Species Quotes - page 47

I'm acquainted with a, uh, gentleman who claims that the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society'll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn't be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down. He claims that martyrs like you just perpetuate human misery by catering to it. He believes individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices. (Tom Robbins)
At some time in their careers, most good historians itch to write a history of the world, endeavor to discover what makes humanity the most destructive and creative of species. View quote
Paul Johnson
What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? View quote
Yiyun Li
Mankind is considered (by the radical environmentalists) the lowest and the meanest of all species and is blamed for everything. View quote
Dixie Lee Ray
No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom. Perhaps it was boredom, not intelligence, that had propelled them up to the evolutionary ladder. View quote
Terry Pratchett
I read the 'Old Testament' all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read 'The Origin Of Species', hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense. View quote
Terry Pratchett
Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that theres nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone. View quote
Terry Pratchett
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. View quote
Diane Ackerman
Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere. View quote
Diane Ackerman
The planet needs trees. If there is indeed that carbon dioxide out there in the atmosphere, the only species on the planet that can actually trap it for us in a natural process of photosynthesis are the trees. View quote
Wangari Maathai
If our species is to survive, our future will probably require outposts beyond our own planet. (Lawrence M. Krauss)
Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives – and may even extend our stay on Earth. View quote
Alex Steffen
We can truly see that consciousness is operating creatively even in biology, even in the evolution of species. View quote
Amit Goswami
You feel afraid of small, insignificant rulers and obey them; shouldn't you fear and obey the Sole, Absolute Ruler? He has taken no son for Himself. The Jews say, ‘Uzair-as is the son of Allah'; the Christians claim, ‘Jesus is the son of Allah.' But He says: ‘I have no son.' He is the Absolute, the Single; there can be none like Him. A son necessarily belongs to the genre and species of his father. The son of a human being would be a human, the young of an elephant would be an elephant and that of a bird would essentially be a bird, inheriting the attributes of its father. If God had a son, he would have been another god. But, He neither has any son, nor any partner in His sovereignty; He is the Absolute Ruler, no one can interfere with His rule. It is He Who has created everything. View quote
Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan
Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species. View quote
Imre Kertész
Well I think on a simple ecological level that the diversity of this planet is important for our survival, that all of our different cultures, people are important to the health of the whole the same way that a species of animal should be saved and at a simple ecology level. View quote
Richard Gere
It will be possible, through the detailed determination of amino-acid sequences of hemoglobin molecules and of other molecules too, to obtain much information about the course of the evolutionary process, and to illuminate the question of the origin of species. View quote
Linus Pauling
One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
The metaphor of the watch was very much used by the deists. And of course, watches run down, and break down, and it was believed by many of them that if an intelligence had begun the universe, begun the process, he'd took no further interest in it - didn't intervene in human affairs, didn't mind who won the war, didn't mind which country was the leading one, watched with relative-well, or didn't watch-with indifference, plague, famine, war and so forth. That's a very hard position to oppose, by the way. It's impossible, actually, to disprove - one can only the evidence for it isn't quite strong enough to be persuasive. To be a theist, to be a member of a monotheistic religion, that believes that truth has been revealed, that god has intervened in human affairs, that he has a plan for us - each of as individually and as a species, and that it shows - is a very much more difficult undertaking. I'm gonna show why I think it's more or less impossible. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
A degree of silence envelops Washington's actions; he moved slowly; one might say that he felt charged with future liberty, and that he feared to compromise it. It was not his own destiny that inspired this new species of hero: it was that of his country; he did not allow himself to enjoy what did not belong to him; but from that profound humility what glory emerged! View quote
François-René de Chateaubriand
The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the most lasting joys the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings -- woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star. (Charles Baudelaire)
I have a sense that something amazing is at work ... I think our planet is actually moving into a time of profound harmony and fecundity and peace but whether that's going to take 600 years or 6 days I don't know. I mean, I think that as humans begin to take seriously... the planetary dimension of conscious self-awareness, then we will become homonized versions of natural selection - so that we will begin to make decision with the large scale dynamic of the planet in mind. So I see that we're actually entering into a transformation of the human species out of the modern period into this new era... It may take centuries... but like the past and it's catastrophes I think that's... what's taking place in the midst of so many hardships. View quote
Brian Swimme
For years, governments, corporations, and researchers have argued that the testing of animals to assess the risk of chemicals to human health is essential to ensure the well-being of our own species. But now, new breakthroughs in the field of genomics, bioinformatics, epigenetics, and computational toxicology are providing new research tools for studying the impact of toxic chemicals on human health that are far more accurate in assessing the risk of these chemicals to human beings. Antivivisection societies and animal rights organizations have made this argument for many, many years-only to be scorned by scientific bodies, medical associations, and industry lobbies who accuse them of being "anti-progress” in caring more about animals than people. Now it is the scientific establishment, interestingly enough, that has come to the very same conclusions. View quote
Jeremy Rifkin
In the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear that humanity is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions. Modern science has developed effective measures that could solve most of the urgent problems in today's world--combat the majority of diseases, eliminate hunger and poverty, reduce the amount of industrial waste, and replace destructive fossil fuels by renewable sources of clean energy. The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species. View quote
Stanislav Grof
Art Exists for the human species. I think that all of the people who love art, those who teach art, and all of you should burn with the obligation to save the world. View quote
Shinichi Suzuki