Species Quotes - Page 35

• The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives, homes and businesses lost, ecosystems destroyed, species driven to extinction, infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.

  David Suzuki

  Home, Ecosystems, People

  18 Copy quote

• Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.

  Lewis Thomas

  Science, Animal, Survival

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad.

  Lewis Thomas

  Development, Stage, Juvenile

  4 Copy quote

• As a species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the face of the earth in just a few thousand years, no time at all as evolution clocks time, covering all livable parts of the planet, endangering other forms of life, and now threatening ourselves.

  Lewis Thomas

  Years, Covering, Earth

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe in reincarnation. In my last life I was a peasant. Next time around, I'd like to be an eagle. Who hasn't dreamed they could fly? They're a protected species, too.

  Lee Trevino

  Believe, Eagles, Next

  22 Copy quote

• Darwin's theory of evolution is a framework by which we understand the diversity of life on Earth. But there is no equation sitting there in Darwin's 'Origin of Species' that you apply and say, 'What is this species going to look like in 100 years or 1,000 years?' Biology isn't there yet with that kind of predictive precision.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Years, Theory Of Evolution, Diversity

  52 Copy quote

• The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.

  George Wald

  Mistake, Winning, Competition

  8 Copy quote

• It is the great sadness of our species that we have not found a way to eliminate the conflict and to eliminate violence as a device to resolve our conflicts throughout the entire history of the human race.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Sadness, Race, Way

  15 Copy quote

• I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.

  George Washington

  Spiritual, Religious, Religion

  George Washington (1837). “The Writings of George Washington: pt. V. Speeches and messages to Congress, proclamations, and addresses”, p.155

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Religious, Atheism, Salary

  Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 2, ch. 4

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.

  E. O. Wilson

  Needs, Pages, Given

  Interview with Richard Conniff, discovermagazine.com. June 25, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

  E. O. Wilson

  Two, Ants, Insects

  27 Copy quote

• The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

  E. O. Wilson

  Loss, Years, Diversity

  16 Copy quote

• It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.

  E. O. Wilson

  Dream, World, Biosphere

  Interview with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. July 6, 2007.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.

  E. O. Wilson

  Rain, Animal, Tree

  57 Copy quote

• So much of the habitat destruction and pollution is based on the simple principle that we somehow have been given free license over other species to degrade the planet.

  Greg Graffin

  Simple, Principles, Habitat

  10 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, with dinosaurs, we haven't had enough specimens to determine how much variation there is within a species.

  Jack Horner

  Variation, Dinosaurs, Had Enough

  9 Copy quote

• Mushrooms are miniature pharmaceutical factories, and of the thousands of mushroom species in nature, our ancestors and modern scientists have identified several dozen that have a unique combination of talents that improve our health.

  Paul Stamets

  Nature, Health, Unique

  Interview with Patricia Fitzgerald, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 2, 2011.

  82 Copy quote

  Show source

• Looking around, I thought the human species was in fine shape and tried to think of something more beautiful than women and couldn't come up with a thing. The propagation of the species was a dance of total joy.

  Pat Conroy

  Beautiful, Thinking, Joy

  Pat Conroy (1995). “Beach Music”, Nan A. Talese

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.

  Rachel Carson

  Change, Nature, Men

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic hermaphroditism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of "perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified.

  Michel Foucault

  Strong, Psychics, Vocabulary

  "The History of Sexuality, Volume I: The Will to Knowledge". Book by Michel Foucault, 1978.

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Animal, Men, Principles

  "Enemies, A Love Story" by Isaac Bashevis Singer, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (p. 257), 1972.

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man—as he had long suspected—was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated.

  Rafael Sabatini

  Morning, Men, Apples

  Rafael Sabatini (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Rafael Sabatini (Illustrated)”, p.2979, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.

  Jose Saramago

  Hands, Dying, May

  "Blindness". Book by Jose Saramago, October 1997.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Responsibility, Space

  "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space".

  7 Copy quote

  Show source