TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index E > Category: Environment

Environment Quotes (239 quotes)
Environmentally Quotes, Environmental Quotes


“Progress” was synonymous with distance from nature. The adults, who set the pace of progress from nature, were so absorbed by their own ability to invent and to alter the existing world, that they hurried headlong, with no design for the ultimate structure. A man-made environment was the obvious goal, but who was the responsible architect? No one in my country. Not even the king of Great Britain or the president of America. Each inventor and producer who worked on building tomorrow’s world just threw in a brick or a cogwheel wherever he cared to, and it was up to us of the next generation to find out what the result would be.
In Ch. 1, 'Farewell to Civilization', Fatu-Hiva (1974), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Absorb (54)  |  Adult (24)  |  Alter (64)  |  America (143)  |  Architect (32)  |  Brick (20)  |  Build (211)  |  Care (203)  |  Country (269)  |  Design (203)  |  Distance (171)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find Out (25)  |  Generation (256)  |  Goal (155)  |  Headlong (2)  |  Hurry (16)  |  Invent (57)  |  Inventor (79)  |  King (39)  |  Man-Made (10)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Next (238)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Pace (18)  |  President (36)  |  Producer (4)  |  Progress (492)  |  Responsible (19)  |  Result (700)  |  Structure (365)  |  Synonymous (2)  |  Throw (45)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  United Kingdom (2)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

[Richard Drew] created a greenhouse environment—a skunkworks—where we could do anything, try anything. When you’re an oddball in a permissive environment, very often things turn out well.
As quoted in W. James McNerney Jr., A Century of Innovation: The 3M Story (2002), 26.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Richard G. Drew (6)  |  Greenhouse (2)  |  Invention (400)  |  Oddball (2)  |  Research (753)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Try (296)  |  Turn (454)  |  Turn Out (9)

[When I was a child] I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and I was a street kid. … [T]here was one aspect of that environment that, for some reason, struck me as different, and that was the stars. … I could tell they were lights in the sky, but that wasn’t an explanation. I mean, what were they? Little electric bulbs on long black wires, so you couldn’t see what they were held up by? What were they? … My mother said to me, "Look, we’ve just got you a library card … get out a book and find the answer.” … It was in there. It was stunning. The answer was that the Sun was a star, except very far away. … The dazzling idea of a universe vast beyond imagining swept over me. … I sensed awe.
In 'Wonder and Skepticism', Skeptical Enquirer (Jan-Feb 1995), 19, No. 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Awe (43)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Biography (254)  |  Book (413)  |  Brooklyn (3)  |  Bulb (10)  |  Child (333)  |  Dazzling (13)  |  Different (595)  |  Electric (76)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Far (158)  |  Find (1014)  |  Idea (881)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Kid (18)  |  Library (53)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mother (116)  |  New (1273)  |  New York (17)  |  Reason (766)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sky (174)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Street (25)  |  Stunning (4)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tell (344)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  Vastness (15)  |  Wire (36)

[About reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, age 14, in the back seat of his parents' sedan. I almost threw up. I got physically ill when I learned that ospreys and peregrine falcons weren't raising chicks because of what people were spraying on bugs at their farms and lawns. This was the first time I learned that humans could impact the environment with chemicals. [That a corporation would create a product that didn't operate as advertised] was shocking in a way we weren't inured to.
As quoted by Eliza Griswold, in 'The Wild Life of “Silent Spring”', New York Times (23 Sep 2012), Magazine 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Back (395)  |  Bug (10)  |  Rachel Carson (49)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chick (5)  |  Corporation (6)  |  Create (245)  |  Falcon (2)  |  Farm (28)  |  First (1302)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impact (45)  |  Lawn (5)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Parent (80)  |  People (1031)  |  Product (166)  |  Reading (136)  |  Shock (38)  |  Sick (83)  |  Spring (140)  |  Time (1911)  |  Way (1214)

Dogbert (advice to Boss): Every credible scientist on earth says your products harm the environment. I recommend paying weasels to write articles casting doubt on the data. Then eat the wrong kind of foods and hope you die before the earth does.
Dilbert cartoon strip (30 Oct 2007).
Science quotes on:  |  Advice (57)  |  Article (22)  |  Casting (10)  |  Consulting (13)  |  Credibility (4)  |  Data (162)  |  Death (406)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eat (108)  |  Food (213)  |  Harm (43)  |  Hope (321)  |  Kind (564)  |  Product (166)  |  Recommend (27)  |  Recommendation (12)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)  |  Wrong (246)

Interviewer: Is there any science that’s not wrapped in politics?
Seitz: Oh, there are some things. The disappearance of the frog—as you know, the frog is dying worldwide. … I don’t think that has had any political repercussions other than the fact that that is happening.
Interview transcript on PBS Frontline website (24 Apr 2007). Seitz was a leading skeptic, dismissive of climate change.
Science quotes on:  |  Disappearance (28)  |  Dying (2)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Frog (44)  |  Happening (59)  |  Know (1538)  |  Other (2233)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Repercussion (5)  |  Science And Politics (16)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Worldwide (19)

Les Leucocytes Et L'esprit De Sacrifice. — Il semble, d'après les recherches de De Bruyne (Phagocytose, 1895) et de ceux qui le citent, que les leucocytes des Lamellibranches — probablement lorsqu'ils ont phagocyté, qu'ils se sont chargés de résidus et de déchets, qu'ils ont, en un mot, accompli leur rôle et bien fait leur devoir — sortent du corps de l'animal et vont mourir dans le milieu ambiant. Ils se sacrifient. Après avoir si bien servi l'organisme par leur activité, ils le servent encore par leur mort en faisant place aux cellules nouvelles, plus jeunes.
N'est-ce pas la parfaite image du désintéressement le plus noble, et n'y a-t-il point là un exemple et un modèle? Il faut s'en inspirer: comme eux, nous sommes les unités d'un grand corps social; comme eux, nous pouvons le servir et envisager la mort avec sérénité, en subordonnant notre conscience individuelle à la conscience collective.
(30 Jan 1896)
Leukocytes and The Spirit Of Sacrifice. - It seems, according to research by De Bruyne (Phagocytosis, 1885) and those who quote it, that leukocytes of Lamellibranches [bivalves] - likely when they have phagocytized [ingested bacteria], as they become residues and waste, they have, in short, performed their role well and done their duty - leave the body of the animal and will die in the environment. They sacrifice themselves. Having so well served the body by their activities, they still serve in their death by making room for new younger cells.
Isn't this the perfect image of the noblest selflessness, and thereby presents an example and a model? It should be inspiring: like them, we are the units of a great social body, like them, we can serve and contemplate death with equanimity, subordinating our individual consciousness to collective consciousness.
In Recueil d'Œuvres de Léo Errera: Botanique Générale (1908), 194. Google translation by Webmaster. Please give feedback if you can improve it.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Activity (218)  |  Animal (651)  |  Bacteria (50)  |  Become (821)  |  Bivalve (2)  |  Body (557)  |  Cell (146)  |  Collective (24)  |  Conscience (52)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Death (406)  |  Duty (71)  |  Equanimity (5)  |  Example (98)  |  Great (1610)  |  Image (97)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Leaving (10)  |  Leukocyte (2)  |  Making (300)  |  Model (106)  |  New (1273)  |  Noble (93)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Perform (123)  |  Performance (51)  |  Plus (43)  |  Point (584)  |  Present (630)  |  Quote (46)  |  Research (753)  |  Residue (9)  |  Role (86)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Service (110)  |  Short (200)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Still (614)  |  Subordination (5)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Waste (109)  |  Will (2350)  |  Younger (21)

Question: If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?
Goodall: Well, in some ways we're not successful at all. We're destroying our home. That's not a bit successful.
In Virginia Morell, 'The Discover Interview: Jane Goodall', Discover (Mar 2007), 28, No. 3, 52.
Science quotes on:  |  Chimpanzee (14)  |  Destroying (3)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Question (649)  |  Success (327)  |  Successful (134)

The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that which assured the maintenance, with the internal environment, of all the conditions necessary for the life of the elements.
Lectures on the Phenomena of Life Common to Animals and Plants (1878), trans. Hebbel E. Hoff, Roger Guillemin and Lucienne Guillemin (1974), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Condition (362)  |  Constancy (12)  |  Element (322)  |  Free (239)  |  Internal (69)  |  Life (1870)  |  Maintenance (21)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Possible (560)

Wenige sind imstande, von den Vorurteilen der Umgebung abweichende Meinungen gelassen auszusprechen; die Meisten sind sogar unfähig, überhaupt zu solchen Meinungen zu gelangen.
Few people are able to express opinions that dissent from the prejudices of their social group. The majority are even incapable of forming such opinions at all.
Original German in Essays Presented to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (1954), 26. English text by Webmaster assisted by online translation tools.
Science quotes on:  |  Differ (88)  |  Express (192)  |  Forming (42)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Majority (68)  |  Opinion (291)  |  People (1031)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Social (261)

A bewildering assortment of (mostly microscopic) life-forms has been found thriving in what were once thought to be uninhabitable regions of our planet. These hardy creatures have turned up in deep, hot underground rocks, around scalding volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean, in the desiccated, super-cold Dry Valleys of Antarctica, in places of high acid, alkaline, and salt content, and below many meters of polar ice. ... Some deep-dwelling, heat-loving microbes, genetic studies suggest, are among the oldest species known, hinting that not only can life thrive indefinitely in what appear to us totally alien environments, it may actually originate in such places.
In Life Everywhere: the Maverick Science of Astrobiology (2002), xi.
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Alien (35)  |  Alkali (6)  |  Antarctica (8)  |  Assortment (5)  |  Bewilderment (8)  |  Cold (115)  |  Creature (242)  |  Deep (241)  |  Dry (65)  |  Form (976)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Heat (180)  |  High (370)  |  Hot (63)  |  Ice (58)  |  Known (453)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life-Form (6)  |  Microbe (30)  |  Microbes (14)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Origin (250)  |  Originate (39)  |  Planet (402)  |  Polar (13)  |  Rock (176)  |  Salt (48)  |  Species (435)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thrive (22)  |  Thriving (2)  |  Turn (454)  |  Underground (12)  |  Valley (37)  |  Vent (2)  |  Volcano (46)

A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between ‘external’ forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and ‘internal’ forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development–what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called ‘laws of form.’
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Balance (82)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Call (781)  |  Complete (209)  |  Constraint (13)  |  Darwinian (10)  |  Development (441)  |  Downgrade (2)  |  Emphasis (18)  |  Equally (129)  |  Err (5)  |  Evolution (635)  |  External (62)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Ignoring (11)  |  Impose (22)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Internal (69)  |  Law (913)  |  Limit (294)  |  Local (25)  |  Must (1525)  |  Old (499)  |  Place (192)  |  Power (771)  |  Practically (10)  |  Represent (157)  |  Selection (130)  |  Structure (365)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Western (45)

A frequent misunderstanding of my vision of Gaia is that I champion complacence, that I claim feedback will always protect the environment from any serious harm that humans might do. It is sometimes more crudely put as “Lovelock’s Gaia gives industry the green light to pollute at will.” The truth is almost diametrically opposite. Gaia, as I see her, is no doting mother tolerant of misdemeanors, nor is she some fragile and delicate damsel in danger from brutal mankind. She is stern and tough, always keeping the world warm and comfortable for those who obey the rules, but ruthless in her destruction of those who transgress. Her unconscious goal is a planet fit for life. If humans stand in the way of this, we shall be eliminated with as little pity as would be shown by the micro-brain of an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile in full flight to its target.
In The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (1999), 199.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Brutal (3)  |  Champion (6)  |  Claim (154)  |  Comfortable (13)  |  Complacent (7)  |  Danger (127)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Diametrical (2)  |  Dote (2)  |  Eliminate (25)  |  Feedback (10)  |  Fit (139)  |  Flight (101)  |  Fragile (26)  |  Frequent (26)  |  Gaia (15)  |  Goal (155)  |  Harm (43)  |  Human (1512)  |  Industry (159)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Misdemeanor (2)  |  Misunderstanding (13)  |  Mother (116)  |  Nuclear Missile (2)  |  Obey (46)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Pity (16)  |  Planet (402)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Protect (65)  |  Rule (307)  |  Ruthless (12)  |  Serious (98)  |  Show (353)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stern (6)  |  Target (13)  |  Tolerant (4)  |  Tough (22)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unconscious (24)  |  Vision (127)  |  Warm (74)  |  World (1850)

A lot of people ask, “Do you think humans are parasites?” It’s an interesting idea and one worth thinking about. People casually refer to humanity as a virus spreading across the earth. In fact, we do look like some strange kind of bio-film spreading across the landscape. A good metaphor? If the biosphere is our host, we do use it up for our own benefit. We do manipulate it. We alter the flows and fluxes of elements like carbon and nitrogen to benefit ourselves—often at the expense of the biosphere as a whole. If you look at how coral reefs or tropical forests are faring these days, you’ll notice that our host is not doing that well right now. Parasites are very sophisticated; parasites are highly evolved; parasites are very successful, as reflected in their diversity. Humans are not very good parasites. Successful parasites do a very good job of balancing—using up their hosts and keeping them alive. It’s all a question of tuning the adaptation to your particular host. In our case, we have only one host, so we have to be particularly careful.
Talk at Columbia University, 'The Power of Parasites'.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Alive (97)  |  Alter (64)  |  Ask (420)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Biosphere (14)  |  Carbon (68)  |  Carbon Cycle (5)  |  Coral Reef (15)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Element (322)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Flow (89)  |  Forest (161)  |  Good (906)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Idea (881)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Job (86)  |  Kind (564)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Look (584)  |  Lot (151)  |  Manipulate (11)  |  Metaphor (37)  |  Nitrogen (32)  |  Nitrogen Cycle (2)  |  Notice (81)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Parasite (33)  |  People (1031)  |  Question (649)  |  Rain Forest (34)  |  Right (473)  |  Strange (160)  |  Successful (134)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Use (771)  |  Virus (32)  |  Whole (756)  |  Worth (172)

A terrible wilderness of mountainous country constitutes the immediate environment of St. Paul’s. It is a precipitous cliff into the abyss, a gate of hell, more horrible than the fantasy of Dante could express it.
St. Paul’s Monastery is located 300-km southeast of Cairo, on the southern edge of a desert mountain range, adjacent to the Gulf of Suez
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Cliff (22)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Country (269)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Express (192)  |  Fantasy (15)  |  Gate (33)  |  Immediate (98)  |  More (2558)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Wilderness (57)

Aesthetic considerations are a matter of luxury and indulgence rather than of necessity.
A New Jersey Court decision confirming an existing billboard to be exempted from retrospective application of a city ordinance restricting billboard location. From 'City of Passaic v. Paterson Bill Posting, Etc., Co. (Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey, November 20, 1905)', The New Jersey Law Journal (1906), 29, 244. The court wrote that the effect of the ordinance was to take private property without compensation, and could not be justified as an exercise of the police power because public safety was not unreasonably compromised by the billboard, and thus the ordinance exceeded necessity.
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Billboard (2)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Indulgence (6)  |  Law (913)  |  Luxury (21)  |  Matter (821)  |  Necessity (197)

After having produced aquatic animals of all ranks and having caused extensive variations in them by the different environments provided by the waters, nature led them little by little to the habit of living in the air, first by the water's edge and afterwards on all the dry parts of the globe. These animals have in course of time been profoundly altered by such novel conditions; which so greatly influenced their habits and organs that the regular gradation which they should have exhibited in complexity of organisation is often scarcely recognisable.
Hydrogéologie (1802), trans. A. V. Carozzi (1964), 69-70.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Alter (64)  |  Altered (32)  |  Animal (651)  |  Aquatic (5)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Condition (362)  |  Course (413)  |  Different (595)  |  Dry (65)  |  Edge (51)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Extensive (34)  |  First (1302)  |  Gradation (17)  |  Habit (174)  |  Little (717)  |  Living (492)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Novel (35)  |  Organ (118)  |  Produced (187)  |  Rank (69)  |  Regular (48)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Time (1911)  |  Variation (93)  |  Water (503)

Alcmaeon maintains that the bond of health is the 'equal balance' of the powers, moist and dry, cold and hot, bitter and sweet, and the rest, while the 'supremacy' of one of them is the cause of disease; for the supremacy of either is destructive. Illness comes aboutdirectly through excess of heat or cold, indirectly through surfeit or deficiency of nourishment; and its centre is either the blood or the marrow or the brain. It sometimes arises in these centres from external causes, moisture of some sort or environment or exhaustion or hardship or similar causes. Health on the other hand is the proportionate admixture of the qualities.
About Alcmaeon of Croton. In Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1976) 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Arise (162)  |  Balance (82)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Blood (144)  |  Bond (46)  |  Brain (281)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cold (115)  |  Deficiency (15)  |  Disease (340)  |  Dry (65)  |  Excess (23)  |  Exhaustion (18)  |  Health (210)  |  Heat (180)  |  Hot (63)  |  Illness (35)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Moist (13)  |  Moisture (21)  |  Nourishment (26)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Rest (287)  |  Supremacy (4)  |  Sweet (40)  |  Through (846)

Although I must say that research problems I worked on were frequently the result of serendipity and often grew out of my interest in some species or some environment which I found to be particularly appealing—marine birds and tropical islands for example.
Bartholomew, April 1993, unpublished remarks when receiving the Miller Award from the Cooper Ornithological Society.
Science quotes on:  |  Appeal (46)  |  Bird (163)  |  Example (98)  |  Find (1014)  |  Frequently (21)  |  Grow (247)  |  Interest (416)  |  Island (49)  |  Marine (9)  |  Must (1525)  |  Often (109)  |  Particularly (21)  |  Problem (731)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Say (989)  |  Serendipity (17)  |  Species (435)  |  Tropical (9)  |  Work (1402)

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.
Time, July 2, 1956.
Science quotes on:  |  Chair (25)  |  City (87)  |  Consider (428)  |  Context (31)  |  Design (203)  |  House (143)  |  Large (398)  |  Next (238)  |  Plan (122)  |  Room (42)  |  Thing (1914)

Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment, but to change it. And that series of inventions, by which man from age to age has remade his environment, is a different kind of evolution—not biological, but cultural evolution. I call that brilliant sequence of cultural peaks The Ascent of Man. I use the word ascent with a precise meaning. Man is distinguished from other animals by his imaginative gifts. He makes plans, inventions, new discoveries, by putting different talents together; and his discoveries become more subtle and penetrating, as he learns to combine his talents in more complex and intimate ways. So the great discoveries of different ages and different cultures, in technique, in science, in the arts, express in their progression a richer and more intricate conjunction of human faculties, an ascending trellis of his gifts.
The Ascent of Man (1973), 19-20.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Age (509)  |  Animal (651)  |  Art (680)  |  Ascent Of Man (7)  |  Become (821)  |  Biological (137)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Call (781)  |  Change (639)  |  Combine (58)  |  Complex (202)  |  Conjunction (12)  |  Culture (157)  |  Different (595)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Express (192)  |  Fly (153)  |  Gift (105)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Invention (400)  |  Kind (564)  |  Learn (672)  |  Man (2252)  |  Meaning (244)  |  More (2558)  |  Multitude (50)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plan (122)  |  Possible (560)  |  Precise (71)  |  Progression (23)  |  Reason (766)  |  Sequence (68)  |  Series (153)  |  Subtlety (19)  |  Swim (32)  |  Talent (99)  |  Technique (84)  |  Together (392)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Word (650)

An organism is involved with the environment to which it is not only adapted but which is adapted to it as well.
In A.V. Lapo, 'Problemy biogeokhimii' (“Problems of Biogeochemistry”), Works of the Biogeochemical Laboratory (1980), 16, 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Involved (90)  |  Organism (231)

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed,—chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man’s life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees—tens of centuries old—that have been destroyed.
John Muir
In 'The American Forests', Atlantic Monthly (Aug 1897), Vol. 80, 157.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Backbone (12)  |  Bark (19)  |  Branch (155)  |  Branching (10)  |  Chase (14)  |  Clear-Cut (10)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Dollar (22)  |  Down (455)  |  Fell (2)  |  Fool (121)  |  Forest (161)  |  Fun (42)  |  Hide (70)  |  Horn (18)  |  Hunt (32)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Magnificence (14)  |  Magnificent (46)  |  Man (2252)  |  Noble (93)  |  Old (499)  |  Plant (320)  |  Primeval (15)  |  Run (158)  |  Still (614)  |  Tree (269)

As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life—a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. [On the effect of chemical insecticides and fertilizers.]
In Silent Spring, (1962), 297.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Back (395)  |  Capable (174)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Crude (32)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Effect (414)  |  Fabric (27)  |  Fertilizer (13)  |  Insecticide (5)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Striking (48)  |  Tough (22)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  Way (1214)  |  Weapon (98)

As long as museums and universities send out expeditions to bring to light new forms of living and extinct animals and new data illustrating the interrelations of organisms and their environments, as long as anatomists desire a broad comparative basis human for anatomy, as long as even a few students feel a strong curiosity to learn about the course of evolution and relationships of animals, the old problems of taxonomy, phylogeny and evolution will gradually reassert themselves even in competition with brilliant and highly fruitful laboratory studies in cytology, genetics and physiological chemistry.
'Genetics Versus Paleontology', The American Naturalist, 1917, 51, 623.
Science quotes on:  |  Anatomist (24)  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Animal (651)  |  Basis (180)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Competition (45)  |  Course (413)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Cytology (7)  |  Data (162)  |  Desire (212)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Expedition (9)  |  Extinct (25)  |  Feel (371)  |  Form (976)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Human (1512)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Learn (672)  |  Light (635)  |  Living (492)  |  Long (778)  |  Museum (40)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Organism (231)  |  Paleontologist (19)  |  Phylogeny (10)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Problem (731)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Strong (182)  |  Student (317)  |  Taxonomy (19)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Will (2350)

