, and aspects of interrelationships between male-female, aspects of the body, the way the body has changed over thousands of years . . .

  Jeff Koons

  Sex, Believe, Reality

  Interview with David Colman, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 23, 2008.

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• The thing that defines a species is that all members have the same addressing system for their DNA.

  Richard Dawkins

  Dna, Members

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.120, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.

  David Brin

  Past, Paradise, Replacements

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• How many people on Earth serve people? And how many people on Earth serve the Earth? The difference in the numbers must be enormous. It would reveal that the Earth is definitely not the primary concern of the human species. This might be fatal both to the Earth and to humanity. Please, leaders of the Earth and the nations, wake up to this potentially fatal disparity.

  Robert Muller

  Differences, Numbers, People

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• It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

  Douglas Adams

  Long, Doe, Monkeys

  Douglas Adams (2005). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.133, Del Rey

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• For as to the dispersing of Books, that Circumstance does perhaps as much harm as good: Since Nonsense flies with greater Celerity, and makes greater Impression than Reason; though indeed no particular species of Nonsense is so durable. But the several Forms of Nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and Men are always under the Dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism.

  David Hume

  Book, Men, Wickedness

  David Hume, J. Y. T. Greig (2011). “The Letters of David Hume:”, p.239, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the "mutations" of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly.

  B. F. Skinner

  Different, Mutation, Culture

  B.F Skinner (2012). “Science And Human Behavior”, p.434, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm extremely worried. I'm worried about the survival of our species, worried about what we're doing, worried about being Americans, worried about depletion of resources. On the other hand, we are trying. We are trying to understand our impact on the environment.

  T.C. Boyle

  Impact, Hands, Survival

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• We're an amazingly adaptive and resilient species. Once we put our mind to global warming, I have no doubt we'll figure a way through here that won't lead to utter calamity.

  Andrew Revkin

  Doubt, Mind, Way

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• It amazes me to witness the masochism with which some journalists characterize their industry as a dying species. The future belongs to citizen journalism and blogs.

  Mathias Dopfner

  Dying, Citizens, Journalism

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• That's precisely the reason we need less paper and more concrete political decisions - the protection of endangeres species is not some luxury item by Gucci or Hermès, for people who have no problems.

  Klaus Topfer

  Luxury, People, Decision

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Protecting biodiversity is just as important and critical to the survival of mankind as stabilizing the climate. Species protection and climate are interdependent.

  Klaus Topfer

  Survival, Important, Climate

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Responsibility, Our World

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 6: "Traveller's Tales", 1990.

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