Species Quotes - Page 31

• We're told, often enough, that as a species we are poised on the edge of the abyss. It's possible that our puffed-up, prideful intelligence has outstripped our instinct for survival and the road back to safety has already been washed away. In which case there's nothing much to be done. If there is something to be done, then one thing is for sure: those who created the problem will not be the ones who come up with a solution.

  Arundhati Roy

  Safety, Survival, Done

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• 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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• I think the use of language is a very important means by which this species, because of its biological nature, creates a kind of social space, to place itself in interactions with other people. It doesn't have much to do with communication in a narrow sense; that is, it doesn't involve transmission of information. There is much information transmitted but it is not the content of what is said that is transmitted.

  Noam Chomsky

  Communication, Mean, Thinking

  Source: chomsky.info

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• You can imagine a different world in which a number of species developed with different genetically determined linguistic systems. It hasn't happened in evolution. What has happened is that one species has developed, and the genetic structure of this species happens to involve a variety of intricate abstract principles of linguistic organization that, therefore, necessarily constrain every language, and, in fact, create the basis for learning language as a way of organizing experience rather than constituting something learned from experience.

  Noam Chomsky

  Organization, Numbers, World

  Source: chomsky.info

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• It is innate in our species to be cyborgian in nature. We have been in the self amplifying feedback loop with our tools since stone tools, and since the written word, and what we are seeing now is just a deepening of that. But it has always been the case. We have always done this.

  Jason Silva

  Self, Tools, Done

  Source: alejandrotrojas.com

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• I think one of the both liberating and terrifying prospects from synthetic biology for example is that you are going to have all of these do it yourself biosynthetic labs where people are going to be playing with the software of life. We are going to have a new generation of artists that are going to be playing with genomes the way that Blake and Byron used to play with poetry. And when genomes are the new canvas for the artist, we might be able to radically upgrade the human species and the software of the biology of the human species.

  Jason Silva

  Artist, Thinking, Play

  Source: alejandrotrojas.com

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• Every reader of the Conversations with the God is invited to self-select, that is, to choose themselves, to be among those who commit to moving forward their own individual and personal evolution by embracing and demonstrating behaviors that serve to awaken the species to who and what human beings really are Individuations of Divinity, and how that may be made manifest in our experience.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Moving, Self, Being Real

  Source: www.spiritualmediablog.com

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• It is understood that nonhuman creatures adapt to their places or they don't live. And for some reason that I can't figure out, even the biologists have excused our own species from that obligation. I think there's going to be a biological penalty to be paid for that eventually.

  Wendell Berry

  Thinking, Reason, Figures

  Source: www.neh.gov

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• We have new media, new forms of connectivity, and an enormous transference of knowledge. When you study evolution, you see that when new genes meet and multiply, they create new contexts and new species. In a sense, the gene-pool of knowledge and of people connecting at all levels is literally spawning a kind of mind-pool of possibilities.

  Jean Houston

  Media, People, Mind

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes.

  Tillie Olsen

  Forever, Degradation, Facts

  Source: progressive.org

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• The idea that writing about characters of another race requires a passage through a critical gauntlet, which involves apology and self-examination of an almost punitive nature, as though the act of writing race was somehow morally suspect, is a dangerous one. This approach appears culturally sensitive, but often it reveals a failure of nerve. I believe the demand that we ought to reveals a species of fascism within the left - an embrace of political correctness with its required silences, which has left people afraid to offend or take a stand.

  C.E. Morgan

  Believe, Writing, Character

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• So many things tear us apart from each other. That's the hardest thing, to fit with all the hatred and pain we're embroiled in. I mean, we're a very violent species, physically and emotionally.

  Ellar Coltrane

  Pain, Mean, Hatred

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• As many glaciers are melting and icy tundras are decaying, there's an unprecedented amount of woolly mammoth material that's becoming dislodged from the ice. Not just mammoth, but all kinds of fossils from the past. What occurred to me was, had anyone tried to pinpoint the first case of human-induced extinction? What was the first time we as species pushed another one to oblivion? I would argue that's probably going to be one of the defining moral problems of the century, human-induced extinction. And I really wanted to know, when did we first cross that barrier?

  Dario Robleto

  Past, Ice, Becoming

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere.

  Diane Ackerman

  Habitat, Pageant, Evolve

  Diane Ackerman (2014). “The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us”, p.92, W. W. Norton & Company

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• As a species, we've somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we'll survive our own ingenuity.

  Diane Ackerman

  War, Ice, Age

  Diane Ackerman (2014). “The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us”, p.136, W. W. Norton & Company

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• What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity.

  Diane Ackerman

  Lonely, Zoos, Animal

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• Going to Mars would evolve humankind into a two-planet species.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Two, Mars, Planets

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• I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

  Maya Angelou

  Positive, Sweet, Believe

  Maya Angelou, Jeffrey M. Elliot (1989). “Conversations with Maya Angelou”

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• It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.

  David Attenborough

  Stars, Two, Care

  "Is it worth saving the world’s most worthless species?". www.iucn.org. November 26, 2012.

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• The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.

  David Attenborough

  Animal, Rhinos, Way

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• It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.

  David Attenborough

  Animal Rights, Moral

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• Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that.

  David Attenborough

  Years, Littles, Doing Nothing

  The Time Out Interview, www.timeout.com. September 20, 2013.

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• Where do we say that a cell became a blade of grass, which became a starfish, which became a cat, which became a donkey, which became a human being? There's a real lack of evidence from change from actual species to a different type of species.

  Michele Bachmann

  Real, Cat, Cells

  "Michele Bachmann Said What?!" by Tim Murphy, www.motherjones.com. June 6, 2011.

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• The real threat to whales is whaling, which has endangered many whale species.

  Dave Barry

  Real, Whales, Literature

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• As much horror as we have always created, we are a species that keeps moving forward, seeing new sights in new ways, and enjoying the journey.

  Martha Beck

  Moving, Journey, Sight

  "Reasons to feel good about the future" by Martha Beck, edition.cnn.com. January 9, 2008.

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