Behavioral avoidance, not physiological adaptations, is an organism’s primary response to an environmental challenge. This point is elementary, but it is by no means trivial.
From 'Interspecific comparison as a tool for ecological physiologists', collected in M.E. Feder, A.F. Bennett, W.W. Burggren, and R.B. Huey, (eds.), New Directions in Ecological Physiology (1987), 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Avoidance (11)  |  Behavioral (6)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Organism (231)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Point (584)  |  Primary (82)  |  Response (56)  |  Trivial (59)

Believe me, this planet has put up with much worse than us. It’s been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, solar flares, sun-spots, magnetic storms, pole reversals, planetary floods, worldwide fires, tidal waves, wind and water erosion, cosmic rays, ice ages, and hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets, asteroids, and meteors. And people think a few plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?
In Napalm and Silly Putty (2002), 97.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Aluminum (15)  |  Asteroid (19)  |  Bombardment (3)  |  Comet (65)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Cosmic Ray (7)  |  Difference (355)  |  Earthquake (37)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flood (52)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Ice (58)  |  Ice Age (10)  |  Magnetic (44)  |  Meteor (19)  |  People (1031)  |  Planet (402)  |  Planetary (29)  |  Plastic (30)  |  Plastic Bag (2)  |  Plate Tectonics (22)  |  Pole (49)  |  Ray (115)  |  Solar Flare (2)  |  Storm (56)  |  Storms (18)  |  Sun (407)  |  Sunspot (5)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Tidal Wave (2)  |  Volcano (46)  |  Water (503)  |  Wave (112)  |  Wind (141)  |  Worldwide (19)  |  Worse (25)  |  Year (963)

Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it. Life in a local site struck down by a passing storm springs back quickly: opportunistic species rush in to fill the spaces. They entrain the succession that circles back to something resembling the original state of the environment.
In 'Storm Over the Amazon', The Diversity of Life (1992), 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biological Diversity (5)  |  Circle (117)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Down (455)  |  Fill (67)  |  Key (56)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Local (25)  |  Maintenance (21)  |  Original (61)  |  Passing (76)  |  Quickly (21)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Rush (18)  |  Site (19)  |  Something (718)  |  Space (523)  |  Species (435)  |  Spring (140)  |  State (505)  |  Storm (56)  |  Strike (72)  |  Succession (80)  |  World (1850)

Biology is a science of three dimensions. The first is the study of each species across all levels of biological organization, molecule to cell to organism to population to ecosystem. The second dimension is the diversity of all species in the biosphere. The third dimension is the history of each species in turn, comprising both its genetic evolution and the environmental change that drove the evolution. Biology, by growing in all three dimensions, is progressing toward unification and will continue to do so.
In 'Systematics and the Future of Biology', Systematics and the Origin of Species: on Ernst Mayr's 100th anniversary, Volume 102, Issues 22-26 (2005), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Biosphere (14)  |  Both (496)  |  Cell (146)  |  Change (639)  |  Continue (179)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Do (1905)  |  Ecosystem (33)  |  Evolution (635)  |  First (1302)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Growing (99)  |  Growth (200)  |  History (716)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Organism (231)  |  Organization (120)  |  Population (115)  |  Progress (492)  |  Species (435)  |  Study (701)  |  Turn (454)  |  Unification (11)  |  Will (2350)

Birds ... are sensitive indicators of the environment, a sort of “ecological litmus paper,” ... The observation and recording of bird populations over time lead inevitably to environmental awareness and can signal impending changes.
In Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (2008), 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Awareness (42)  |  Bird (163)  |  Change (639)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Impending (5)  |  Indicator (6)  |  Lead (391)  |  Observation (593)  |  Paper (192)  |  Population (115)  |  Recording (13)  |  Sensitive (15)  |  Signal (29)  |  Sort (50)  |  Time (1911)

Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life. It’s akin to using a bulldozer to catch a butterfly, destroying a whole ecosystem for the sake of a few pounds of protein. We wouldn’t do this on land, so why do it in the oceans?
In 'Can We Stop Killing Our Oceans Now, Please?', Huffington Post (14 Aug 2013).
Science quotes on:  |  Bottom (36)  |  Bulldozer (6)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Catch (34)  |  Damage (38)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Do (1905)  |  Ecosystem (33)  |  Ghastly (5)  |  Land (131)  |  Life (1870)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Pound (15)  |  Process (439)  |  Protein (56)  |  Sake (61)  |  Sea (326)  |  Support (151)  |  Trawling (6)  |  Untold (6)  |  Whole (756)  |  Why (491)

But of all environments, that produced by man’s complex technology is perhaps the most unstable and rickety. In its present form, our society is not two centuries old, and a few nuclear bombs will do it in.
To be sure, evolution works over long periods of time and two centuries is far from sufficient to breed Homo technikos… .
The destruction of our technological society in a fit of nuclear peevishness would become disastrous even if there were many millions of immediate survivors.
The environment toward which they were fitted would be gone, and Darwin’s demon would wipe them out remorselessly and without a backward glance.
Asimov on Physics (1976), 151. Also in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 181.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Backward (10)  |  Become (821)  |  Breed (26)  |  Century (319)  |  Complex (202)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Demon (8)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Do (1905)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fit (139)  |  Form (976)  |  Glance (36)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Old (499)  |  Period (200)  |  Present (630)  |  Produced (187)  |  Remorse (9)  |  Rickety (2)  |  Society (350)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Survivor (2)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Unstable (9)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

Butterflies may be better indicators of the health of our environment than birds.
In Roger Tory Peterson’s Dozen Birding Hot Spots (1976), 202.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Bird (163)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Health (210)  |  Indicator (6)

City after city, state after state, had essentially failed in their efforts to protect their air and their water, the land, the health of their citizens. By 1970, our city’ skylines were so polluted that in many places it was all but impossible to see from one city skyscraper to another. … We had rivers that were fouled with raw sewage and toxic chemicals. One actually caught on fire. There was a very famous photograph from my teenage years of the Cuyahoga River burning. In fact, it was memorialized in a song at the time.
In 'Environmental Protection: Meeting the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century', Harvard Environmental Law Review (2001), 25, 329, 330-331. [In fact, the Cuyahoga River had caught fire several times over a number of decades, and there had been fires on other rivers. Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Air Pollution (13)  |  Burning (49)  |  Chemical (303)  |  City (87)  |  Cuyahoga River (3)  |  Failure (176)  |  Fire (203)  |  Health (210)  |  Memorial (4)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Protection (41)  |  River (140)  |  Sewage (9)  |  Sky (174)  |  Skyscraper (9)  |  Song (41)  |  State (505)  |  Toxic (3)  |  Water Pollution (17)

Civilization is in no immediate danger of running out of energy or even just out of oil. But we are running out of environment—that is, out of the capacity of the environment to absorb energy's impacts without risk of intolerable disruption—and our heavy dependence on oil in particular entails not only environmental but also economic and political liabilities.
Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution will Transform an Industry, Change our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet (2003).
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Danger (127)  |  Dependence (46)  |  Economic (84)  |  Energy (373)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Impact (45)  |  Oil (67)  |  Political (124)  |  Risk (68)  |  Running (61)

Clean air, clean water, open spaces—these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.
In State of the Union Address (22 Jan 1970).
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Air Pollution (13)  |  America (143)  |  Birthright (5)  |  Water Pollution (17)

Clearly, we have compiled a record of serious failures in recent technological encounters with the environment. In each case, the new technology was brought into use before the ultimate hazards were known. We have been quick to reap the benefits and slow to comprehend the costs.
In 'Frail Reeds in a Harsh World', Natural History Journal of the American Museum of Natural History (Feb 1969), 79, No. 2, 44.
Science quotes on:  |  Benefit (123)  |  Compile (2)  |  Comprehend (44)  |  Cost (94)  |  Encounter (23)  |  Failure (176)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Known (453)  |  New (1273)  |  Reap (19)  |  Recent (78)  |  Record (161)  |  Serious (98)  |  Slow (108)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Use (771)

Clinical ecology [is] a new branch of medicine aimed at helping people made sick by a failure to adapt to facets of our modern, polluted environment. Adverse reactions to processed foods and their chemical contaminants, and to indoor and outdoor air pollution with petrochemicals, are becoming more and more widespread and so far these reactions are being misdiagnosed by mainstream medical practitioners and so are not treated effectively.
Quoted in article 'Richard Mackarness', Contemporary Authors Online (2002).
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Adverse (3)  |  Aim (175)  |  Air (366)  |  Air Pollution (13)  |  Allergy (2)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Being (1276)  |  Branch (155)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Clinical (18)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Effectiveness (13)  |  Facet (9)  |  Failure (176)  |  Food (213)  |  Illness (35)  |  Mainstream (4)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  People (1031)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Practitioner (21)  |  Process (439)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Sick (83)  |  Sickness (26)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Widespread (23)

Complex organisms cannot be construed as the sum of their genes, nor do genes alone build particular items of anatomy or behavior by them selves. Most genes influence several aspects of anatomy and behavior–as they operate through complex interactions with other genes and their products, and with environmental factors both within and outside the developing organism. We fall into a deep error, not just a harmful oversimplification, when we speak of genes ‘for’ particular items of anatomy or behavior.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Both (496)  |  Build (211)  |  Complex (202)  |  Construe (2)  |  Deep (241)  |  Develop (278)  |  Do (1905)  |  Error (339)  |  Factor (47)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gene (105)  |  Harmful (13)  |  Influence (231)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Item (4)  |  Most (1728)  |  Operate (19)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Outside (141)  |  Particular (80)  |  Product (166)  |  Self (268)  |  Several (33)  |  Speak (240)  |  Sum (103)  |  Through (846)

Conservation of energy also protects our environment.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Conservation (187)  |  Conservation Of Energy (30)  |  Energy (373)  |  Protect (65)

Considering the difficulties represented by the lack of water, by extremes of temperature, by the full force of gravity unmitigated by the buoyancy of water, it must be understood that the spread to land of life forms that evolved to meet the conditions of the ocean represented the greatest single victory won by life over the inanimate environment.
(1965). In Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 194.
Science quotes on:  |  Buoyancy (7)  |  Condition (362)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Inanimate (18)  |  Lack (127)  |  Land (131)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life Form (6)  |  Must (1525)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Represent (157)  |  Single (365)  |  Spread (86)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understood (155)  |  Victory (40)  |  Water (503)

Constant, or free, life is the third form of life; it belongs to the most highly organized animals. In it, life is not suspended in any circumstance, it unrolls along a constant course, apparently indifferent to the variations in the cosmic environment, or to the changes in the material conditions that surround the animal. Organs, apparatus, and tissues function in an apparently uniform manner, without their activity undergoing those considerable variations exhibited by animals with an oscillating life. This because in reality the internal environment that envelops the organs, the tissues, and the elements of the tissues does not change; the variations in the atmosphere stop there, so that it is true to say that physical conditions of the environment are constant in the higher animals; it is enveloped in an invariable medium, which acts as an atmosphere of its own in the constantly changing cosmic environment. It is an organism that has placed itself in a hot-house. Thus the perpetual changes in the cosmic environment do not touch it; it is not chained to them, it is free and independent.
Lectures on the Phenomena of Life Common to Animals and Plants (1878), trans. Hebbel E. Hoff, Roger Guillemin and Lucienne Guillemin (1974), 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Activity (218)  |  Animal (651)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Belong (168)  |  Body (557)  |  Change (639)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Condition (362)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Constant (148)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Course (413)  |  Do (1905)  |  Element (322)  |  Form (976)  |  Free (239)  |  Function (235)  |  Hot (63)  |  House (143)  |  Internal (69)  |  Life (1870)  |  Material (366)  |  Most (1728)  |  Organ (118)  |  Organism (231)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Physical (518)  |  Reality (274)  |  Say (989)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Touch (146)  |  Variation (93)

Create a vision and never let the environment, other people’s beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Conventional (31)  |  Conventional Wisdom (3)  |  Create (245)  |  Decision (98)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Let (64)  |  Limit (294)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  People (1031)  |  Shape (77)  |  Vision (127)  |  Wisdom (235)

Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Barn (6)  |  Climb (39)  |  Connection (171)  |  Create (245)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Discover (571)  |  Erect (6)  |  Exist (458)  |  Form (976)  |  Gain (146)  |  Mastery (36)  |  Mountain (202)  |  New (1273)  |  Obstacle (42)  |  Old (499)  |  Point (584)  |  Skyscraper (9)  |  Start (237)  |  Starting Point (16)  |  Still (614)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wide (97)

Darwinian fitness is compounded of a mutual relationship between the organism and the environment. Of this, fitness of environment is quite as essential a component as the fitness which arises in the process of organic evolution; and in fundamental characteristics the actual environment is the fittest possible abode of life.
His thesis for the book stated at the beginning of The Fitness of the Environment (1913), Preface, v.
Science quotes on:  |  Abode (2)  |  Actual (118)  |  Arise (162)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Component (51)  |  Compound (117)  |  Darwinian (10)  |  Essential (210)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fitness (9)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organism (231)  |  Possible (560)  |  Process (439)  |  Relationship (114)

Darwinists are right to say that selection favours the organisms that leave alive the most progeny, but vigorous growth takes place within a constrained space where feedback from the environment allows the emergence of natural self-regulation.
In The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity (2006, 2007), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Allow (51)  |  Constrain (11)  |  Emergence (35)  |  Favor (69)  |  Feedback (10)  |  Growth (200)  |  Leave (138)  |  Natural (810)  |  Organism (231)  |  Place (192)  |  Progeny (16)  |  Right (473)  |  Selection (130)  |  Space (523)  |  Vigorous (21)

Despite the high long-term probability of extinction, every organism alive today, including every person reading this paper, is a link in an unbroken chain of parent-offspring relationships that extends back unbroken to the beginning of life on earth. Every living organism is a part of an enormously long success story—each of its direct ancestors has been sufficiently well adapted to its physical and biological environments to allow it to mature and reproduce successfully. Viewed thus, adaptation is not a trivial facet of natural history, but a biological attribute so central as to be inseparable from life itself.
In 'Integrative Biology: An Organismic Biologist’s Point of View', Integrative and Comparative Biology (2005), 45, 330.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Alive (97)  |  Allow (51)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Back (395)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Biological (137)  |  Central (81)  |  Chain (51)  |  Despite (7)  |  Direct (228)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enormously (4)  |  Extend (129)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Facet (9)  |  High (370)  |  History (716)  |  Include (93)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life On Earth (16)  |  Link (48)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Long (778)  |  Long-Term (11)  |  Mature (17)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Offspring (27)  |  Organism (231)  |  Paper (192)  |  Parent (80)  |  Part (235)  |  Person (366)  |  Physical (518)  |  Probability (135)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Reproduce (12)  |  Story (122)  |  Success (327)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sufficiently (9)  |  Term (357)  |  Today (321)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Unbroken (10)  |  View (496)

Disease may be defined as “A change produced in living things in consequence of which they are no longer in harmony with their environment.”
In Disease and its Causes (1913), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Definition (238)  |  Disease (340)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Produced (187)  |  Thing (1914)

Do you realize we’ve got 250 million years of coal? But coal has got environmental hazards to it, but there’s—I’m convinced, and I know that we—technology can be developed so we can have zero-emissions coal-fired electricity plants.
Remarks at the Associated Builders and Contractors National Legislative Conference (8 Jun 2005). The White house corrected “250 million years” to “250 years” in a footnote to the printed record, 41 WCPD 956 in 'Administration of George W. Bush', 959.
Science quotes on:  |  Clean (52)  |  Coal (64)  |  Convince (43)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Million (124)  |  Money (178)  |  Plant (320)  |  Realize (157)  |  Technology (281)  |  Year (963)  |  Zero (38)

Each species has evolved a special set of solutions to the general problems that all organisms must face. By the fact of its existence, a species demonstrates that its members are able to carry out adequately a series of general functions. … These general functions offer a framework within which one can integrate one’s view of biology and focus one’s research. Such a view helps one to avoid becoming lost in a morass of unstructured detail—even though the ways in which different species perform these functions may differ widely. A few obvious examples will suffice. Organisms must remain functionally integrated. They must obtain materials from their environments, and process and release energy from these materials. … They must differentiate and grow, and they must reproduce. By focusing one’s questions on one or another of these obligatory and universal capacities, one can ensure that one’s research will not be trivial and that it will have some chance of achieving broad general applicability.
In 'Integrative Biology: An Organismic Biologist’s Point of View', Integrative and Comparative Biology (2005), 45, 331.
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (75)  |  Adequately (4)  |  Applicability (7)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Biology (232)  |  Broad (28)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Carry (130)  |  Chance (244)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Detail (150)  |  Differ (88)  |  Different (595)  |  Differentiate (19)  |  Energy (373)  |  Ensure (27)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Example (98)  |  Existence (481)  |  Face (214)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Focus (36)  |  Framework (33)  |  Function (235)  |  General (521)  |  Grow (247)  |  Help (116)  |  Integrate (8)  |  Integrated (10)  |  Lose (165)  |  Material (366)  |  Member (42)  |  Morass (2)  |  Must (1525)  |  Obligatory (3)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Offer (142)  |  Organism (231)  |  Perform (123)  |  Problem (731)  |  Process (439)  |  Question (649)  |  Release (31)  |  Remain (355)  |  Reproduce (12)  |  Research (753)  |  Series (153)  |  Set (400)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Special (188)  |  Species (435)  |  Suffice (7)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Universal (198)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)  |  Widely (9)  |  Will (2350)

Ecology and economics may unify toward a more sound use of environmental resources and … can translate into a change in paradigm regarding how humans view nature.
From interview (16 Jul 2009) on rorotoko.com about his book The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth (2009).
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Economics (44)  |  Human (1512)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Paradigm (16)  |  Resource (74)  |  Translate (21)  |  Unify (7)  |  View (496)

English science … isolates the reptile or mollusk it assumes to explain; whilst reptile or mollusk only exists in system, in relation.
In essay, 'Literature', English Traits (1856), collected in Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays First and Second Series (1883), 341.
Science quotes on:  |  Assume (43)  |  Ecology (81)  |  English (35)  |  Exist (458)  |  Explain (334)  |  Isolate (24)  |  Mollusk (6)  |  Relation (166)  |  Reptile (33)  |  System (545)  |  Web Of Life (9)

Environment counts for a great deal. A man’s particular idea may have no chance for growth or encouragement in his community. Real success is denied that man, until he finds a proper environment.
In Orison Swett Marden, 'Bell Telephone Talk: Hints on Success by Alexander G. Bell', How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves (1901), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Chance (244)  |  Community (111)  |  Count (107)  |  Deal (192)  |  Deny (71)  |  Encouragement (27)  |  Find (1014)  |  Great (1610)  |  Growth (200)  |  Idea (881)  |  Man (2252)  |  Proper (150)  |  Real (159)  |  Success (327)

Environmental extremists ... wouldn’t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird’s nest.
As quoted by Kathy Koch, 'Candidates Come Clean on Environmental Positions', in the Florida newspaper Lakeland Ledger (25 Oct 1980), 11A.
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Build (211)  |  Environmentalist (7)  |  Extremist (2)  |  House (143)  |  Look (584)  |  Nest (26)

Environmentally friendly cars will soon cease to be an option...they will become a necessity.
Speaking as the President of Toyota Motors, at the North American International Auto Show (2004).
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Car (75)  |  Cease (81)  |  Friendly (7)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Option (10)  |  Soon (187)  |  Will (2350)

Even bigger machines, entailing even bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.
In Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973).
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Big (55)  |  Concentration (29)  |  Demand (131)  |  Denial (20)  |  Do (1905)  |  Economic (84)  |  Entail (4)  |  Exert (40)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Machine (271)  |  New (1273)  |  Orientation (4)  |  Power (771)  |  Progress (492)  |  Represent (157)  |  Science And Technology (46)  |  Technology (281)  |  Violence (37)  |  Wisdom (235)

Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.
Silent Spring, Introduction.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Live (650)  |  Marine Biology (24)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Sea (326)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vast (188)

Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself and its seed. When we compare the (present) human population of the globe with… that of former times, we see that “chemical imperialism” has been… the main end to which human intelligence has been devoted.
In 'Man and his Environment', An Outline of Philosophy (1927), 27.
Science quotes on:  |  Chemical (303)  |  Compare (76)  |  Devote (45)  |  End (603)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imperialism (2)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Living (492)  |  Living Being (3)  |  Population (115)  |  Possible (560)  |  Seed (97)  |  Seek (218)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Transform (74)

Faced with the widespread destruction of the environment, people everywhere are coming to understand that we cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past … [A] new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge which rather than being downplayed, ought to be encouraged to develop into concrete programs and initiatives. (8 Dec 1989)
The Ecological Crisis: A Common Responsibility. Quoted in Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (2000), 262.
Science quotes on:  |  Awareness (42)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Being (1276)  |  Coming (114)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Continue (179)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Develop (278)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Good (906)  |  Initiative (17)  |  New (1273)  |  Past (355)  |  People (1031)  |  Understand (648)  |  Use (771)  |  Widespread (23)

Five centuries ago the printing press sparked a radical reshaping of the nature of education. By bringing a master’s words to those who could not hear a master’s voice, the technology of printing dissolved the notion that education must be reserved for those with the means to hire personal tutors. Today we are approaching a new technological revolution, one whose impact on education may be as far-reaching as that of the printing press: the emergence of powerful computers that are sufficiently inexpensive to be used by students for learning, play and exploration. It is our hope that these powerful but simple tools for creating and exploring richly interactive environments will dissolve the barriers to the production of knowledge as the printing press dissolved the barriers to its transmission.
As co-author with A.A. diSessa, from 'Preface', Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics (1986), xiii.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Barrier (34)  |  Bring (95)  |  Century (319)  |  Computer (131)  |  Create (245)  |  Dissolve (22)  |  Education (423)  |  Emergence (35)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Far-Reaching (9)  |  Hear (144)  |  Hire (7)  |  Hope (321)  |  Impact (45)  |  Inexpensive (2)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Master (182)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Notion (120)  |  Personal (75)  |  Play (116)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Print (20)  |  Printing (25)  |  Printing Press (5)  |  Production (190)  |  Radical (28)  |  Reserve (26)  |  Reshape (5)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Rich (66)  |  Simple (426)  |  Spark (32)  |  Student (317)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)  |  Today (321)  |  Tool (129)  |  Transmission (34)  |  Tutor (3)  |  Voice (54)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)

For the environmentalists, The Space Option is the ultimate environmental solution. For the Cornucopians, it is the technological fix that they are relying on. For the hard core space community, the obvious by-product would be the eventual exploration and settlement of the solar system. For most of humanity however, the ultimate benefit is having a realistic hope in a future with possibilities.... If our species does not soon embrace this unique opportunity with sufficient commitment, it may miss its one and only chance to do so. Humanity could soon be overwhelmed by one or more of the many challenges it now faces. The window of opportunity is closing as fast as the population is increasing. Our future will be either a Space Age or a Stone Age.
Arthur Woods and Marco Bernasconi
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Benefit (123)  |  By-Product (8)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Chance (244)  |  Close (77)  |  Commitment (28)  |  Community (111)  |  Core (20)  |  Do (1905)  |  Embrace (47)  |  Environmentalist (7)  |  Eventual (9)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Face (214)  |  Fast (49)  |  Fix (34)  |  Future (467)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hope (321)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Increase (225)  |  Miss (51)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Option (10)  |  Overwhelm (5)  |  Overwhelmed (6)  |  Population (115)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Product (166)  |  Realistic (6)  |  Rely (12)  |  Settlement (3)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Solution (282)  |  Soon (187)  |  Space (523)  |  Space Age (4)  |  Species (435)  |  Stone (168)  |  Stone Age (14)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  System (545)  |  Technological (62)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Unique (72)  |  Will (2350)  |  Window (59)

For the most part we humans live with the false impression of security and a feeling of being at home in a seemingly trustworthy physical and human environment. But when the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we are like shipwrecked people on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whither they are drifting. But once we fully accept this, life becomes easier and there is no longer any disappointment.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Course (413)  |  Disappointment (18)  |  Drift (14)  |  Easier (53)  |  Easy (213)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Expect (203)  |  False (105)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Fully (20)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impression (118)  |  Interrupt (6)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Miserable (8)  |  Most (1728)  |  Open (277)  |  Part (235)  |  People (1031)  |  Physical (518)  |  Plank (4)  |  Sea (326)  |  Security (51)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Shipwreck (8)  |  Trustworthy (14)  |  Whither (11)

For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go back to the very beginning of the human race.
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Back (395)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Must (1525)  |  Race (278)  |  Widespread (23)

From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment.
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919), 171.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Bound (120)  |  Civilization (220)  |  First (1302)  |  Last (425)  |  Physical (518)

Gaia is a thin spherical shell of matter that surrounds the incandescent interior; it begins where the crustal rocks meet the magma of the Earth’s hot interior, about 100 miles below the surface, and proceeds another 100 miles outwards through the ocean and air to the even hotter thermosphere at the edge of space. It includes the biosphere and is a dynamic physiological system that has kept our planet fit for life for over three billion years. I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life. Its goals are not set points but adjustable for whatever is the current environment and adaptable to whatever forms of life it carries.
In The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity (2006, 2007), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptable (2)  |  Adjustable (2)  |  Air (366)  |  Appear (122)  |  Begin (275)  |  Below (26)  |  Billion (104)  |  Biosphere (14)  |  Call (781)  |  Carry (130)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Climate (102)  |  Comfortable (13)  |  Crust (43)  |  Current (122)  |  Dynamic (16)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Edge (51)  |  Fit (139)  |  Form (976)  |  Gaia (15)  |  Goal (155)  |  Hot (63)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Incandescent (7)  |  Include (93)  |  Interior (35)  |  Keep (104)  |  Life (1870)  |  Magma (4)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mile (43)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Planet (402)  |  Point (584)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Regulate (11)  |  Rock (176)  |  Set (400)  |  Shell (69)  |  Space (523)  |  Sphere (118)  |  State (505)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surround (33)  |  System (545)  |  Thin (18)  |  Unconscious (24)  |  Year (963)

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Aspect (129)  |  History (716)  |  Man (2252)  |  Migration (12)  |  Record (161)

How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvellous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium (death)? … It feeds upon negative entropy … Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.
In 'Organization Maintained by Extracting “Order” from the Environment', What is Life? : The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (1944), 74.
Science quotes on:  |  Consist (223)  |  Death (406)  |  Decay (59)  |  Delay (21)  |  Device (71)  |  Entropy (46)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Express (192)  |  High (370)  |  Level (69)  |  Living (492)  |  Low (86)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Marvellous (25)  |  Negative (66)  |  Orderliness (9)  |  Organism (231)  |  Stationary (11)  |  Suck (8)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theory (1015)

I am born into an environment–I know not whence I came nor whither I go nor who I am. This is my situation as yours, every single one of you. The fact that everyone always was in this same situation, and always will be, tells me nothing. Our burning question as to the whence and whither–all we can ourselves observe about it is the present environment. That is why we are eager to find out about it as much as we can. That is science, learning, knowledge; it is the true source of every spiritual endeavour of man. We try to find out as much as we can about the spatial and temporal surroundings of the place in which we find ourselves put by birth.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Birth (154)  |  Burn (99)  |  Burning (49)  |  Eager (17)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Find (1014)  |  Find Out (25)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observe (179)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Place (192)  |  Present (630)  |  Question (649)  |  Same (166)  |  Single (365)  |  Situation (117)  |  Source (101)  |  Spatial (10)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Surroundings (6)  |  Tell (344)  |  Temporal (4)  |  True (239)  |  Try (296)  |  Whither (11)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

I am mindful that scientific achievement is rooted in the past, is cultivated to full stature by many contemporaries and flourishes only in favorable environment. No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progress, and where the path is smooth progress is most rapid. In my own work this has been particularly true.
Nobel Prize banquet speech (29 Feb 1940)
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Alone (324)  |  Favorable (24)  |  Individual (420)  |  Most (1728)  |  Past (355)  |  Path (159)  |  Progress (492)  |  Root (121)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Single (365)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Stepping Stone (2)  |  Stone (168)  |  Work (1402)

I do not claim that intelligence, however defined, has no genetic basis–I regard it as trivially true, uninteresting, and unimportant that it does. The expression of any trait represents a complex interaction of heredity and environment ... a specific claim purporting to demonstrate a mean genetic deficiency in the intelligence of American blacks rests upon no new facts whatever and can cite no valid data in its support. It is just as likely that blacks have a genetic advantage over whites. And, either way, it doesn’t matter a damn. An individual can’t be judged by his group mean.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  American (56)  |  Basis (180)  |  Black (46)  |  Cite (8)  |  Claim (154)  |  Complex (202)  |  Damn (12)  |  Data (162)  |  Deficiency (15)  |  Define (53)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Do (1905)  |  Expression (181)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Group (83)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Individual (420)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Judge (114)  |  Likely (36)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Purport (3)  |  Regard (312)  |  Represent (157)  |  Rest (287)  |  Specific (98)  |  Support (151)  |  Trait (23)  |  True (239)  |  Unimportant (6)  |  Uninteresting (9)  |  Valid (12)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whatever (234)  |  White (132)

I don’t think America can just drill itself out of its current energy situation. We don’t need to destroy the environment to meet our energy needs. We need smart, comprehensive, common-sense approaches that balance the need to increase domestic energy supplies with the need to maximize energy efficiency.
Statement on New Long-Term Energy Solutions (22 Mar 2001). In Bill Adler (ed.), The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy (2011).
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Balance (82)  |  Common (447)  |  Common Sense (136)  |  Comprehensive (29)  |  Current (122)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Domestic (27)  |  Drill (12)  |  Efficiency (46)  |  Energy (373)  |  Energy Efficiency (7)  |  Increase (225)  |  Sense (785)  |  Situation (117)  |  Smart (33)  |  Supply (100)  |  Think (1122)

I feel a desperation to make people see what we are doing to the environment, what a mess we are making of our world. At this point, the more people I reach, the more I accomplish. … I miss Gombe and my wonderful years in the forest But if I were to go back to that, I wouldn’t feel I was doing what I should be doing.
Answering the question, “Why have you transferred your energies from animal research to activism?” From interview by Tamar Lewin, 'Wildlife to Tireless Crusader, See Jane Run', New York Times (20 Nov 2000), F35.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Back (395)  |  Desperation (6)  |  Doing (277)  |  Feel (371)  |  Forest (161)  |  Gombe (2)  |  Making (300)  |  Mess (14)  |  Miss (51)  |  Missing (21)  |  More (2558)  |  People (1031)  |  Point (584)  |  Reach (286)  |  See (1094)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

I feel the development of space should continue. It is of tremendous importance. … Along with this development of space, which is really a flowering of civilization toward the stars, you might say, we must protect the surface of the earth. That’s even more important. Our environment on the surface is where man lives.
In 'Reactions to Man’s Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions', The New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Civilization (220)  |  Continue (179)  |  Development (441)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Feel (371)  |  Flower (112)  |  Importance (299)  |  Important (229)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Protect (65)  |  Say (989)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surface Of The Earth (36)  |  Tremendous (29)

I ran into the gigantic and gigantically wasteful lumbering of great Sequoias, many of whose trunks were so huge they had to be blown apart before they could be handled. I resented then, and I still resent, the practice of making vine stakes hardly bigger than walking sticks out of these greatest of living things.
In Breaking New Ground (1947, 1998), 102-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Big (55)  |  Blow (45)  |  Giant (73)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Handle (29)  |  Huge (30)  |  Living (492)  |  Lumber (5)  |  Making (300)  |  Practice (212)  |  Redwood (8)  |  Resentment (6)  |  Sequoia (4)  |  Stake (20)  |  Stick (27)  |  Still (614)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tree (269)  |  Trunk (23)  |  Vine (4)  |  Walking (3)  |  Waste (109)

I recall my own emotions: I had just been initiated into the mysteries of the complex number. I remember my bewilderment: here were magnitudes patently impossible and yet susceptible of manipulations which lead to concrete results. It was a feeling of dissatisfaction, of restlessness, a desire to fill these illusory creatures, these empty symbols, with substance. Then I was taught to interpret these beings in a concrete geometrical way. There came then an immediate feeling of relief, as though I had solved an enigma, as though a ghost which had been causing me apprehension turned out to be no ghost at all, but a familiar part of my environment.
In Tobias Dantzig and Joseph Mazur (ed.), 'The Two Realities', Number: The Language of Science (1930, ed. by Joseph Mazur 2007), 254.
Science quotes on:  |  Apprehension (26)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bewilderment (8)  |  Cause (561)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complex Number (3)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Creature (242)  |  Desire (212)  |  Dissatisfaction (13)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Empty (82)  |  Enigma (16)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fill (67)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Illusory (2)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Initiate (13)  |  Interpret (25)  |  Lead (391)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Manipulation (19)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Number (710)  |  Patently (4)  |  Recall (11)  |  Relief (30)  |  Remember (189)  |  Restless (13)  |  Restlessness (8)  |  Result (700)  |  Solve (145)  |  Substance (253)  |  Susceptible (8)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Teach (299)  |  Turn (454)  |  Turn Out (9)  |  Way (1214)

I shall collect plants and fossils, and with the best of instruments make astronomic observations. Yet this is not the main purpose of my journey. I shall endeavor to find out how nature's forces act upon one another, and in what manner the geographic environment exerts its influence on animals and plants. In short, I must find out about the harmony in nature.
Letter to Karl Freiesleben (Jun 1799). In Helmut de Terra, Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander van Humboldt 1769-1859 (1955), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Animal (651)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Best (467)  |  Botany (63)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Exert (40)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Geographic (10)  |  Geography (39)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Influence (231)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Journey (48)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Paleontology (32)  |  Plant (320)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Short (200)

I thought existing zoo programmes were really not doing animals justice. They all looked like oddities, like bizarre stage things, when, really, in their own environment, they are wonderful answers to very complex questions.
Explaining his motivation for his earliest groundbreaking Zoo Quest nature TV series featuring on location filming. From interview with Alice Roberts, 'Attenborough: My Life on Earth', The Biologist (Aug 2015), 62, No. 4, 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Answer (389)  |  Bizarre (6)  |  Complex (202)  |  Doing (277)  |  Justice (40)  |  Look (584)  |  Oddity (4)  |  Program (57)  |  Question (649)  |  Stage (152)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  Zoo (9)

I used to get so depressed about the environment. … But I feel much better since I joined my Environmental Grief Counseling Group, which is a wonderful New Age approach to gaining the personal serenity you need in a world of melting ice caps, shrinking rain forests, and toxic lakes.
In 'Stop Beaching, Think Positive', Mother Jones Magazine (Oct 1988), 14, No. 8, 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Approach (112)  |  Better (493)  |  Depressed (3)  |  Feel (371)  |  Forest (161)  |  Grief (20)  |  Ice (58)  |  Join (32)  |  Lake (36)  |  Melting (6)  |  New (1273)  |  New Age (6)  |  Personal (75)  |  Rain (70)  |  Rain Forest (34)  |  Serenity (11)  |  Toxic (3)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  World (1850)

I want to turn women loose on the environmental crisis…. Nobody knows more about pollution when detergents back up in the sink.
In Unity, Freedom & Peace: A Blueprint for Tomorrow (1968), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Crisis (25)  |  Detergent (3)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Know (1538)  |  More (2558)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Sink (38)  |  Turn (454)  |  Want (504)  |  Woman (160)

I’m not sure what solutions we’ll find to deal with all our environmental problems, but I’m sure of this: They will be provided by industry; they will be products of technology. Where else can they come from?
Nation's Business (12 Jun 1988).
Science quotes on:  |  Deal (192)  |  Find (1014)  |  Industry (159)  |  Problem (731)  |  Product (166)  |  Provide (79)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Technology (281)  |  Will (2350)

I’ve been very involved in science literacy because it’s critically important in our world today. … As a public, we’re asked to vote on issues, we’re asked to accept explanations, we’re asked to figure out what to do with our own health care, and you can’t do that unless you have some level of science literacy. Science literacy isn’t about figuring out how to solve equations like E=MC². Rather, it’s about being able to read an article in the newspaper about the environment, about health care and figuring out how to vote on it. It’s about being able to prepare nutritious meals. It’s about being able to think your way through the day.
As quoted in 'Then & Now: Dr. Mae Jemison' (19 Jun 2005) on CNN web site.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Article (22)  |  Ask (420)  |  Being (1276)  |  Care (203)  |  Citizenship (9)  |  Do (1905)  |  Equation (138)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Figure (162)  |  Health (210)  |  Health Care (10)  |  Involved (90)  |  Literacy (10)  |  Meal (19)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Nutrition (25)  |  Read (308)  |  Science Literacy (6)  |  Solve (145)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Through (846)  |  Today (321)  |  Vote (16)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
In Rosemarie Jarski, Words From The Wise (2007), 269. [Contact webmaster if you know the primary print source.]
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Collapse (19)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Exist (458)  |  Insect (89)  |  Mankind (356)  |  State (505)  |  Thousand (340)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

If I were entering adulthood now instead of in the environment of fifty years ago, I would choose a career that kept me in touch with nature more than science. … Too few natural areas remain; both by intent and by indifference we have insulated ourselves from the wilderness that produced us.
In 'The Wisdom of Wilderness', Life (22 Dec 1967), 63, No. 25, 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Biography (254)  |  Both (496)  |  Career (86)  |  Choose (116)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Produced (187)  |  Remain (355)  |  Touch (146)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  Year (963)

If the Weismann idea triumphs, it will be in a sense a triumph of fatalism; for, according to it, while we may indefinitely improve the forces of our education and surroundings, and this civilizing nurture will improve the individuals of each generation, its actual effects will not be cumulative as regards the race itself, but only as regards the environment of the race; each new generation must start de novo, receiving no increment of the moral and intellectual advance made during the lifetime of its predecessors. It would follow that one deep, almost instinctive motive for a higher life would be removed if the race were only superficially benefited by its nurture, and the only possible channel of actual improvement were in the selection of the fittest chains of race plasma.
'The Present Problem of Heredity', The Atlantic Monthly (1891), 57, 363.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Actual (118)  |  Advance (298)  |  Advancement (63)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Chain (51)  |  Channel (23)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Cumulative (14)  |  Deep (241)  |  Education (423)  |  Effect (414)  |  Fatalism (2)  |  Fit (139)  |  Follow (389)  |  Force (497)  |  Generation (256)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Idea (881)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Increment (2)  |  Indefinitely (10)  |  Individual (420)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lifetime (40)  |  Moral (203)  |  Motive (62)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Nurture (17)  |  Plasma (8)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Predecessor (29)  |  Race (278)  |  Regard (312)  |  Removal (12)  |  Selection (130)  |  Sense (785)  |  Start (237)  |  Superficial (12)  |  Surrounding (13)  |  Triumph (76)  |   August Weismann, (11)  |  Will (2350)

If we are correct in understanding how evolution actually works, and provided we can survive the complications of war, environmental degradation, and possible contact with interstellar planetary travelers, we will look exactly the same as we do now. We won’t change at all. The species is now so widely dispersed that it is not going to evolve, except by gradualism.
In Pamela Weintraub, The Omni Interviews (1984), 75.
Science quotes on:  |  Alien (35)  |  Change (639)  |  Complication (30)  |  Contact (66)  |  Degradation (18)  |  Do (1905)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Gradual (30)  |  Interstellar (8)  |  Look (584)  |  Planetary (29)  |  Possible (560)  |  Species (435)  |  Survive (87)  |  Traveler (33)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

If you look into their [chimpanzees] eyes, you know you’re looking into a thinking mind. They teach us that we are not the only beings with personalities, minds capable of rational thought, altruism and a sense of humor. That leads to new respect for other animals, respect for the environment and respect for all life.
From interview by Tamar Lewin, 'Wildlife to Tireless Crusader, See Jane Run', New York Times (20 Nov 2000), F35.
Science quotes on:  |  Altruism (7)  |  Animal (651)  |  Being (1276)  |  Capability (44)  |  Capable (174)  |  Chimpanzee (14)  |  Eye (440)  |  Humor (10)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lead (391)  |  Life (1870)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  Mind (1377)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Personality (66)  |  Rational (95)  |  Respect (212)  |  Sense (785)  |  Teach (299)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)

If you poison the environment, the environment will poison you.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Poison (46)  |  Will (2350)

In fact, the history of North America has been perhaps more profoundly influenced by man's inheritance from his past homes than by the physical features of his present home.
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Fact (1257)  |  History (716)  |  Home (184)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Past (355)  |  Physical (518)  |  Present (630)

In its essence, the theory of natural selection is primarily an attempt to give an account of the probable mechanism of the origin of the adaptations of the organisms to their environment, and only secondarily an attempt to explain evolution at large. Some modern biologists seem to believe that the word 'adaptation' has teleological connotations, and should therefore be expunged from the scientific lexicon. With this we must emphatically disagree. That adaptations exist is so evident as to be almost a truism, although this need not mean that ours is the best of all possible worlds. A biologist has no right to close his eyes to the fact that the precarious balance between a living being and its environment must be preserved by some mechanism or mechanisms if life is to endure.
Genetics and Origin of Species (1937), 150.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Balance (82)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Emphatically (8)  |  Essence (85)  |  Evident (92)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Exist (458)  |  Explain (334)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Large (398)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Modern (402)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Organism (231)  |  Origin (250)  |  Possible (560)  |  Right (473)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Selection (130)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

In order to survive, an animal must be born into a favoring or at least tolerant environment. Similarly, in order to achieve preservation and recognition, a specimen of fossil man must be discovered in intelligence, attested by scientific knowledge, and interpreted by evolutionary experience. These rigorous prerequisites have undoubtedly caused many still-births in human palaeontology and are partly responsible for the high infant mortality of discoveries of geologically ancient man.
Apes, Men and Morons (1938), 106.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Animal (651)  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Birth (154)  |  Discover (571)  |  Excavation (8)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fossil (143)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Infant (26)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Paleontologist (19)  |  Prerequisite (9)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Specimen (32)  |  Still (614)  |  Survive (87)

In our daily lives, we enjoy the pervasive benefits of long-lived robotic spacecraft that provide high-capacity worldwide telecommunications; reconnaissance of Earth’s solid surface and oceans, with far-reaching cultural and environmental implications; much-improved weather and climatic forecasts; improved knowledge about the terrestrial effects of the Sun’s radiations; a revolutionary new global navigational system for all manner of aircraft and many other uses both civil and military; and the science of Earth itself as a sustainable abode of life.
In 'Is Human Spaceflight Obsolete?', Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 2004).
Science quotes on:  |  Abode (2)  |  Aircraft (9)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Both (496)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Civil (26)  |  Climate (102)  |  Cultural (26)  |  Daily (91)  |  Daily Life (18)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effect (414)  |  Forecast (15)  |  Global (39)  |  Global Positioning System (2)  |  GPS (2)  |  High (370)  |  Implication (25)  |  Improve (64)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Manner (62)  |  Military (45)  |  New (1273)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pervasive (6)  |  Radiation (48)  |  Revolutionary (31)  |  Robot (14)  |  Solid (119)  |  Spacecraft (6)  |  Sun (407)  |  Surface (223)  |  Sustainable (14)  |  System (545)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Use (771)  |  Weather (49)  |  Worldwide (19)

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment. [Modern paraphrase; Darwin never wrote with these words.]
This is NOT AN AUTHENTIC Darwin quote. It is just a modern paraphrase, commonly seen in books and on the web. It is included here so that this caution can be attached to it.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Modern (402)  |  Never (1089)  |  Rival (20)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Win (53)  |  Word (650)

John Muir quote Indians walk softly
Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park (source)
Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.
John Muir
In My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), 73. Based on Muir’s original journals and sketches of his 1869 stay in the Sierra.
Science quotes on:  |  Bark (19)  |  Bird (163)  |  Brush (5)  |  Century (319)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Endurance (8)  |  Fire (203)  |  Forest (161)  |  Ground (222)  |  Hunt (32)  |  Hunting (23)  |  Hurt (14)  |  Hut (2)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Indian (32)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Last (425)  |  Monument (45)  |  More (2558)  |  Rat (37)  |  Softly (6)  |  Squirrel (11)  |  Vanishing (11)  |  Walk (138)  |  Wood (97)

Instead of adjusting students to docile membership in whatever group they happen to be placed, we should equip them to cope with their environment, not be adjusted to it, to be willing to stand alone, if necessary, for what is right and true.
In speech, 'Education for Creativity in the Sciences', Conference at New York University, Washington Square. As quoted by Gene Currivan in 'I.Q. Tests Called Harmful to Pupil', New York Times (16 Jun 1963), 66.
Science quotes on:  |  Adjustment (21)  |  Alone (324)  |  Cope (9)  |  Docile (2)  |  Group (83)  |  Happen (282)  |  Membership (6)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Right (473)  |  Stand (284)  |  Student (317)  |  True (239)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Will (2350)  |  Willing (44)

Intelligence is the capacity to learn. Learning is based on the acquisition of new knowledge about the environment. Memory is its retention.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Base (120)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Memory (144)  |  New (1273)  |  Retention (5)

Is pure science to be considered as something potentially harmful? Answer: Most certainly! Every child knows that it is potentially exceedingly harmful. … The menace of blowing ourselves up by atom bombs, doing ourselves in by chemical or biological warfare, or by population explosion, is certainly with us. I consider the environment thing a trivial question, by comparison—like housekeeping. In any home, the dishes have to be washed, the floors swept, the beds made, and there must be rules as to who is allowed to produce how much stink and noise, and where in the house: When the garbage piles up, these questions become pressing. But they are momentary problems. Once the house is in order, you still want to live in it, not just sit around enjoying its orderliness. I would be sorry to see Caltech move heavily into this type of applied research. … SCIENCE POTENTIALLY HARMFUL? DEFINITELY.
In 'Homo Scientificus According to Beckett," collected in William Beranek, Jr. (ed.)Science, Scientists, and Society, (1972), 135. Excerpted in Ann E. Kammer, Science, Sex, and Society (1979), 277.
Science quotes on:  |  Allow (51)  |  Answer (389)  |  Applied Research (3)  |  Atom Bomb (4)  |  Biological Warfare (3)  |  Blow Up (8)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Child (333)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Consider (428)  |  Definite (114)  |  Enjoy (48)  |  Floor (21)  |  Garbage (10)  |  Harm (43)  |  Home (184)  |  Know (1538)  |  Menace (7)  |  Momentary (5)  |  Noise (40)  |  Order (638)  |  Ourself (21)  |  Population Explosion (2)  |  Potential (75)  |  Pressing (2)  |  Problem (731)  |  Produce (117)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Question (649)  |  Rule (307)  |  Stink (8)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Trivial (59)

It has been calculated that when a factory saves some money by polluting the environment, it costs the citizens living in the vicinity ten times more than it saves the factory.
In 'Ocean Policy and Reasonable Utopias', The Forum (Summer 1981), 16, No. 5, 898
Science quotes on:  |  Air Pollution (13)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Cost (94)  |  Factory (20)  |  Living (492)  |  Money (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Ocean Pollution (10)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Save (126)  |  Time (1911)

It has been said that America is like a gigantic boiler in that once the fire is lighted, there are no limits to the power it can generate. Environmentally, the fire has been lit.
Opening remark in Foreward, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Legal Compilation (Jan 1973), iii. EPA website.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Boiler (7)  |  Fire (203)  |  Generate (16)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Light (635)  |  Limit (294)  |  Power (771)  |  Say (989)

It has been stated that the research should be discontinued because it involved “meddling with evolution.” Homo sapiens has been meddling with evolution in many ways and for a long time. We started in a big way when we domesticated plants and animals. We continue every time we alter the environment. In general, recombinant DNA research docs not seem to represent a significant increase in the risks associated with such meddling—although it may significantly increase the rate at which we meddle.
In letter to the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth, published in The Coevolutionary Quarterly (Spring 1978), as abstracted and cited in New Scientist (6 Jul 1978), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Alter (64)  |  Altering (3)  |  Animal (651)  |  Continue (179)  |  DNA (81)  |  Domestication (5)  |  Evolution (635)  |  General (521)  |  Homo Sapiens (23)  |  Increase (225)  |  Involved (90)  |  Long (778)  |  Meddling (2)  |  Plant (320)  |  Rate (31)  |  Represent (157)  |  Research (753)  |  Risk (68)  |  Significant (78)  |  Start (237)  |  Time (1911)  |  Way (1214)

It hurts the spirit, somehow, to read the word environments, when the plural means that there are so many alternatives there to be sorted through, as in a market, and voted on.
In The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974, 1984), 121.
Science quotes on:  |  Market (23)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Read (308)  |  Somehow (48)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Through (846)  |  Word (650)

It is not the organs—that is, the character and form of the animal's bodily parts—that have given rise to its habits and particular structures. It is the habits and manner of life and the conditions in which its ancestors lived that have in the course of time fashioned its bodily form, its organs and qualities.
Attributed.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Animal (651)  |  Body (557)  |  Character (259)  |  Condition (362)  |  Course (413)  |  Form (976)  |  Habit (174)  |  Life (1870)  |  Organ (118)  |  Rise (169)  |  Structure (365)  |  Time (1911)

It is tautological to say that an organism is adapted to its environment. It is even tautological to say that an organism is physiologically adapted to its environment. However, just as in the case of many morphological characters, it is unwarranted to conclude that all aspects of the physiology of an organism have evolved in reference to a specific milieu. It is equally gratuitous to assume that an organism will inevitably show physiological specializations in its adaptation to a particular set of conditions. All that can be concluded is that the functional capacities of an organism are sufficient to have allowed persistence within its environment. On one hand, the history of an evolutionary line may place serious constraints upon the types of further physiological changes that are readily feasible. Some changes might require excessive restructuring of the genome or might involve maladaptive changes in related functions. On the other hand, a taxon which is successful in occupying a variety of environments may be less impressive in individual physiological capacities than one with a far more limited distribution.
In W.R. Dawson, G.A. Bartholomew, and A.F. Bennett, 'A Reappraisal of the Aquatic Specializations of the Galapagos Marine Iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus)', Evolution (1977), 31, 891.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Allow (51)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Assume (43)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Case (102)  |  Change (639)  |  Character (259)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Condition (362)  |  Constraint (13)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Equally (129)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Excessive (24)  |  Far (158)  |  Feasible (3)  |  Function (235)  |  Functional (10)  |  Genome (15)  |  Gratuitous (2)  |  Hand (149)  |  History (716)  |  Impressive (27)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inevitably (6)  |  Involve (93)  |  Less (105)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Line (100)  |  Milieu (5)  |  More (2558)  |  Morphological (3)  |  Occupy (27)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particular (80)  |  Persistence (25)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Place (192)  |  Readily (10)  |  Reference (33)  |  Relate (26)  |  Require (229)  |  Restructuring (2)  |  Say (989)  |  Serious (98)  |  Set (400)  |  Show (353)  |  Specialization (24)  |  Specific (98)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Tautological (2)  |  Type (171)  |  Unwarranted (2)  |  Variety (138)  |  Will (2350)

It is the relationship between the physical environment and the environed organism, between physiography and ontography (to coin a term), that constitutes the essential principles of geography today.
'Systematic Geography', read 3 April 1902. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, 1902, 41, 240.
Science quotes on:  |  Constitute (99)  |  Essential (210)  |  Geography (39)  |  Organism (231)  |  Physical (518)  |  Principle (530)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Term (357)  |  Today (321)

It seems a miracle that young children easily learn the language of any environment into which they were born. The generative approach to grammar, pioneered by Chomsky, argues that this is only explicable if certain deep, universal features of this competence are innate characteristics of the human brain. Biologically speaking, this hypothesis of an inheritable capability to learn any language means that it must somehow be encoded in the DNA of our chromosomes. Should this hypothesis one day be verified, then lingusitics would become a branch of biology.
'The Generative Grammar of the Immune System', Nobel Lecture, 8 Dec 1984. In Nobel Lectures: Physiology or Medicine 1981-1990 (1993), 223.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Become (821)  |  Biology (232)  |  Birth (154)  |  Brain (281)  |  Branch (155)  |  Capability (44)  |  Certain (557)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Avram Noam Chomsky (7)  |  Chromosome (23)  |  Chromosomes (17)  |  Competence (13)  |  Deep (241)  |  DNA (81)  |  Grammar (15)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Innate (14)  |  Language (308)  |  Learn (672)  |  Linguistics (39)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Must (1525)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Somehow (48)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Universal (198)  |  Young (253)

It usually develops that after much laborious and frustrating effort the investigator of environmental physiology succeeds in proving that the animal in question can actually exist where it lives. It is always somewhat discouraging for an investigator to realize that his efforts can be made to appear so trite, but this statement does not belittle the ecological physiologist. If his data assist the understanding of the ways in which an animal manages to live where it does, he makes an important contribution to the study of distribution, for the present is necessarily a key to the past.”
From 'The role of physiology in the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates', collected in C.L. Hubbs (ed.), Zoogeography: Publ. 51 (1958), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Actually (27)  |  Animal (651)  |  Appear (122)  |  Assist (9)  |  Belittle (2)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Data (162)  |  Develop (278)  |  Discourage (14)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Ecological (7)  |  Effort (243)  |  Exist (458)  |  Frustrate (5)  |  Important (229)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Key (56)  |  Laborious (17)  |  Live (650)  |  Manage (26)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Past (355)  |  Physiologist (31)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Present (630)  |  Prove (261)  |  Question (649)  |  Realize (157)  |  Statement (148)  |  Study (701)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Trite (5)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Usually (176)  |  Way (1214)

It will be noticed that the fundamental theorem proved above bears some remarkable resemblances to the second law of thermodynamics. Both are properties of populations, or aggregates, true irrespective of the nature of the units which compose them; both are statistical laws; each requires the constant increase of a measurable quantity, in the one case the entropy of a physical system and in the other the fitness, measured by m, of a biological population. As in the physical world we can conceive the theoretical systems in which dissipative forces are wholly absent, and in which the entropy consequently remains constant, so we can conceive, though we need not expect to find, biological populations in which the genetic variance is absolutely zero, and in which fitness does not increase. Professor Eddington has recently remarked that “The law that entropy always increases—the second law of thermodynamics—holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature.” It is not a little instructive that so similar a law should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences. While it is possible that both may ultimately be absorbed by some more general principle, for the present we should note that the laws as they stand present profound differences—-(1) The systems considered in thermodynamics are permanent; species on the contrary are liable to extinction, although biological improvement must be expected to occur up to the end of their existence. (2) Fitness, although measured by a uniform method, is qualitatively different for every different organism, whereas entropy, like temperature, is taken to have the same meaning for all physical systems. (3) Fitness may be increased or decreased by changes in the environment, without reacting quantitatively upon that environment. (4) Entropy changes are exceptional in the physical world in being irreversible, while irreversible evolutionary changes form no exception among biological phenomena. Finally, (5) entropy changes lead to a progressive disorganization of the physical world, at least from the human standpoint of the utilization of energy, while evolutionary changes are generally recognized as producing progressively higher organization in the organic world.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Aggregate (24)  |  Bear (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Biological (137)  |  Both (496)  |  Change (639)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Consider (428)  |  Constant (148)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (135)  |  End (603)  |  Energy (373)  |  Entropy (46)  |  Exception (74)  |  Exceptional (19)  |  Existence (481)  |  Expect (203)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  General (521)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Human (1512)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Increase (225)  |  Irreversible (12)  |  Law (913)  |  Lead (391)  |  Little (717)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Occur (151)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organism (231)  |  Organization (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical World (30)  |  Population (115)  |  Possible (560)  |  Present (630)  |  Principle (530)  |  Professor (133)  |  Profound (105)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Remain (355)  |  Require (229)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Second Law Of Thermodynamics (14)  |  Species (435)  |  Stand (284)  |  Standpoint (28)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Supreme (73)  |  System (545)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Thermodynamics (40)  |  Think (1122)  |  Ultimately (56)  |  Utilization (16)  |  Variance (12)  |  Wholly (88)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Zero (38)

It’s a numbers game—in a dense urban area there are so many of us that even unintentional pollution would cause all the crap we see in the water.
Anonymous
Posted by 'Lisa' (6 Mar 2008), Reply in blog 'Emerald City' to item 'The Plague that is the plastic bag, in photos', Los Angeles Times website (1 Mar 2008).
Science quotes on:  |  Cause (561)  |  Game (104)  |  Number (710)  |  Pollution (53)  |  See (1094)  |  Urban (12)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Pollution (17)

Joad, the philosopher, said … “science changes our environment faster than we have the ability to adjust ourselves to it.”
In 'The Talk of the Town', in The New Yorker (18 Aug 1945), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Adjust (11)  |  Change (639)  |  Faster (50)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Philosopher (269)

Knowledge of the laws of nature offers humankind the only chance of survival in a changing environment. … The search for knowledge gives expression to a basic curiosity which appears to be the salient defining characteristic of human beings.
From opening paragraph of Preface, Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies (1987).
Science quotes on:  |  Basic (144)  |  Being (1276)  |  Chance (244)  |  Changing (7)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Defining (3)  |  Expression (181)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Offer (142)  |  Salient (2)  |  Search (175)  |  Survival (105)

Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edition (1970), 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Believer (26)  |  Better (493)  |  Different (595)  |  Display (59)  |  Progress (492)  |  Puzzle (46)  |  Relativist (2)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Progress (14)  |  Scientific Theory (24)  |  Sense (785)  |  Solution (282)  |  Theory (1015)

Let each social order … give the scientist a free hand and provide him with the environment and tools he needs; make him accessible to students, for he is essentially a teacher, make the university his home, and otherwise, for humanity’s sake, leave him alone.
Address upon receiving the Passano award in Baltimore, MD. In 'Medicine: The Egg & He', Time (27 May 1946). The author of the article described (not as direct quote) that Goodpasture deplored the fact that researchers are too often hamstrung by special “projects,” and not permitted to follow their own keen noses. Goodpasture acknowledged that exploratory research does entail relatively great financial risk, but these risks must be met if medicine is to serve humanity and not a social order. The author wrote that the ceremony was “last week”.
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Essential (210)  |  Give (208)  |  Home (184)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Leave Alone (3)  |  Let (64)  |  Need (320)  |  Otherwise (26)  |  Provide (79)  |  Sake (61)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Social Order (8)  |  Student (317)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Tool (129)  |  University (130)

Life became a science when interest shifted from the dissection of dead bodies to the study of action in living beings and the nature of the environment they live in.
From Why We Behave Like Human Beings (1925), Preface, xiv.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Being (1276)  |  Dissection (35)  |  Interest (416)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Shift (45)  |  Study (701)

Life is inseparable from water. For all terrestrial animals, including birds, the inescapable need for maintaining an adequate state of hydration in a hostile, desiccating environment is a central persistent constraint which exerts a sustained selective pressure on every aspect of the life cycle. It has been said, with some justification, that the struggle for existence is a struggle for free energy for doing physiological work. It can be said with equal justification for terrestrial organisms that the struggle for existence is a struggle to maintain an aqueous internal environment in which energy transformations for doing work can take place.
In 'The water economy of seed-eating birds that survive without drinking', Proceedings of the International Ornithological Congress (1972), 15, 237-238.
Science quotes on:  |  Adequate (50)  |  Animal (651)  |  Aqueous (8)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Bird (163)  |  Central (81)  |  Constraint (13)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Doing (277)  |  Energy (373)  |  Equal (88)  |  Exert (40)  |  Existence (481)  |  Free (239)  |  Hostile (8)  |  Include (93)  |  Inescapable (7)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Internal (69)  |  Justification (52)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life Cycle (5)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Need (320)  |  Organism (231)  |  Persistent (18)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Place (192)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Say (989)  |  Selective (21)  |  State (505)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Water (503)  |  Work (1402)

Man cannot have an effect on nature, cannot adopt any of her forces, if he does not know the natural laws in terms of measurement and numerical relations. Here also lies the strength of the national intelligence, which increases and decreases according to such knowledge. Knowledge and comprehension are the joy and justification of humanity; they are parts of the national wealth, often a replacement for the materials that nature has too sparcely dispensed. Those very people who are behind us in general industrial activity, in application and technical chemistry, in careful selection and processing of natural materials, such that regard for such enterprise does not permeate all classes, will inevitably decline in prosperity; all the more so were neighbouring states, in which science and the industrial arts have an active interrelationship, progress with youthful vigour.
Kosmos (1845), vol.1, 35. Quoted in C. C. Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970), vol. 6, 552.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Active (80)  |  Activity (218)  |  Application (257)  |  Art (680)  |  Behind (139)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Decline (28)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Force (497)  |  General (521)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Increase (225)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Joy (117)  |  Justification (52)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Lie (370)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Measurement (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Law (46)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Numerical (39)  |  People (1031)  |  Progress (492)  |  Prosperity (31)  |  Regard (312)  |  Replacement (13)  |  Selection (130)  |  State (505)  |  Strength (139)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Vigour (18)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Will (2350)

Man is the only animal that fouls its own nest.
Anonymous
Used about man's pollution of his own environment. Webmaster has not found its original source. An example of its use is in the American Public Works Yearbook 1966 (1966), 326: “As you have heard too often, man is the only animal that fouls its own nest. One of the major accomplishments of civilization has been to bring that fouling process to a high degree of perfection. We foul the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, the land we stand on, the landscape we look at, and the minds we think with.” Webmaster notes the similarity to an English proverb in use at least as early as 1839 concerning criticism of speech or social actions: “It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest.” See example in 'Craven' (ed.), The Sporting Review (Aug 1839), 132. (There may be an early example of Lewis Mumford using the subject quote. If you know it, please contact Webmaster.)
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Foul (15)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nest (26)  |  Pollution (53)

Man not only survives and functions in his environment, he shapes it and he is shaped by it.
In Barbara Ward and René Jules Dubos, Only One Earth: the Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet: an unofficial report commissioned by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1972), 30. This is similar to the quote, “Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment,” which is commonly seen attributed to Dubos, but without citation. If you know the primary source of this wording of that quote, please contact webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Decision (98)  |  Function (235)  |  Himself (461)  |  Man (2252)  |  Shape (77)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survive (87)

Marxists are more right than wrong when they argue that the problems scientists take up,. the way they go about solving them, and even the solutions they arc inclined to accept, arc conditioned by the intellectual, social, and economic environments in which they live and work.
In Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species, 128. As cited in Ted Woods & Alan Grant, Reason in Revolt - Dialectical Philosophy and Modern Science (2003), Vol. 2, 183.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Arc (14)  |  Argue (25)  |  Condition (362)  |  Economic (84)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Live (650)  |  More (2558)  |  Problem (731)  |  Right (473)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Social (261)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Solving (6)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)  |  Wrong (246)

Mathematics is a type of thought which seems ingrained in the human mind, which manifests itself to some extent with even the primitive races, and which is developed to a high degree with the growth of civilization. … A type of thought, a body of results, so essentially characteristic of the human mind, so little influenced by environment, so uniformly present in every civilization, is one of which no well-informed mind today can be ignorant.
In Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1906), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Degree (277)  |  Develop (278)  |  Extent (142)  |  Growth (200)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Influence (231)  |  Inform (50)  |  Informed (5)  |  Ingrained (5)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Present (630)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Race (278)  |  Result (700)  |  Thought (995)  |  Today (321)  |  Type (171)  |  Uniform (20)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Well-Informed (7)

Mathematics was born and nurtured in a cultural environment. Without the perspective which the cultural background affords, a proper appreciation of the content and state of present-day mathematics is hardly possible.
In Introduction to the Foundations of Mathematics (1952), 265.
Science quotes on:  |  Appreciation (37)  |  Background (44)  |  Born (37)  |  Content (75)  |  Cultural (26)  |  Hardly (19)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nurture (17)  |  Perspective (28)  |  Possible (560)  |  Present (630)  |  Present Day (5)  |  Proper (150)  |  State (505)

Microbiology is usually regarded as having no relevance to the feelings and aspirations of the man of flesh and bone. Yet, never in my professional life do I find myself far removed from the man of flesh and bone. It is not only because microbes are ubiquitous in our environment, and therefore must be studied for the sake of human welfare. More interesting, and far more important in the long run, is the fact that microbes exhibit profound resemblances to man. They resemble him in their physical makeup, in their properties, in their responses to various stimuli; they also display associations with other living things which have perplexing and illuminating analogies with human societies.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogy (76)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Association (49)  |  Bone (101)  |  Display (59)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exhibit (21)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Human (1512)  |  Illuminate (26)  |  Illuminating (12)  |  In The Long Run (18)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Microbe (30)  |  Microbes (14)  |  Microbiology (11)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Myself (211)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perplex (6)  |  Physical (518)  |  Professional (77)  |  Profound (105)  |  Regard (312)  |  Relevance (18)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Response (56)  |  Sake (61)  |  Society (350)  |  Stimulus (30)  |  Study (701)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Ubiquitous (5)  |  Usually (176)  |  Various (205)  |  Welfare (30)

Mutations and chromosomal changes arise in every sufficiently studied organism with a certain finite frequency, and thus constantly and unremittingly supply the raw materials for evolution. But evolution involves something more than origin of mutations. Mutations and chromosomal changes are only the first stage, or level, of the evolutionary process, governed entirely by the laws of the physiology of individuals. Once produced, mutations are injected in the genetic composition of the population, where their further fate is determined by the dynamic regularities of the physiology of populations. A mutation may be lost or increased in frequency in generations immediately following its origin, and this (in the case of recessive mutations) without regard to the beneficial or deleterious effects of the mutation. The influences of selection, migration, and geographical isolation then mold the genetic structure of populations into new shapes, in conformity with the secular environment and the ecology, especially the breeding habits, of the species. This is the second level of the evolutionary process, on which the impact of the environment produces historical changes in the living population.
Genetics and Origin of Species (1937), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Arise (162)  |  Breeding (21)  |  Certain (557)  |  Change (639)  |  Chromosome (23)  |  Composition (86)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Effect (414)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fate (76)  |  Finite (60)  |  First (1302)  |  Frequency (25)  |  Generation (256)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Govern (66)  |  Habit (174)  |  Historical (70)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Impact (45)  |  Individual (420)  |  Influence (231)  |  Injection (9)  |  Involve (93)  |  Isolation (32)  |  Law (913)  |  Living (492)  |  Material (366)  |  Migration (12)  |  Mold (37)  |  More (2558)  |  Mutation (40)  |  New (1273)  |  Organism (231)  |  Origin (250)  |  Origin Of Species (42)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Population (115)  |  Process (439)  |  Produced (187)  |  Raw (28)  |  Recessive (6)  |  Regard (312)  |  Secular (11)  |  Selection (130)  |  Something (718)  |  Species (435)  |  Stage (152)  |  Structure (365)  |  Supply (100)

Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement,
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (1977), 45.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  General (521)  |  Guarantee (30)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Perfecting (6)  |  Principle (530)  |  Selection (130)  |  Theory (1015)

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath.
'What We Owe to the Trees', Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Apr 1882), 46, No. 383, 686.
Science quotes on:  |  Abuse (25)  |  Appease (6)  |  Bear (162)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Equal (88)  |  Equally (129)  |  Final (121)  |  Global Warming (29)  |  Long (778)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Patient (209)  |  Reckoning (19)  |  Slow (108)  |  Time (1911)  |  Turn (454)  |  Wrath (3)  |  Wrong (246)

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge of its garment of vegetation, for this determines not only the nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the majority of human beings.
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919), 88.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Being (1276)  |  Determine (152)  |  Garment (13)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Majority (68)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Plant (320)  |  Truly (118)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Understood (155)  |  Vegetation (24)  |  World (1850)

Now when you cut a forest, an ancient forest in particular, you are not just removing a lot of big trees and a few birds fluttering around in the canopy. You are drastically imperiling a vast array of species within a few square miles of you. The number of these species may go to tens of thousands. … Many of them are still unknown to science, and science has not yet discovered the key role undoubtedly played in the maintenance of that ecosystem, as in the case of fungi, microorganisms, and many of the insects.
From On Human Nature (2000). As quoted in John H. Morgan, Naturally Good: A Behavioral History of Moral Development (2005), 251-252.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Bird (163)  |  Canopy (8)  |  Cut (116)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Discover (571)  |  Ecosystem (33)  |  Forest (161)  |  Fungus (8)  |  Insect (89)  |  Key (56)  |  Lot (151)  |  Maintenance (21)  |  Microorganism (29)  |  Number (710)  |  Role (86)  |  Species (435)  |  Square (73)  |  Still (614)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Tree (269)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vast (188)  |  Water (503)

Now, over half of us live in an urban environment. My home, too, is here in the city of London. Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape the surface of our planet is very striking. It’s also very sobering, and reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world.
In closing remarks of BBC TV Series, Planet Earth II (2016).
Science quotes on:  |  City (87)  |  Connection (171)  |  Continue (179)  |  Easy (213)  |  Half (63)  |  Home (184)  |  Ingenuity (42)  |  Live (650)  |  London (15)  |  Lose (165)  |  Metropolis (2)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Planet (402)  |  Remind (16)  |  Reshape (5)  |  Sober (10)  |  Strike (72)  |  Surface (223)

Now, the downside to conservation is that so much is done for the public, which almost always mars the environment that one wanted to conserve.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Conservation (187)  |  Conserve (7)  |  Downside (2)  |  Mars (47)  |  Public (100)  |  Want (504)

On the terrace of the Pepiniere, the 150 pupils of the Institut Chemique talk chemistry as they leave the auditoria and the laboratory. The echoes of the magnificent public garden of the city of Nancy make the words reverberate; coupling, condensation, grignardization. Moreover, their clothes stay impregnated with strong and characteristic odours; we follow the initiates of Hermes by their scent. In such an environment, how is it possible not to be productive?
Charles Courtot, 'Notice sur la vie de Victor Grignard', Bulletin Societé Chemie, 1936, 3, 1445. Trans. in Mary Jo Nye, Science in the Provinces (1986),184.
Science quotes on:  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  City (87)  |  Condensation (12)  |  Follow (389)  |  Garden (64)  |  Initiate (13)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Magnificent (46)  |  Possible (560)  |  Productive (37)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Scent (7)  |  Strong (182)  |  Word (650)

One may summarize by saying that by a combination of behavior and physiology mammals can successfully occupy all but the most extreme environments on earth without anything more than quantitative shifts in the basic physiological pattern common to all.
From 'The role of physiology in the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates', collected in C.L. Hubbs (ed.), Zoogeography: Publ. 51 (1958), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Basic (144)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Combination (150)  |  Common (447)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Mammal (41)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Occupy (27)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Say (989)  |  Shift (45)  |  Successful (134)  |  Summarize (10)

One precept for the scientist-to-be is already obvious. Do not place yourself in an environment where your advisor is already suffering from scientific obsolescence. If one is so unfortunate as to receive his training under a person who is either technically or intellectually obsolescent, one finds himself to be a loser before he starts. It is difficult to move into a position of leadership if one’s launching platform is a scientific generation whose time is already past.
In 'Scientific innovation and creativity: a zoologist’s point of view', American Zoologist (1982), 22, 229.
Science quotes on:  |  Advisor (3)  |  Already (226)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Do (1905)  |  Find (1014)  |  Generation (256)  |  Himself (461)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Launch (21)  |  Leadership (13)  |  Loser (3)  |  Move (223)  |  Obsolescence (4)  |  Obsolescent (2)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Past (355)  |  Person (366)  |  Place (192)  |  Platform (3)  |  Position (83)  |  Precept (10)  |  Receive (117)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Start (237)  |  Suffer (43)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Technically (5)  |  Time (1911)  |  Training (92)  |  Unfortunate (19)

One tragic example of the loss of forests and then water is found in Ethiopia. The amount of its forested land has decreased from 40 to 1 percent in the last four decades. Concurrently, the amount of rainfall has declined to the point where the country is rapidly becoming a wasteland.
Al Gore
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (2006), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Country (269)  |  Decade (66)  |  Forest (161)  |  Last (425)  |  Loss (117)  |  Point (584)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Tragic (19)  |  Wasteland (2)  |  Water (503)

Our contemporary culture, primed by population growth and driven by technology, has created problems of environmental degradation that directly affect all of our senses: noise, odors and toxins which bring physical pain and suffering, and ugliness, barrenness, and homogeneity of experience which bring emotional and psychological suffering and emptiness. In short, we are jeopardizing our human qualities by pursuing technology as an end rather than a means. Too often we have failed to ask two necessary questions: First, what human purpose will a given technology or development serve? Second, what human and environmental effects will it have?
Report of the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution (7 Aug 1969). 'Environmental Quality: Summary and Discussion of Major Provisions', U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Legal Compilation, (Jan 1973), Water, Vol. 3, 1365. EPA website.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Barren (33)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Culture (157)  |  Degradation (18)  |  Development (441)  |  Drive (61)  |  Effect (414)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Emptiness (13)  |  End (603)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fail (191)  |  First (1302)  |  Growth (200)  |  Homogeneity (9)  |  Human (1512)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Noise (40)  |  Odor (11)  |  Pain (144)  |  Physical (518)  |  Population (115)  |  Population Growth (9)  |  Problem (731)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Question (649)  |  Sense (785)  |  Short (200)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Technology (281)  |  Toxin (8)  |  Two (936)  |  Ugliness (3)  |  Will (2350)

Our environment may and should mean something towards us which is not to be measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.
Swarthmore Lecture (1929) at Friends’ House, London, printed in Science and the Unseen World (1929), 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Mean (810)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Something (718)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Tool (129)

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society. If the world continues to behave as stupidly as it has behaved in the past, we are going to have an increase in population, an increase in violence. We will try to support the population by ripping up earth’s resources, producing pollution at a greater and greater rate, ending, perhaps, in a nuclear war. The earth will have its oil burnt up, most of its most easily available coal used up, its metals distributed thinly over the entire world. We simply won’t have the material basis to build up another technological civilization. The greater the population, the greater the pressure on technology to produce things. Also, there is a great deal of pressure to produce things that don’t directly relate to the quantity of people in the world, but are useless, energy wasting. Socrates is reported to have looked over a bazaar in great wonder and said, “How very many things there are that I do not need.” There are a great many things that we don’t need.
Interview in The Christian Science Monitor (27 Mar 1974), F1.
Science quotes on:  |  Basis (180)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Coal (64)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Energy (373)  |  Lifetime (40)  |  Material (366)  |  Need (320)  |  Nuclear War (2)  |  Oil (67)  |  Overpopulation (6)  |  Population (115)  |  Production (190)  |  Resource (74)  |  Society (350)  |   Socrates, (17)  |  Stupidity (40)  |  Technology (281)  |  Violence (37)  |  Waste (109)

Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts ... A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Admirably (3)  |  Available (80)  |  Build (211)  |  Confound (21)  |  Context (31)  |  Create (245)  |  Curious (95)  |  Current (122)  |  Different (595)  |  Enough (341)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fine (37)  |  Force (497)  |  History (716)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mass (160)  |  Matter (821)  |  Often (109)  |  Omnipotent (13)  |  Optimal (4)  |  Optimally (2)  |  Part (235)  |  Past (355)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Place (192)  |  Prove (261)  |  Quirky (3)  |  Selection (130)  |  Set (400)  |  Transform (74)  |  Tune (20)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.
On the effect of chemical insecticides and fertilizers. In 'And No Birds Sing', Silent Spring (1962), Ch. 8, 103.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Bird (163)  |  Early (196)  |  Large (398)  |  Morning (98)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Return (133)  |  Song (41)  |  Spring (140)  |  State (505)

Over the years it has become clear that adjustments to the physical environment are behavioral as well as physiological and are inextricably intertwined with ecology and evolution. Consequently, a student of the physiology of adaptation should not only be a technically competent physiologist, but also be familiar with the evolutionary and ecological setting of the phenomenon that he or she is studying.
From 'Interspecific comparison as a tool for ecological physiologists', collected in M.E. Feder, A.F. Bennett, W.W. Burggren, and R.B. Huey, (eds.), New Directions in Ecological Physiology (1987), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Adjustment (21)  |  Become (821)  |  Behavioral (6)  |  Clear (111)  |  Competent (20)  |  Consequently (5)  |  Ecological (7)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Inextricably (2)  |  Intertwine (4)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiologist (31)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Set (400)  |  Setting (44)  |  Student (317)  |  Study (701)  |  Studying (70)  |  Technically (5)  |  Year (963)

Physiology is concerned with all those phenomena of life that present them selves to us in sense perception as bodily processes, and accordingly form part of that total environment which we name the external world.
Science quotes on:  |  Concern (239)  |  Form (976)  |  Life (1870)  |  Name (359)  |  Perception (97)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Present (630)  |  Sense (785)  |  Total (95)  |  World (1850)

Plants are extraordinary. For instance ... if you pinch a leaf of a plant you set off electrical impulse. You can't touch a plant without setting off an electrical impulse ... There is no question that plants have all kinds of sensitivities. They do a lot of responding to an environment. They can do almost anything you can think of.
Quoted in George Ritzer and Barry Smart, Handbook of Social Theory, 532.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Impulse (52)  |  Kind (564)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Lot (151)  |  Pinch (6)  |  Plant (320)  |  Question (649)  |  Reflex (14)  |  Set (400)  |  Setting (44)  |  Think (1122)  |  Touch (146)

Plants, generally speaking, meet the impact of the terrestrial environment head on, although of course they in turn modify the physical environment by adventitious group activity. The individual plant cannot select its habitat; its location is largely determined by the vagaries of the dispersal of seeds or spores and is thus profoundly affected by chance. Because of their mobility and their capacity for acceptance or rejection terrestrial animals, in contrast, can and do actively seek out and utilize the facets of the environment that allow their physiological capacities to function adequately. This means that an animal by its behavior can fit the environment to its physiology by selecting situations in which its physiological capacities can cope with physical conditions. If one accepts this idea, it follows that there is no such thing as The Environment, for there exist as many different terrestrial environments as there are species of animals.
From 'The role of physiology in the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates', collected in C.L. Hubbs (ed.), Zoogeography: Publ. 51 (1958), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acceptance (56)  |  Actively (3)  |  Activity (218)  |  Adequately (4)  |  Affect (19)  |  Allow (51)  |  Animal (651)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Chance (244)  |  Condition (362)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Cope (9)  |  Course (413)  |  Determine (152)  |  Different (595)  |  Dispersal (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exist (458)  |  Facet (9)  |  Fit (139)  |  Follow (389)  |  Function (235)  |  Generally (15)  |  Group (83)  |  Habitat (17)  |  Head (87)  |  Idea (881)  |  Impact (45)  |  Individual (420)  |  Largely (14)  |  Location (15)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Meet (36)  |  Mobility (11)  |  Modify (15)  |  Of Course (22)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Plant (320)  |  Profoundly (13)  |  Rejection (36)  |  Seed (97)  |  Seek (218)  |  Select (45)  |  Situation (117)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Species (435)  |  Spore (3)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Turn (454)  |  Utilize (10)  |  Vagary (2)

Presumably, technology has made man increasingly independent of his environment. But, in fact, technology has merely substituted nonrenewable resources for renewables, which is more an increase than a decrease in dependence.
Steady-State Economics (1977).
Science quotes on:  |  Decrease (16)  |  Dependence (46)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Increase (225)  |  Increasingly (4)  |  Independent (74)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merely (315)  |  More (2558)  |  Nonrenewable Resources (2)  |  Presumably (3)  |  Renewable (7)  |  Substitute (47)  |  Technology (281)

Restoring nature to its natural state … is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.
In State of the Union Address (22 Jan 1970).
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Concern (239)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Failure (176)  |  Grim (6)  |  Natural (810)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Reap (19)  |  Restore (12)  |  Young (253)

Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth’s gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement.
Speech, NASA Headquarters (14 Jan 2004). In Office of the Federal Register (U.S.) Staff (eds.), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush (2007), 58.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundant (23)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Air (366)  |  Allow (51)  |  Ambitious (4)  |  Approach (112)  |  Assemble (14)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Contain (68)  |  Cost (94)  |  Develop (278)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Energy (373)  |  Escape (85)  |  Establish (63)  |  Expensive (10)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Extend (129)  |  Extended (4)  |  Far (158)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Function (235)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Heavy (24)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Important (229)  |  Less (105)  |  Lift (57)  |  Logical (57)  |  Low (86)  |  Making (300)  |  Material (366)  |  Mission (23)  |  Moon (252)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possible (560)  |  Presence (63)  |  Process (439)  |  Progress (492)  |  Provision (17)  |  Raw (28)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Resource (74)  |  Return (133)  |  Rocket (52)  |  Soil (98)  |  Space (523)  |  Space Exploration (15)  |  Space Program (9)  |  Spacecraft (6)  |  Step (234)  |  System (545)  |  Technology (281)  |  Test (221)  |  Time (1911)  |  Toward (45)  |  Use (771)  |  Vastly (8)  |  Will (2350)

Science offers us complete mastery over our environment and our own destiny, yet instead of rejoicing we feel deeply afraid. Why should this be?
From transcript of BBC radio Reith Lecture (12 Nov 1967), 'A Runaway World', on the bbc.co.uk website.
Science quotes on:  |  Afraid (24)  |  Complete (209)  |  Deeply (17)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Feel (371)  |  Mastery (36)  |  Offer (142)  |  Rejoice (11)  |  Why (491)

Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society.
In Education For a New World (1946), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Activity (218)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Direct (228)  |  Doing (277)  |  Education (423)  |  Event (222)  |  Experience (494)  |  Future (467)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Society (14)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interference (22)  |  Listening (26)  |  Man (2252)  |  Master (182)  |  Motive (62)  |  Natural (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Observation (593)  |  Preparing (21)  |  Process (439)  |  Rising (44)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Series (153)  |  Servant (40)  |  Society (350)  |  Soul (235)  |  Spread (86)  |  Task (152)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Unfolding (16)  |  Victim (37)  |  Vision (127)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)

Second Law
All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.
Philosophie Zoologique (1809), Vol. 1, 235, trans. Hugh Elliot (1914), 113.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Arise (162)  |  Both (496)  |  Common (447)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Individual (420)  |  Influence (231)  |  Law (913)  |  Long (778)  |  Loss (117)  |  Modification (57)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Organ (118)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Race (278)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  Through (846)  |  Use (771)  |  Young (253)

Since an organism is inseparable from its environment, any person who attempts to understand an organism’s distribution must keep constantly in mind that the item being studied is neither a stuffed skin, a pickled specimen, nor a dot on a map. It is not even the live organism held in the hand, caged in a laboratory, or seen in the field. It is a complex interaction between a self-sustaining physicochemical system and the environment. An obvious corollary is that to know the organism it is necessary to know its environment.
From 'The role of physiology in the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates', collected in C.L. Hubbs (ed.), Zoogeography: Publ. 51 (1958), 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Being (1276)  |  Cage (12)  |  Complex (202)  |  Constantly (27)  |  Corollary (5)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Dot (18)  |  Field (378)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hold (96)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Item (4)  |  Keep (104)  |  Know (1538)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Live (650)  |  Map (50)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Organism (231)  |  Person (366)  |  Pickle (3)  |  See (1094)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Sustaining (3)  |  Skin (48)  |  Specimen (32)  |  Study (701)  |  Stuff (24)  |  System (545)  |  Understand (648)

Since natural selection demands only adequacy, elegance of design is not relevant; any combination of behavioural adjustment, physiological regulation, or anatomical accommodation that allows survival and reproduction may be favoured by selection. Since all animals are caught in a phylogenetic trap by the nature of past evolutionary adjustments, it is to be expected that a given environmental challenge will be met in a variety of ways by different animals. The delineation of the patterns of the accommodations of diverse types of organisms to the environment contributes much of the fascination of ecologically relevant physiology.
In 'The roles of physiology and behaviour in the maintenance of homeostasis in the desert environment.', Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology (1964), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Accommodation (9)  |  Adequacy (10)  |  Adjustment (21)  |  Allow (51)  |  Anatomical (3)  |  Animal (651)  |  Catch (34)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Combination (150)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Demand (131)  |  Design (203)  |  Different (595)  |  Diverse (20)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Expect (203)  |  Fascination (35)  |  Favor (69)  |  Give (208)  |  Meet (36)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Organism (231)  |  Past (355)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Phylogenetic (3)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Regulation (25)  |  Relevant (5)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  Selection (130)  |  Survival (105)  |  Trap (7)  |  Type (171)  |  Variety (138)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

Sociobiology is not just any statement that biology, genetics, and evolutionary theory have something to do with human behavior. Sociobiology is a specific theory about the nature of genetic and evolutionary input into human behavior. It rests upon the view that natural selection is a virtually omnipotent architect, constructing organisms part by part as best solutions to problems of life in local environments. It fragments organisms into “traits,” explains their existence as a set of best solutions, and argues that each trait is a product of natural selection operating “for” the form or behavior in question. Applied to humans, it must view specific behaviors (not just general potentials) as adaptations built by natural selection and rooted in genetic determinants, for natural selection is a theory of genetic change. Thus, we are presented with unproved and unprovable speculations about the adaptive and genetic basis of specific human behaviors: why some (or all) people are aggressive, xenophobic, religious, acquisitive, or homosexual.
In Hen's Teeth and Horses Toes (1983, 2010), 242-243.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Aggression (10)  |  Applied (176)  |  Architect (32)  |  Basis (180)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Best (467)  |  Biology (232)  |  Change (639)  |  Do (1905)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Existence (481)  |  Explain (334)  |  Form (976)  |  Fragment (58)  |  General (521)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Behavior (10)  |  Life (1870)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Omnipotent (13)  |  Organism (231)  |  People (1031)  |  Potential (75)  |  Present (630)  |  Problem (731)  |  Product (166)  |  Question (649)  |  Religious (134)  |  Rest (287)  |  Root (121)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Selection (130)  |  Set (400)  |  Sociobiology (5)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Something (718)  |  Specific (98)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Statement (148)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Trait (23)  |  View (496)  |  Why (491)

Some people will tell you “the hell with the environment” and others say “to hell with industrial development.” They're both wrong.
As quoted by Advocate News Service in 'Budget by Air Board Pleases State Salons', reporting budget hearings before Texas State House and Senate committees, before which Barden said that Texas must have a “balancing” of environmental and industrial growth needs. In The Victoria Advocate (30 Jan 1977), 5A.
Science quotes on:  |  Air Pollution (13)  |  Both (496)  |  Development (441)  |  Industrial Development (4)  |  Industry (159)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Say (989)  |  Tell (344)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wrong (246)

Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking.
Essay collected in John Cornwell (ed.), 'The Limitless Power of Science', Nature's Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision (1995), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Condition (362)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Look (584)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Reductionism (8)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scorn (12)  |  Sentimental (3)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Wishful (6)  |  World (1850)

Technocrats are turning us into daredevils. The haphazard gambles they are imposing on us too often jeopardize our safety for goals that do not advance the human cause but undermine it. By staking our lives on their schemes, decision makers are not meeting the mandate of a democratic society; they are betraying it. They are not ennobling us; they are victimizing us. And, in acquiescing to risks that have resulted in irreversible damage to the environment, we ourselves are not only forfeiting our own rights as citizens. We are, in turn, victimizing the ultimate nonvolunteers: the defenseless, voiceless—voteless—children of the future.
In Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (2007), 85.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquiesce (2)  |  Advance (298)  |  Betray (8)  |  Cause (561)  |  Children (201)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Damage (38)  |  Decision (98)  |  Defenseless (3)  |  Democratic (12)  |  Do (1905)  |  Ennoble (8)  |  Forfeit (2)  |  Future (467)  |  Gamble (3)  |  Goal (155)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impose (22)  |  Irreversible (12)  |  Jeopardize (2)  |  Live (650)  |  Maker (34)  |  Often (109)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Result (700)  |  Right (473)  |  Risk (68)  |  Safety (58)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Society (350)  |  Stake (20)  |  Turn (454)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Undermine (6)  |  Volunteer (7)  |  Vote (16)

Technology and production can be great benefactors of man, but they are mindless instruments, and if undirected they careen along with a momentum of their own. In our country, they pulverize everything in their path—the landscape, the natural environment,
The Greening of America (1970).
Science quotes on:  |  Benefactor (6)  |  Country (269)  |  Everything (489)  |  Great (1610)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mindless (4)  |  Momentum (10)  |  Natural (810)  |  Path (159)  |  Production (190)  |  Pulverize (3)  |  Technology (281)

Television, films, and newspapers are forms of pollution for us and our children. They sow seeds of violence and anxiety in us and pollute our consciousness, just as we destroy our environment by farming with chemicals, clear-cutting the trees, and polluting the water. We need to protect the ecology of the Earth and the ecology of the mind, or this kind of violence and recklessness will spill over into even more areas of life.
In Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (1993), 132.
Science quotes on:  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Farm (28)  |  Film (12)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Protect (65)  |  Television (33)  |  Tree (269)  |  Violence (37)  |  Water (503)

The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.
In Silent Spring (1962), 297.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Arrogance (22)  |  Biology (232)  |  Control (182)  |  Convenience (54)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Neanderthal (7)  |  Phrase (61)

The advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic evolution of the Earth; it is seen in the unfolding of every single organism on its surface, and in the multiplication of kinds of organisms; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated in the civilized individual, or in the aggregate of races; it is seen in the evolution of Society in respect alike of its political, its religious, and its economical organization; and it is seen in the evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the remotest past which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of yesterday, that in which Progress essentially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.
Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Activity (218)  |  Advance (298)  |  Advancement (63)  |  Aggregate (24)  |  Aggregation (6)  |  Alike (60)  |  Back (395)  |  Change (639)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Climate (102)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Consist (223)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Daily (91)  |  Daily Life (18)  |  Differentiation (28)  |  Early (196)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Economy (59)  |  Endless (60)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fathom (15)  |  Geology (240)  |  Heterogeneity (4)  |  Homogeneity (9)  |  Homogeneous (17)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Individual (420)  |  Induction (81)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Organism (231)  |  Organization (120)  |  Past (355)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Process (439)  |  Product (166)  |  Progress (492)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Respect (212)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Single (365)  |  Society (350)  |  Succession (80)  |  Successive (73)  |  Surface (223)  |  Through (846)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Unfolding (16)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Yesterday (37)

The choice of zoology as a main subject [at university] was to follow up my childhood love of nature. … My animal studies never became quite what I had hoped for. We hardly heard of wild beasts and the way they lived in the wilderness. We sliced up intestines and looked at them under the microscope … but their life and function in the environment was ignored in favor of their Latin names. … Was our knowledge of nature superior to, or only different from, that of the eagle-eyed Polynesian islanders, who specialized in appraising nature the way it could best benefit man? I had to think as a scientist now. Not as a Polynesian yet. Knowledge was to be sought independently of its purpose.
In Ch. 1, 'Farewell to Civilization', Fatu-Hiva (1974), 9-10.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Appraise (2)  |  Beast (58)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Different (595)  |  Favor (69)  |  Function (235)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Independent (74)  |  Intestine (16)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Latin (44)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Polynesian (2)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Slice (3)  |  Specialized (9)  |  Study (701)  |  Superior (88)  |  Think (1122)  |  Wild (96)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  Zoology (38)

The choice to 'do nothing' in response to the mounting evidence is actually a choice to continue and even accelerate the reckless environmental destruction that is creating the catastrophe at hand.
Al Gore
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (2006), 37.
Science quotes on:  |  Accelerate (11)  |  Catastrophe (35)  |  Choice (114)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Continue (179)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Do (1905)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Response (56)

The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens) and human free will (in the factual rather than theological sense) are conjoined concepts, and no better evidence can be produced than the ‘experimental’ production of markedly different solutions in identical environments.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Both (496)  |  Concept (242)  |  Conjoin (2)  |  Contingency (11)  |  Culture (157)  |  Different (595)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Factual (8)  |  Free (239)  |  Free Will (15)  |  General (521)  |  History (716)  |  Homo Sapiens (23)  |  Human (1512)  |  Identical (55)  |  Life (1870)  |  Markedly (2)  |  Produce (117)  |  Produced (187)  |  Production (190)  |  Sense (785)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Theological (3)  |  Will (2350)

The contributions of physiological knowledge to an understanding of distribution are necessarily inferential. Distribution is a historical phenomenon, and the data ordinarily obtained by students of physiology are essentially instantaneous. However, every organism has a line of ancestors which extends back to the beginning of life on earth and which, during this immensity of time, has invariably been able to avoid, to adapt to, or to compensate for environmental changes.
From 'The role of physiology in the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates', collected in C.L. Hubbs (ed.), Zoogeography: Publ. 51 (1958), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Back (395)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Change (639)  |  Compensate (3)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Data (162)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Essentially (15)  |  Extend (129)  |  Historical (70)  |  Immensity (30)  |  Inferential (2)  |  Instantaneous (4)  |  Invariably (35)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life On Earth (16)  |  Line (100)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Organism (231)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Student (317)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

The crescendo of noise—whether it comes from truck or jackhammer, siren or airplane—is more than an irritating nuisance. It intrudes on privacy, shatters serenity, and can inflict pain. We dare not be complacent about this ever mounting volume of noise. In the years ahead, it can bring even more discomfort—and worse—to the lives of people.
In 'Special Message to the Congress on Conservation: “To Renew a Nation” (8 Mar 1968). Collected in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson: 1968-69 (1970), 363. https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1623768977 Johnson, Lyndon B. - 1970
Science quotes on:  |  Airplane (43)  |  Complacent (7)  |  Crescendo (3)  |  Dare (55)  |  Discomfort (4)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Increase (225)  |  Inflict (4)  |  Intrude (3)  |  Irritate (4)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  More (2558)  |  Noise (40)  |  Nuisance (10)  |  Pain (144)  |  People (1031)  |  Privacy (7)  |  Serenity (11)  |  Shatter (8)  |  Siren (4)  |  Truck (3)  |  Volume (25)  |  Year (963)

The diversity of life is extraordinary. There is said to be a million or so different kinds of living animals, and hundreds of thousands of kinds of plants. But we don’t need to think of the world at large. It is amazing enough to stop and look at a forest or at a meadow—at the grass and trees and caterpillars and hawks and deer. How did all these different kinds of things come about; what forces governed their evolution; what forces maintain their numbers and determine their survival or extinction; what are their relations to each other and to the physical environment in which they live? These are the problems of natural history.
In The Nature of Natural History (1950), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Amazing (35)  |  Animal (651)  |  Caterpillar (5)  |  Deer (11)  |  Determine (152)  |  Different (595)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Enough (341)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Force (497)  |  Forest (161)  |  Govern (66)  |  Grass (49)  |  Hawk (4)  |  History (716)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Kind (564)  |  Large (398)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Look (584)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Meadow (21)  |  Million (124)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Plant (320)  |  Problem (731)  |  Relation (166)  |  Survival (105)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Tree (269)  |  World (1850)

The elements of human nature are the learning rules, emotional reinforcers, and hormonal feedback loops that guide the development of social behaviour into certain channels as opposed to others. Human nature is not just the array of outcomes attained in existing societies. It is also the potential array that might be achieved through conscious design by future societies. By looking over the realized social systems of hundreds of animal species and deriving the principles by which these systems have evolved, we can be certain that all human choices represent only a tiny subset of those theoretically possible. Human nature is, moreover, a hodgepodge of special genetic adaptations to an environment largely vanished, the world of the Ice­Age hunter-gatherer.
In On Human Nature (1978), 196.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Age (509)  |  Animal (651)  |  Attain (126)  |  Behaviour (42)  |  Certain (557)  |  Choice (114)  |  Design (203)  |  Development (441)  |  Element (322)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Feedback (10)  |  Future (467)  |  Gene (105)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Guide (107)  |  Hormone (11)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Hunter-Gatherer (2)  |  Ice (58)  |  Ice Age (10)  |  Learning (291)  |  Looking (191)  |  Loop (6)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possible (560)  |  Potential (75)  |  Principle (530)  |  Represent (157)  |  Rule (307)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Special (188)  |  Species (435)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Tiny (74)  |  World (1850)

The essential character of a species in biology is, that it is a group of living organisms, separated from all other such groups by a set of distinctive characters, having relations to the environment not identical with those of any other group of organisms, and having the power of continuously reproducing its like. Genera are merely assemblages of a number of these species which have a closer resemblance to each other in certain important and often prominent characters than they have to any other species.
In 'The Method of Organic Evolution', Fortnightly Review (1895), 57, 441.
Science quotes on:  |  Assemblage (17)  |  Biology (232)  |  Certain (557)  |  Character (259)  |  Closer (43)  |  Continuously (7)  |  Distinctive (25)  |  Essential (210)  |  Genus (27)  |  Group (83)  |  Identical (55)  |  Important (229)  |  Living (492)  |  Merely (315)  |  Number (710)  |  Often (109)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Prominent (6)  |  Relation (166)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Separate (151)  |  Set (400)  |  Species (435)

The feudal model of agriculture collided, first, with environmental limits and then with a massive external shock – the Black Death. After that, there was a demographic shock: too few workers for the land, which raised their wages and made the old feudal obligation system impossible to enforce. The labour shortage also forced technological innovation. The new technologies that underpinned the rise of merchant capitalism were the ones that stimulated commerce (printing and accountancy), the creation of tradeable wealth (mining, the compass and fast ships) and productivity (mathematics and the scientific method).
In 'The End of Capitalism Has Begun', The Guardian (17 Jul 2015) (online).
Science quotes on:  |  Accountant (4)  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Black Death (2)  |  Capitalism (12)  |  Commerce (23)  |  Compass (37)  |  Creation (350)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Labor (200)  |  Limit (294)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mining (22)  |  Plague (42)  |  Printing (25)  |  Productivity (23)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Ship (69)  |  Shortage (6)  |  Stimulate (21)  |  Technology (281)  |  Trade (34)  |  Wage (7)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Worker (34)

The Industrial Revolution as a whole was not designed. It took shape gradually as industrialists and engineers figured out how to make things. The result is that we put billions of pounds of toxic materials in the air, water and soil every year and generate gigantic amounts of waste. If our goal is to destroy the world—to produce global warming and toxicity and endocrine disruption—we're doing great.
In interview article, 'Designing For The Future', Newsweek (15 May 2005).
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Amount (153)  |  Billion (104)  |  Design (203)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Disruption (3)  |  Doing (277)  |  Endocrine (2)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Global (39)  |  Global Warming (29)  |  Goal (155)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Great (1610)  |  Industrial Revolution (10)  |  Manufacturing (29)  |  Material (366)  |  Result (700)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Soil (98)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Toxicity (2)  |  Toxin (8)  |  Warming (24)  |  Waste (109)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

The interactions of man with his environment are so complex that only an ecological approach to nutrition permits an understanding of the whole spectrum of factors determining the nutritional problems that exist in human societies.
World Health Organization, Nutrition in Preventive Medicine, 13. From http://whqlibdoc.who.int/monograph/WHO_MONO_62_(chp1).pdf
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Complex (202)  |  Ecology (81)  |  Exist (458)  |  Human (1512)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nutrition (25)  |  Permit (61)  |  Problem (731)  |  Spectrum (35)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Whole (756)

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources…. By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated.
In The Population Explosion (1990), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Already (226)  |  Area (33)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Carrying capacity (3)  |  Density (25)  |  Deplete (3)  |  Entire (50)  |  Human (1512)  |  Key (56)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Nation (208)  |  Nonrenewable Resources (2)  |  Number (710)  |  Overpopulation (6)  |  People (1031)  |  Planet (402)  |  Population (115)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Relative (42)  |  Resource (74)  |  Standard (64)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Virtually (6)

The land is the only living thing. Men are merely mortals.… The land is a mother that never dies.
Anonymous
Maori Polynesian saying. As quoted in Jean Hobbs, Hawaii: A Pageant of the Soil (1935), ix.
Science quotes on:  |  Death (406)  |  Land (131)  |  Living (492)  |  Merely (315)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Mother (116)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Thing (1914)

The moment man first picked up a stone or a branch to use as a tool, he altered irrevocably the balance between him and his environment. From this point on, the way in which the world around him changed was different. It was no longer regular or predictable. New objects appeared that were not recognizable as a mutation of something that existed before, and as each one merged it altered the environment not for one season, but for ever.
from Introduction to Connections by James Burke, Macmillan (1978)
Science quotes on:  |  Alter (64)  |  Altered (32)  |  Altering (3)  |  Balance (82)  |  Branch (155)  |  Change (639)  |  Different (595)  |  Exist (458)  |  First (1302)  |  Irrevocable (3)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moment (260)  |  Mutation (40)  |  New (1273)  |  Object (438)  |  Point (584)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Regular (48)  |  Season (47)  |  Something (718)  |  Stone (168)  |  Tool (129)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Conservation (187)  |  Culture (157)  |  Ethic (39)  |  Important (229)  |  Issue (46)  |  Lack (127)  |  Mention (84)  |  Most (1728)  |  Rarely (21)

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired in value. Conservation means development as much as it does protection.
Speech before Colorado Livestock Association, Denver, Colorado, 29 Aug 1910. The New Nationalism (1910), 52. In Suzy Platt, Respectfully Quoted (1993), 64. This is one of the quotations inscribed in the Roosevelt Memorial rotunda at the American Museum of Natural History. It is also in the artwork on Cox Corridor II, first floor House wing, U.S. Capitol.
Science quotes on:  |  Conservation (187)  |  Development (441)  |  Generation (256)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nation (208)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Resource (23)  |  Next (238)  |  Protection (41)  |  Sustainable (14)  |  Turn (454)  |  Value (393)

The neutral zone of selective advantage in the neighbourhood of zero is thus so narrow that changes in the environment, and in the genetic constitution of species, must cause this zone to be crossed and perhaps recrossed relatively rapidly in the course of evolutionary change, so that many possible gene substitutions may have a fluctuating history of advance and regression before the final balance of selective advantage is determined.
'The Distribution of Gene Ratios for Rare Mutations', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1930, 50, 219.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Balance (82)  |  Cause (561)  |  Change (639)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Course (413)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Final (121)  |  Gene (105)  |  Genetic (110)  |  History (716)  |  Must (1525)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Neutral (15)  |  Possible (560)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Regression (2)  |  Selective (21)  |  Species (435)  |  Zero (38)

The next decade will perhaps raise us a step above despair to a cleaner, clearer wisdom and biology cannot fail to help in this. As we become increasingly aware of the ethical problems raised by science and technology, the frontiers between the biological and social sciences are clearly of critical importance—in population density and problems of hunger, psychological stress, pollution of the air and water and exhaustion of irreplaceable resources.
As quoted in 'H. Bentley Glass', New York Times (12 Jan 1970), 96.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Air Pollution (13)  |  Awareness (42)  |  Become (821)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Cleaner (2)  |  Clearer (4)  |  Critical (73)  |  Decade (66)  |  Density (25)  |  Despair (40)  |  Ethical (34)  |  Ethics (53)  |  Exhaustion (18)  |  Fail (191)  |  Frontier (41)  |  Help (116)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Importance (299)  |  Irreplaceable (3)  |  Next (238)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Population (115)  |  Problem (731)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Resource (74)  |  Science And Technology (46)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Step (234)  |  Stress (22)  |  Technology (281)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Pollution (17)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wisdom (235)

The nucleus has to take care of the inheritance of the heritable characters, while the surrounding cytoplasm is concerned with accommodation or adaptation to the environment.
Generelle Morphologie (1866), Vol. 1, 287-8. Trans. Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (1982), 672.
Science quotes on:  |  Accommodation (9)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Care (203)  |  Cell (146)  |  Character (259)  |  Concern (239)  |  Cytoplasm (6)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Nucleus (54)

The outlook seems grim. Natural selection under civilized conditions may lead mankind to evolve towards a state of genetic overspecialization for living in gadget-ridden environments. It is certainly up to man to decide whether this direction of his evolution is or is not desirable. If it is not, man has, or soon will have, the knowledge requisite to redirect the evolution of his species pretty much as he sees fit. Perhaps we should not be too dogmatic about this choice of direction. We may be awfully soft compared to paleolithic men when it comes to struggling, unaided by gadgets, with climatic difficulties and wild beasts. Most of us feel most of the time that this is not a very great loss. If our remote descendants grow to be even more effete than we are, they may conceivably be compensated by acquiring genotypes conducive to kindlier dispositions and greater intellectual capacities than those prevalent in mankind today.
[Co-author with American statistician Gordon Allen.]
Theodosius Dobzhansky and Gordon Allen, 'Does Natural Selection Continue to Operate in Modern Mankind?', American Anthropologist, 1956, 58 599.
Science quotes on:  |  Author (175)  |  Beast (58)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Choice (114)  |  Condition (362)  |  Descendant (18)  |  Desirable (33)  |  Direction (185)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Feel (371)  |  Fit (139)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Genotype (8)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Grow (247)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lead (391)  |  Living (492)  |  Loss (117)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Outlook (32)  |  Paleolithic (2)  |  Remote (86)  |  See (1094)  |  Selection (130)  |  Soft (30)  |  Soon (187)  |  Species (435)  |  State (505)  |  Statistician (27)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Wild (96)  |  Will (2350)

The phenomenon of emergence takes place at critical points of instability that arise from fluctuations in the environment, amplified by feedback loops. Emergence results in the creation of novelty, and this novelty is often qualitatively different from the phenomenon out of which it emerged.
In The Hidden Connections (2002), 116-117.
Science quotes on:  |  Amplification (3)  |  Amplified (6)  |  Arise (162)  |  Creation (350)  |  Critical (73)  |  Critical Point (3)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Emergence (35)  |  Feedback (10)  |  Fluctuation (15)  |  Instability (4)  |  Loop (6)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Point (584)  |  Qualitative (15)  |  Result (700)

The philosophy that I have worked under most of my life is that the serious study of natural history is an activity which has far-reaching effects in every aspect of a person’s life. It ultimately makes people protective of the environment in a very committed way. It is my opinion that the study of natural history should be the primary avenue for creating environmentalists.
As quoted in William V. Mealy, Peter Friederici and Roger Tory Peterson Institute, Value in American Wildlife Art: Proceedings of the 1992 Forum (1992), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Avenue (14)  |  Committed (2)  |  Create (245)  |  Effect (414)  |  Environmentalist (7)  |  Far-Reaching (9)  |  History (716)  |  Life (1870)  |  Make (25)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Opinion (291)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Primary (82)  |  Protective (5)  |  Serious (98)  |  Study (701)  |  Ultimately (56)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)

The process of mutation is the only known source of the raw materials of genetic variability, and hence of evolution. It is subject to experimental study, and considerable progress has been accomplished in this study in recent years. An apparent paradox has been disclosed. Although the living matter becomes adapted to its environment through formation of superior genetic patterns from mutational components, the process of mutation itself is not adaptive. On the contrary, the mutants which arise are, with rare exceptions, deleterious to their carriers, at least in the environments which the species normally encounters. Some of them are deleterious apparently in all environments. Therefore, the mutation process alone, not corrected and guided by natural selection, would result in degeneration and extinction rather than in improved adaptedness.
'On Methods of Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology', American Scientist, 1957, 45, 385.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Alone (324)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Arise (162)  |  Become (821)  |  Component (51)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Degeneration (11)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Exception (74)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Formation (100)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Known (453)  |  Living (492)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mutation (40)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Process (439)  |  Progress (492)  |  Rare (94)  |  Raw (28)  |  Recent (78)  |  Result (700)  |  Selection (130)  |  Species (435)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Superior (88)  |  Through (846)  |  Year (963)

The quality of Mersey is not strained. A century ago the river of that name, in England, afforded not less than sixty varieties of fish; now it affords none. (1876)
Newspaper
Description of the turbid, polluted River Mersey, Liverpool, England in the nineteenth century. In Daily Alta California (21 Aug 1876), 28, No. 9633, 2. The expression “The quality of Mersey is not strained” is seen repeated in various sources through the years to the present. The pun refers a line in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice that “The quality of mercy is not strained.” An earlier mention appears in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Dec 1870), 42, No. 247, 158.
Science quotes on:  |  Century (319)  |  Fish (130)  |  Liverpool (3)  |  Name (359)  |  Pun (3)  |  Quality (139)  |  River (140)  |  River Mersey (3)  |  Strained (3)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Pollution (17)

The real problem is not the loss of a particular species but the loss of particular kinds of environments. … When you lose a big, dramatic species like the whooping crane, you don’t notice that you are also losing other plants and animals. … We are only putting Band-Aids on until we recognize we need to be protecting environments, not just endangered species.
In Philip Shabecoff, 'Further Safeguards Urged For Endangered Species', New York Times (14 Mar 1985), B9. Attenborough was in America to testify before a Congressional subcommittee considering the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act (originally passed in 1973).
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Big (55)  |  Dramatic (19)  |  Endangered Species (6)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lose (165)  |  Loss (117)  |  Need (320)  |  Notice (81)  |  Particular (80)  |  Plant (320)  |  Problem (731)  |  Protect (65)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Species (435)  |  Whooping Crane (3)

The responsibility for maintaining the composition of the blood in respect to other constituents devolves largely upon the kidneys. It is no exaggeration to say that the composition of the blood is determined not by what the mouth ingests but by what the kidneys keep; they are the master chemists of our internal environment, which, so to speak, they synthesize in reverse. When, among other duties, they excrete the ashes of our body fires, or remove from the blood the infinite variety of foreign substances which are constantly being absorbed from our indiscriminate gastrointestinal tracts, these excretory operations are incidental to the major task of keeping our internal environment in an ideal, balanced state. Our glands, our muscles, our bones, our tendons, even our brains, are called upon to do only one kind of physiological work, while our kidneys are called upon to perform an innumerable variety of operations. Bones can break, muscles can atrophy, glands can loaf, even the brain can go to sleep, without immediately endangering our survival, but when the kidneys fail to manufacture the proper kind of blood neither bone, muscle, gland nor brain can carry on.
'The Evolution of the Kidney', Lectures on the Kidney (1943), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Absorption (13)  |  Ash (21)  |  Atrophy (8)  |  Balance (82)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blood (144)  |  Body (557)  |  Bone (101)  |  Brain (281)  |  Break (109)  |  Call (781)  |  Carry (130)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Composition (86)  |  Condition (362)  |  Constant (148)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Determined (9)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exaggeration (16)  |  Excretion (7)  |  Fail (191)  |  Failure (176)  |  Fire (203)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Gland (14)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Incidental (15)  |  Indiscriminate (2)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Internal (69)  |  Keep (104)  |  Kidney (19)  |  Kind (564)  |  Loaf (5)  |  Major (88)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  Manufacturing (29)  |  Master (182)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Muscle (47)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perform (123)  |  Performance (51)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Proper (150)  |  Removal (12)  |  Remove (50)  |  Respect (212)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Reverse (33)  |  Say (989)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Speak (240)  |  State (505)  |  Substance (253)  |  Survival (105)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Task (152)  |  Tract (7)  |  Variety (138)  |  Work (1402)

The same algebraic sum of positive and negative charges in the nucleus, when the arithmetical sum is different, gives what I call “isotopes” or “isotopic elements,” because they occupy the same place in the periodic table. They are chemically identical, and save only as regards the relatively few physical properties which depend upon atomic mass directly, physically identical also. Unit changes of this nuclear charge, so reckoned algebraically, give the successive places in the periodic table. For any one “place” or any one nuclear charge, more than one number of electrons in the outer-ring system may exist, and in such a case the element exhibits variable valency. But such changes of number, or of valency, concern only the ring and its external environment. There is no in- and out-going of electrons between ring and nucleus.
Concluding paragraph of 'Intra-atomic Charge', Nature (1913), 92, 400. Collected in Alfred Romer, Radiochemistry and the Discovery of Isotopes (1970), 251-252.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Call (781)  |  Change (639)  |  Charge (63)  |  Concern (239)  |  Depend (238)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Electron (96)  |  Element (322)  |  Exist (458)  |  Identical (55)  |  Isotope (4)  |  Mass (160)  |  More (2558)  |  Negative (66)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Occupy (27)  |  Periodic Table (19)  |  Physical (518)  |  Place (192)  |  Positive (98)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Regard (312)  |  Save (126)  |  Successive (73)  |  Sum (103)  |  System (545)  |  Table (105)  |  Valency (4)  |  Variable (37)

The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit.
In his 'Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty' written to Congress (8 Feb 1965). It was a broad initiative aimed at beautifying America, guaranteeing water and air quality, and preserving natural areas. In Lyndon B. Johnson: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President (1965), Vol.1, 156. United States. President (1963-1969 : Johnson), Lyndon Baines Johnson, United States. Office of the Federal Register - 1970
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Charm (54)  |  City (87)  |  Classic (13)  |  Concern (239)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Control (182)  |  Cooperation (38)  |  Countryside (5)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Deal (192)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Development (441)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Object (438)  |  Problem (731)  |  Protect (65)  |  Protection (41)  |  Receive (117)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Require (229)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Restoration (5)  |  Reward (72)  |  Salvage (2)  |  Save (126)  |  Saving (20)  |  Society (350)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Technology (281)  |  Total (95)  |  Welfare (30)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

The scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute. It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests. As our ideas are gradually brought into conformity with the facts by the painful process of selection,—for intuition runs equally into truth and into error, and can settle nothing if not controlled by experience,—we gain vastly in our command over our environment. This is the fundamental value of natural science
In The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory (1896), 22.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Command (60)  |  Conformity (15)  |  Control (182)  |  Equally (129)  |  Error (339)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Gain (146)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Idea (881)  |  Interest (416)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Painful (12)  |  Practical (225)  |  Process (439)  |  Rest (287)  |  Run (158)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Selection (130)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Value (393)

The secrets of evolution are death and time—the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.
Cosmos (1980, 1985), 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Death (406)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Lifeform (2)  |  Long (778)  |  Mutation (40)  |  Number (710)  |  Secret (216)  |  Small (489)  |  Succession (80)  |  Time (1911)

The stationary state would make fewer demands on our environmental resources, but much greater demands on our moral resources.
In J. Harte and R. Socolow, 'Toward a Stationary-State Economy', Patient Earth (1971), 237.
Science quotes on:  |  Demand (131)  |  Fewer (11)  |  Greater (288)  |  Moral (203)  |  Resource (74)  |  State (505)  |  Stationary (11)

The successful launching of the Sputnik was a demonstration of one of the highest scientific and technological achievements of man—a tantalizing invitation both to the militarist in search of ever more devastating means of destruction and to the astronomer searching for new means of carrying his instruments away from their earthbound environment.
In BBC Reith Lecture (9 Nov 1958), 'Astronomy Breaks Free', published as The Individual and the Universe (1959, 1961), 72.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Both (496)  |  Carry (130)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Devastating (6)  |  Earthbound (4)  |  Highest (19)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Invitation (12)  |  Launch (21)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Military (45)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Search (175)  |  Searching (7)  |  Sputnik (5)  |  Success (327)  |  Successful (134)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)

The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago—as even their infinitely more numerous analogues on the earth beneath are likely to disappear—had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
In The Dance of Life (1923), 352.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogue (7)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Hand (149)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Human (1512)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Likely (36)  |  Long (778)  |  Long Ago (12)  |  Moon (252)  |  More (2558)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Reach (286)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sun (407)

The Superfund legislation set up a system of insurance premiums collected from the chemical industry to clean up toxic wastes. This new program may prove to be as far-reaching and important as any accomplishment of my administration. The reduction of the threat to America's health and safety from thousands of toxic-waste sites will continue to be an urgent but bitterly fought issue—another example for the conflict between the public welfare and the profits of a few private despoilers of our nation's environment.
Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1980), 591.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Administration (15)  |  America (143)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Clean (52)  |  Collect (19)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Continue (179)  |  Despoiler (2)  |  Health (210)  |  Importance (299)  |  Industry (159)  |  Insurance (12)  |  Issue (46)  |  Legislation (10)  |  Nation (208)  |  New (1273)  |  Premium (2)  |  Private (29)  |  Profit (56)  |  Prove (261)  |  Public (100)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Safety (58)  |  Set (400)  |  Site (19)  |  System (545)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Threat (36)  |  Toxic Waste (4)  |  Urgent (15)  |  Waste (109)  |  Welfare (30)  |  Will (2350)

The supersonic transport (SST) summarizes, in one project, our society’s demented priorities. It is a virtual catalog of the reasons why the United States is ailing in the midst of its affluence—nationalistic vanity, pandering to corporate profit, the worship of technology, and the deteriorating human environment.
In Garrett De Bell, ed., The Environmental Handbook (1970), 177.
Science quotes on:  |  Affluence (3)  |  Catalog (5)  |  Corporate (4)  |  Deteriorate (3)  |  Human (1512)  |  Midst (8)  |  Nationalistic (2)  |  Pander (3)  |  Priority (11)  |  Profit (56)  |  Project (77)  |  Reason (766)  |  Society (350)  |  State (505)  |  Summarize (10)  |  Supersonic (4)  |  Technology (281)  |  Transport (31)  |  United States (31)  |  Vanity (20)  |  Virtual (5)  |  Why (491)  |  Worship (32)

The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge.
Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916), 400.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Aim (175)  |  Desire (212)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Enable (122)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Method (531)  |  Need (320)  |  Organization (120)  |  Situation (117)  |  Term (357)  |  Theory (1015)

The threat to America's health and safety from thousands of toxic-waste sites will continue to be an urgent but bitterly fought issue—another example for the conflict between the public welfare and the profits of a few private despoilers of our nation’s environment.
In Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1980), 591.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Bitterly (2)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Continue (179)  |  Despoiler (2)  |  Example (98)  |  Fight (49)  |  Health (210)  |  Issue (46)  |  Nation (208)  |  Private (29)  |  Profit (56)  |  Public (100)  |  Safety (58)  |  Site (19)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Threat (36)  |  Toxic Waste (4)  |  Urgent (15)  |  Welfare (30)

The Truly Healthy environment is not merely safe but stimulating.
Environmental Science and Technology (Feb 1968).
Science quotes on:  |  Health (210)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Merely (315)  |  Safe (61)  |  Safety (58)  |  Stimulation (18)  |  Truly (118)

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.
In The Nature of Natural History (1961, 2014), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Building (158)  |  Community (111)  |  Do (1905)  |  Group (83)  |  History (716)  |  Individual (420)  |  Larger (14)  |  Level (69)  |  Life (1870)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Organism (231)  |  Organization (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plant (320)  |  Population (115)  |  Study (701)  |  Think (1122)  |  World (1850)

There are fewer chemical pollutants in the air. Our drinking water is safer. Our food standards have been raised. We’ve cleaned up more toxic waste sites in three years than the previous administrations did in twelve. The environment is cleaner, and we have fought off the most vigorous assault on environmental protection since we began to protect the environment in 1970. We are moving in the right direction to the 21st century.
Remarks at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (29 Oct 1996) while seeking re-election. On the American Presidency Project web page.
Science quotes on:  |  21st Century (11)  |  Administration (15)  |  Air (366)  |  Assault (12)  |  Century (319)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Clean (52)  |  Cleaning (7)  |  Direction (185)  |  Drink (56)  |  Drinking (21)  |  Food (213)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Pollutant (2)  |  Protect (65)  |  Protection (41)  |  Right (473)  |  Safety (58)  |  Site (19)  |  Standard (64)  |  Toxic Waste (4)  |  Waste (109)  |  Water (503)  |  Year (963)

There are those who say that the human kidney was created to keep the blood pure, or more precisely, to keep our internal environment in an ideal balanced state. This I must deny. I grant that the human kidney is a marvelous organ, but I cannot grant that it was purposefully designed to excrete urine or to regulate the composition of the blood or to subserve the physiological welfare of Homo sapiens in any sense. Rather I contend that the human kidney manufactures the kind of urine that it does, and it maintains the blood in the composition which that fluid has, because this kidney has a certain functional architecture; and it owes that architecture not to design or foresight or to any plan, but to the fact that the earth is an unstable sphere with a fragile crust, to the geologic revolutions that for six hundred million years have raised and lowered continents and seas, to the predacious enemies, and heat and cold, and storms and droughts; to the unending succession of vicissitudes that have driven the mutant vertebrates from sea into fresh water, into desiccated swamps, out upon the dry land, from one habitation to another, perpetually in search of the free and independent life, perpetually failing, for one reason or another, to find it.
From Fish to Philosopher (1953), 210-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Architecture (50)  |  Balance (82)  |  Blood (144)  |  Certain (557)  |  Cold (115)  |  Composition (86)  |  Contention (14)  |  Continent (79)  |  Creation (350)  |  Crust (43)  |  Denial (20)  |  Deny (71)  |  Design (203)  |  Drought (14)  |  Dry (65)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enemy (86)  |  Excretion (7)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Failure (176)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fluid (54)  |  Foresight (8)  |  Fragile (26)  |  Fragility (2)  |  Free (239)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Function (235)  |  Geology (240)  |  Grant (76)  |  Habitation (7)  |  Heat (180)  |  Homo Sapiens (23)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Independent (74)  |  Internal (69)  |  Keep (104)  |  Kidney (19)  |  Kind (564)  |  Land (131)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lowering (4)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Maintenance (21)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  Manufacturing (29)  |  Marvel (37)  |  Marvelous (31)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Mutant (2)  |  Organ (118)  |  Owe (71)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Perpetually (20)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Plan (122)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Predator (6)  |  Pure (299)  |  Purity (15)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Raise (38)  |  Reason (766)  |  Regulation (25)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Say (989)  |  French Saying (67)  |  Sea (326)  |  Search (175)  |  Sense (785)  |  Serve (64)  |  Sphere (118)  |  State (505)  |  Storm (56)  |  Storms (18)  |  Succession (80)  |  Swamp (9)  |  Unstable (9)  |  Urine (18)  |  Vertebrate (22)  |  Vicissitude (6)  |  Water (503)  |  Welfare (30)  |  Year (963)

There are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before. … we can't allow our nation to fall behind. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's happened. Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century. Time and again we've allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse.
Speech to the National Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting (27 Apr 2009).
Science quotes on:  |  Behind (139)  |  Business (156)  |  Century (319)  |  Credit (24)  |  Disagreement (14)  |  Domestic (27)  |  Essential (210)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fall (243)  |  Federal (6)  |  Fund (19)  |  Funding (20)  |  Grow (247)  |  Growth (200)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Health (210)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Invest (20)  |  Life (1870)  |  Luxury (21)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Nation (208)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Past (355)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Portion (86)  |  Product (166)  |  Prosperity (31)  |  Quality (139)  |  Research (753)  |  Say (989)  |  Security (51)  |  Somehow (48)  |  Support (151)  |  Tax (27)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unfortunately (40)

There is a theory that creativity arises when individuals are out of sync with their environment. To put it simply, people who fit in with their communities have insufficient motivation to risk their psyches in creating something truly new, while those who are out of sync are driven by the constant need to prove their worth.
In 'Beyond the Soapsuds Universe', Discover Magazine (1997). The author explains (in a blog found online) that this “idea comes from a theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote a book called Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. You do need someone to come in from outside. One of the theories about why mathematicians do their best work when they’re young is because they’re not yet educated enough to know what seems obviously wrong. So they try new things.”
Science quotes on:  |  Arise (162)  |  Arising (22)  |  Community (111)  |  Constant (148)  |  Creating (7)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Driven (4)  |  Fit (139)  |  Individual (420)  |  Insufficient (10)  |  Motivation (28)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  People (1031)  |  Proof (304)  |  Prove (261)  |  Psyche (9)  |  Risk (68)  |  Something (718)  |  Sync (2)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Truly (118)  |  Worth (172)

There is no gene ‘for’ such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail ... Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn’t even work directly on parts.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Bit (21)  |  Body (557)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Directly (25)  |  Embryonic (6)  |  External (62)  |  Gene (105)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Hundreds (6)  |  Influence (231)  |  Internal (69)  |  Leave (138)  |  Morphology (22)  |  Most (1728)  |  Part (235)  |  Selection (130)  |  Series (153)  |  Through (846)  |  Translate (21)  |  Unambiguous (6)  |  Work (1402)

This false belief that we own the Earth, or are its stewards, allow us to pay lip service to environmental policies and programmes but to continue with business as usual.
In The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity (2006, 2007), 173.
Science quotes on:  |  Allow (51)  |  Belief (615)  |  Business As Usual (2)  |  Continue (179)  |  Earth (1076)  |  False (105)  |  Lip Service (2)  |  Policy (27)  |  Program (57)  |  Steward (4)

This notion that “science” is something that belongs in a separate compartment of its own, apart from everyday life, is one that I should like to challenge. We live in a scientific age; yet we assume that knowledge of science is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings, isolated and priest-like in their laboratories. This is not true. It cannot be true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience. It is impossible to understand man without understanding his environment and the forces that have molded him physically and mentally.
Address upon receiving National Book Award at reception, Hotel Commodore, New York (27 Jan 1952). As cited in Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (1997), 218-219.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belong (168)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Everything (489)  |  Experience (494)  |  Force (497)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Isolation (32)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mold (37)  |  Notion (120)  |  Number (710)  |  Physical (518)  |  Prerogative (3)  |  Priest (29)  |  Reality (274)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Separate (151)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Why (491)

This remarkable [nuclear] energy is spreading its tentacles to almost all walks of life - be it power, agriculture, medicine, laser systems, satellite imagery or environment protection.
Interview in newsletter of the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (Oct 2001), online.
Science quotes on:  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Energy (373)  |  Imagery (3)  |  Laser (5)  |  Life (1870)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Energy (18)  |  Power (771)  |  Protection (41)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Satellite (30)  |  Spread (86)  |  System (545)  |  Tentacle (2)  |  Walk (138)

Those who nod sagely and quote the tragedy of the commons in relation to environmental problems from pollution of the atmosphere to poaching of national parks tend to forget that Garrett Hardin revised his conclusions many times…. He recognized, most importantly, that anarchy did not prevail on the common pastures of medieval England in the way he had described…. “A managed commons, though it may have other defects, is not automatically subject to the tragic fate of the unmanaged commons,” wrote Hardin…. At sea, where a common exists in most waters… None of Hardin’s requirements for a successfully managed common is fulfilled by high-seas fishery regimes.
In The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat (2004), 153-155.
Science quotes on:  |  Air Pollution (13)  |  Anarchy (8)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Automatic (16)  |  Common (447)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Defect (31)  |  England (43)  |  Exist (458)  |  Fate (76)  |  Fishery (3)  |  Forget (125)  |  Fulfilled (2)  |  Garrett Hardin (2)  |  High (370)  |  Medieval (12)  |  Most (1728)  |  National Park (4)  |  Ocean Pollution (10)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overfishing (27)  |  Pasture (15)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Problem (731)  |  Quote (46)  |  Recognized (3)  |  Regime (3)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Sea (326)  |  Subject (543)  |  Successful (134)  |  Tend (124)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tragedy (31)  |  Tragedy Of The Commons (2)  |  Tragic (19)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Pollution (17)  |  Way (1214)  |  Write (250)

Albert Einstein quote: Mistrust of every kind of authority
Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment–an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.
In P. A. Schilpp, (ed.), Part I, 'Autobiographical Notes', Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (1949, 1959), Vol. 1, 5. Translated by the P.A. Schilpp, from Einstein’s original German manuscript, written at age 67, (p.2, 4): “Durch Lesen populärwissenschaftlicher Bücher kam ich bald zu der Ueberzeugung, dass vieles in den Erzählungen der Bibel nicht wahr sein konnte. Die Folge war eine geradezu fanatische Freigeisterei, verbunden mit dem Eindruck, dass die Jugend vom Staate mit Vorbedacht belogen wird; es war ein niederschmetternder Eindruck. Das Misstrauen gegen jede Art Autorität erwuchs aus diesem Erlebnis, eine skeptische Einstellung gegen die Ueberzeugungen, welche in der jeweiligen sozialen Umwelt lebendig waren—eine Einstellung, die mich nicht wieder verlassen hat, wenn sie auch später durch bessere Einsicht in die kausalen Zusammenhänge ihre ursprünglische Schärfe verloren haben.”.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Author (175)  |  Being (1276)  |  Better (493)  |  Bible (105)  |  Book (413)  |  Causal (7)  |  Connection (171)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Couple (9)  |  Crush (19)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fanatic (7)  |  Freethinking (2)  |  Grow (247)  |  Impression (118)  |  Insight (107)  |  Intentionally (3)  |  Kind (564)  |  Late (119)  |  Leave (138)  |  Lie (370)  |  Mistrust (4)  |  Never (1089)  |  Orgy (3)  |  Popular (34)  |  Positively (4)  |  Reach (286)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Social (261)  |  Soon (187)  |  Specific (98)  |  State (505)  |  Story (122)  |  Temper (12)  |  Through (846)  |  Toward (45)  |  True (239)  |  Youth (109)

Throughout his career, [Richard] Drew tried to create an environment where people were encouraged to follow their instincts. He was known at 3M as a consummate mentor, encouraging and helping to train many of the company’s young scientists, who went on to develop successful products of their own, paving the way for 3M’s culture of innovation.
In Press Release (7 May 2007) on 3M Company website.
Science quotes on:  |  3M Company (2)  |  Career (86)  |  Company (63)  |  Consummate (5)  |  Create (245)  |  Culture (157)  |  Develop (278)  |  Richard G. Drew (6)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Encouraging (12)  |  Follow (389)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Known (453)  |  Mentor (3)  |  People (1031)  |  Product (166)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Successful (134)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Train (118)  |  Way (1214)  |  Young (253)

Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection ... Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.
In The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (1990, 2010), 38.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Accepting (22)  |  Accumulate (30)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Against (332)  |  Book (413)  |  Build (211)  |  Campaign (6)  |  Capricious (9)  |  Certain (557)  |  Change (639)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Constrain (11)  |  Darwinism (3)  |  Design (203)  |  Direction (185)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Example (98)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Good (906)  |  Hope (321)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Improve (64)  |  Influence (231)  |  Arthur Koestler (39)  |  Last (425)  |  Local (25)  |  Material (366)  |  Misunderstanding (13)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Order (638)  |  Random (42)  |  Raw (28)  |  Reject (67)  |  Selection (130)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Variant (9)  |  Variation (93)

Today when the public thinks of the products of science it is likely to think about environmental problems, an unproductive armament industry, careless or dishonest 'scientific' reports, Livermore cheers for 'nukes forever' and a huge amount of self-serving noise on every subject from global warming to 'the face of God'.
'Hard Times', Physics Today (Oct 1992), 45, 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Dishonest (7)  |  Dishonesty (9)  |  Face (214)  |  Forever (111)  |  Global (39)  |  Global Warming (29)  |  God (776)  |  Industry (159)  |  Noise (40)  |  Problem (731)  |  Product (166)  |  Publication (102)  |  Science And Society (25)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Self (268)  |  Serving (15)  |  Subject (543)  |  Think (1122)  |  Today (321)  |  Warming (24)

Truly, we do live on a “water planet.” For us, water is that critical issue that we need. It’s the most precious substance on the planet, and it links us to pretty much every environmental issue, including climate change, that we’re facing.
From interview by Kathleen Walter, Newsmax (28 Sep 2009).
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Climate (102)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Critical (73)  |  Do (1905)  |  Issue (46)  |  Link (48)  |  Live (650)  |  Most (1728)  |  Need (320)  |  Planet (402)  |  Precious (43)  |  Pretty (21)  |  Substance (253)  |  Truly (118)  |  Water (503)

Twenty centuries of “progress” have brought the average citizen a vote, a national anthem, a Ford, a bank account, and a high opinion of himself, but not the capacity to live in high density without befouling and denuding his environment, nor a conviction that such capacity, rather than such density, is the true test of whether he is civilized.
In Game Management (1933), 423.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Automobile (23)  |  Average (89)  |  Bank (31)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Density (25)  |  High (370)  |  Himself (461)  |  Live (650)  |  Money (178)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Progress (492)  |  Test (221)  |  Vote (16)

Undeveloped though the science [of chemistry] is, it already has great power to bring benefits. Those accruing to physical welfare are readily recognized, as in providing cures, improving the materials needed for everyday living, moving to ameliorate the harm which mankind by its sheer numbers does to the environment, to say nothing of that which even today attends industrial development. And as we continue to improve our understanding of the basic science on which applications increasingly depend, material benefits of this and other kinds are secured for the future.
Speech at the Nobel Banquet (10 Dec 1983) for his Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel: The Nobel Prizes (1984), 43.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Application (257)  |  Attend (67)  |  Basic (144)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Continue (179)  |  Cure (124)  |  Depend (238)  |  Development (441)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Future (467)  |  Great (1610)  |  Harm (43)  |  Improve (64)  |  Industrial (15)  |  Industrial Development (4)  |  Kind (564)  |  Living (492)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Material (366)  |  Need (320)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Power (771)  |  Provision (17)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Say (989)  |  Secured (18)  |  Today (321)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Undeveloped (6)  |  Welfare (30)

Unless man can make new and original adaptations to his environment as rapidly as his science can change the environment, our culture will perish.
On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961), 348.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Change (639)  |  Culture (157)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  New (1273)  |  Original (61)  |  Perish (56)  |  Rapidity (29)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Will (2350)

Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most ‘obvious,’ ‘accurate,’ and ‘natural’ style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Arise (162)  |  Art (680)  |  Benighted (2)  |  Complex (202)  |  Context (31)  |  Creature (242)  |  Define (53)  |  Draw (140)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Easily (36)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Experiment (736)  |  First (1302)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Invention (400)  |  Little (717)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Novel (35)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Poor (139)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Record (161)  |  Regulate (11)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Conscious (3)  |  Social (261)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Species (435)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Style (24)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Win (53)

Very old and wide-spread is the opinion that forests have an important impact on rainfall. ... If forests enhance the amount and frequency of precipitation simply by being there, deforestation as part of agricultural expansion everywhere, must necessarily result in less rainfall and more frequent droughts. This view is most poignantly expressed by the saying: Man walks the earth and desert follows his steps! ... It is not surprising that under such circumstances the issue of a link between forests and climate has ... been addressed by governments. Lately, the Italian government has been paying special attention to reforestation in Italy and its expected improvement of the climate. ... It must be prevented that periods of heavy rainfall alternate with droughts. ...In the Unites States deforestation plays an important role as well and is seen as the cause for a reduction in rainfall. ... committee chairman of the American Association for Advancement of Science demands decisive steps to extend woodland in order to counteract the increasing drought. ... some serious concerns. In 1873, in Vienna, the congress for agriculture and forestry discussed the problem in detail; and when the Prussian house of representatives ordered a special commission to examine a proposed law pertaining to the preservation and implementation of forests for safeguarding, it pointed out that the steady decrease in the water levels of Prussian rivers was one of the most serious consequences of deforestation only to be rectified by reforestation programs. It is worth mentioning that ... the same concerns were raised in Russia as well and governmental circles reconsidered the issue of deforestation.
as quoted in Eduard Brückner - The Sources and Consequences of Climate Change and Climate Variability in Historical Times editted by N. Stehr and H. von Storch (2000)
Science quotes on:  |  Advancement (63)  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Amount (153)  |  Association (49)  |  Attention (196)  |  Being (1276)  |  Cause (561)  |  Circle (117)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Climate (102)  |  Concern (239)  |  Congress (20)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Demand (131)  |  Desert (59)  |  Detail (150)  |  Drought (14)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enhance (17)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Examine (84)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Expect (203)  |  Express (192)  |  Extend (129)  |  Follow (389)  |  Forest (161)  |  Forestry (17)  |  Frequency (25)  |  Government (116)  |  House (143)  |  Impact (45)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Italian (13)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Old (499)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Order (638)  |  Period (200)  |  Point (584)  |  Precipitation (7)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Problem (731)  |  Rectified (4)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Reforestation (6)  |  Result (700)  |  River (140)  |  Role (86)  |  Serious (98)  |  Special (188)  |  Spread (86)  |  State (505)  |  Steady (45)  |  Step (234)  |  Unite (43)  |  View (496)  |  Walk (138)  |  Water (503)  |  Wide (97)  |  Worth (172)

Watching baseball under the lights is like observing dogs indoors, at a pedigree show. In both instances, the environment is too controlled to suit the species.
Baseball The Difference between Night and Day Christian Science Monitor, 3 Apr 85
Science quotes on:  |  Baseball (3)  |  Both (496)  |  Control (182)  |  Dog (70)  |  Indoors (2)  |  Light (635)  |  Observation (593)  |  Pedigree (3)  |  Show (353)  |  Species (435)  |  Suitable (10)  |  Watching (11)

We are already engaged in World War III. It is a war against nature, and it is simply no contest. As a result, the threat from the skies is no longer missiles but ozone-layer depletion and global warming, and the threat on land is the erosion of soil.
Guest Essay in G. Tyler Miller, Environmental Science: Working With the Earth (6th Ed, 1997), 258.
Science quotes on:  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Depletion (4)  |  Global Warming (29)  |  Missile (7)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Ozone Layer (3)  |  Soil Erosion (5)  |  Threat (36)  |  World War III (4)

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Child (333)  |  Develop (278)  |  Drain (12)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Future (467)  |  Irreplaceable (3)  |  Live (650)  |  Means (587)  |  People (1031)  |  Priceless (9)  |  Regard (312)  |  Resource (74)  |  World (1850)

We do live in a conceptual trough that encourages such yearning for unknown and romanticized greener pastures of other times. The future doesn’t seem promising, if only because we can extrapolate some disquieting present trends in to further deterioration: pollution, nationalism, environmental destruction, and aluminum bats. Therefore, we tend to take refuge in a rose-colored past ... I do not doubt the salutary, even the essential, properties of this curiously adaptive human trait, but we must also record the down side. Legends of past golden ages become impediments when we try to negotiate our current dilemma.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptive (3)  |  Age (509)  |  Aluminum (15)  |  Bat (10)  |  Become (821)  |  Color (155)  |  Conceptual (11)  |  Current (122)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Deterioration (10)  |  Dilemma (11)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Down (455)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Essential (210)  |  Extrapolate (3)  |  Far (158)  |  Future (467)  |  Golden (47)  |  Golden Age (11)  |  Green (65)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impediment (12)  |  Legend (18)  |  Live (650)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nationalism (5)  |  Negotiate (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Pasture (15)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Present (630)  |  Promise (72)  |  Property (177)  |  Record (161)  |  Refuge (15)  |  Romanticize (2)  |  Rose (36)  |  Salutary (5)  |  Seem (150)  |  Side (236)  |  Tend (124)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trait (23)  |  Trend (23)  |  Try (296)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Yearn (13)  |  Yearning (13)

We do not inhabit a perfected world where natural selection ruthlessly scrutinizes all organic structures and then molds them for optimal utility. Organisms inherit a body form and a style of embryonic development; these impose constraint s upon future change and adaptation. In many cases, evolutionary pathways reflect inherited patterns more than current environmental demands. These inheritances constrain, but they also provide opportunity. A potentially minor genetic change ... entails a host of complex, nonadaptive consequences ... What ‘play’ would evolution have if each structure were built for a restricted purpose and could be used for nothing else? How could humans learn to write if our brain had not evolved for hunting, social cohesion, or whatever, and could not transcend the adaptive boundaries of its original purpose?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Adaptive (3)  |  Body (557)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Brain (281)  |  Build (211)  |  Case (102)  |  Change (639)  |  Cohesion (7)  |  Complex (202)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Constrain (11)  |  Constraint (13)  |  Current (122)  |  Demand (131)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Embryonic (6)  |  Entail (4)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Host (16)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hunt (32)  |  Hunting (23)  |  Impose (22)  |  Inhabit (18)  |  Inherit (35)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Inherited (21)  |  Learn (672)  |  Minor (12)  |  Mold (37)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Optimal (4)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organism (231)  |  Original (61)  |  Pathway (15)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Play (116)  |  Provide (79)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Restrict (13)  |  Scrutinize (7)  |  Selection (130)  |  Social (261)  |  Structure (365)  |  Style (24)  |  Transcend (27)  |  Utility (52)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

We find that one of the most rewarding features of being scientists these days ... is the common bond which the search for truth provides to scholars of many tongues and many heritages. In the long run, that spirit will inevitably have a constructive effect on the benefits which man can derive from knowledge of himself and his environment.
Nobel Prize Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1972).
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Bond (46)  |  Common (447)  |  Constructive (15)  |  Derive (70)  |  Effect (414)  |  Feature (49)  |  Find (1014)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Himself (461)  |  In The Long Run (18)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Language (308)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Most (1728)  |  Provide (79)  |  Reward (72)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Search (175)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Will (2350)

We make a lot of mistakes in the environmental space. … We don’t do a good-enough job of asking, “What are the fundamentals of telling a good story?” And that is not statistics, it’s usually not science, or at least complex science. It’s people stories. … It’s got to have adventure, it’s got to be funny, it’s got to pull my heart strings, it’s got to have conflict, setting, character. It’s a story. And if it doesn’t have those things, it can be the best-meaning story in the world, and nobody’s going to buy it.
From interview with Dan Conover, 'A Conversation with Philippe Cousteau Jr.', Charleston City Paper (27 Jul 2012).
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Asking (74)  |  Best (467)  |  Buy (21)  |  Character (259)  |  Complex (202)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Do (1905)  |  Enough (341)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Funny (11)  |  Good (906)  |  Heart (243)  |  Job (86)  |  Lot (151)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Nobody (103)  |  People (1031)  |  Pull (43)  |  Setting (44)  |  Space (523)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Story (122)  |  String (22)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Usually (176)  |  World (1850)

We must be part not only of the human community, but of the whole community; we must acknowledge some sort of oneness not only with our neighbors, our countrymen and our civilization but also some respect for the natural as well as for the man-made community. Ours is not only “one world” in the sense usually implied by that term. It is also “one earth”. Without some acknowledgement of that fact, men can no more live successfully than they can if they refuse to admit the political and economic interdependency of the various sections of the civilized world. It is not a sentimental but a grimly literal fact that unless we share this terrestrial globe with creatures other than ourselves, we shall not be able to live on it for long.
The Voice of the Desert (1956), 194-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Community (111)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Creature (242)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Economic (84)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Human (1512)  |  Literal (12)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Man-Made (10)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Oneness (6)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Political (124)  |  Refuse (45)  |  Respect (212)  |  Sense (785)  |  Share (82)  |  Term (357)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Usually (176)  |  Various (205)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

We should stop the non-scientific, pseudo-scientific, and anti-scientific nonsense emanating from the right wing, and start demanding immediate action to reduce global warming and prevent catastrophic climate change that may be on our horizon now. We must not let the [Bush] Administration distort science and rewrite and manipulate scientific reports in other areas. We must not let it turn the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Pollution Agency.
Address to National Press Club, Washington, DC (12 Jan 2005). In Bill Adler (ed.), The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy (2011).
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Administration (15)  |  Agency (14)  |  George W. Bush (19)  |  Catastrophe (35)  |  Catastrophic (10)  |  Change (639)  |  Climate (102)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Demand (131)  |  Distort (22)  |  Distortion (13)  |  Global (39)  |  Global Warming (29)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Let (64)  |  Manipulate (11)  |  Manipulation (19)  |  Must (1525)  |  Non-Scientific (7)  |  Nonsense (48)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Prevention (37)  |  Protection (41)  |  Pseudoscience (17)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Report (42)  |  Rewrite (4)  |  Right (473)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Start (237)  |  Stop (89)  |  Turn (454)  |  Warming (24)  |  Wing (79)

We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.
Collected in Michèle Brown and Ann O’Connor (eds.), Woman Talk: A Book of Women’s Quotes (1985), 196. No source given.
Science quotes on:  |  Destroy (189)  |  Society (350)

We’re going to see public attitudes [on climate change] switch not in proportion to scientific findings or graphs, but in proportion to the stories they hear, the people they know whose lives have been touched by climate change or some environmental calamity. That’s what really changed public opinion.
From interview with Mark Tercek, 'Q&A With Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment', Huffington Post (1 Jul 2013).
Science quotes on:  |  Attitude (84)  |  Calamity (11)  |  Change (639)  |  Climate (102)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Finding (34)  |  Graph (8)  |  Hear (144)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Opinion (291)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Public (100)  |  Scientific (955)  |  See (1094)  |  Story (122)  |  Switch (10)  |  Touch (146)

What makes it so hard to organize the environment sensibly is that everything we touch is hooked up to everything else.
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 64.
Science quotes on:  |  Ecology (81)  |  Everything (489)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hook (7)  |  Organize (33)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Touch (146)

What nature does in the course of long periods we do every day when we suddenly change the environment in which some species of living plant is situated.
Philosophie Zoologique (1809), Vol. 1, 226, trans. Hugh Elliot (1914), 109.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Course (413)  |  Do (1905)  |  Living (492)  |  Long (778)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Period (200)  |  Plant (320)  |  Species (435)  |  Suddenly (91)

When an accident at sea releases huge volumes of crude oil onto beaches, rocks and coves we see it as an environmental disaster, and not long ago we tried vainly to wash it away with detergents. Now, with greater common sense, we leave the clean-up to the natural organisms that regard the spillage as food.
In The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity (2006, 2007), 92.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Beach (23)  |  Clean Up (5)  |  Common Sense (136)  |  Detergent (3)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Food (213)  |  Huge (30)  |  Long Ago (12)  |  Natural (810)  |  Oil Spill (6)  |  Organism (231)  |  Regard (312)  |  Release (31)  |  Rock (176)  |  Sea (326)  |  Spill (3)  |  Volume (25)

When there are too many deer in the forest or too many cats in the barn, nature restores the balance by the introduction of a communicable disease or virus.
Science quotes on:  |  Balance (82)  |  Cat (52)  |  Deer (11)  |  Disease (340)  |  Forest (161)  |  Introduction (37)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Virus (32)

When you get up here in space and you go into the weightlessness environment, your body is not sure what really just happened to it. So your stomach, intestines, and that stuff kind of shuts down for a few hours to figure out what is going on and during that timeframe your body is not doing much with your food. After your body figures out that it can handle the new environment, everything cranks back up and your food, stomach and intestines and all start working like normal.
Replying to a Mifflin Middle School students’ question during a school forum held using a downlink with the Discovery Space Shuttle mission (31 Oct 1998). On NASA web page 'STS-95 Educational Downlink'. Mike Tomolillo, Philip Slater asked, “Commander Brown, how does space affect the digestive system?”
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Body (557)  |  Crank (18)  |  Digestion (29)  |  Doing (277)  |  Down (455)  |  Everything (489)  |  Figure (162)  |  Food (213)  |  Handle (29)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Hour (192)  |  Intestine (16)  |  Kind (564)  |  New (1273)  |  Normal (29)  |  Shut (41)  |  Space (523)  |  Start (237)  |  Stomach (40)  |  Weightlessness (2)

When you look at the companies that have really won customers over in technology—say, Apple and Google—you find that they spend billions of dollars on R&D [research and development] each year, often spending that much on a product before they ever make a dime back in profits. Unfortunately, in the environment, I don’t see as much willingness to invest heavily in R&D as I do in consumer technology. And that’s a pity.
From interview with Mark Tercek, 'Q&A With Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment', Huffington Post (1 Jul 2013).
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Back (395)  |  Billion (104)  |  Company (63)  |  Consumer (6)  |  Customer (8)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dollar (22)  |  Find (1014)  |  Google (4)  |  Heavily (14)  |  Invest (20)  |  Look (584)  |  Pity (16)  |  Product (166)  |  Profit (56)  |  Research (753)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spending (24)  |  Technology (281)  |  Unfortunately (40)  |  Willingness (10)  |  Year (963)

While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.
Wealth (1899), 655.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Accommodate (17)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beneficial (16)  |  Best (467)  |  Business (156)  |  Competition (45)  |  Concentration (29)  |  Condition (362)  |  Department (93)  |  Essential (210)  |  Future (467)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hard (246)  |  Individual (420)  |  Industry (159)  |  Inequality (9)  |  Law (913)  |  Must (1525)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Progress (492)  |  Race (278)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Welcome (20)

Why Become Extinct? Authors with varying competence have suggested that dinosaurs disappeared because the climate deteriorated (became suddenly or slowly too hot or cold or dry or wet), or that the diet did (with too much food or not enough of such substances as fern oil; from poisons in water or plants or ingested minerals; by bankruptcy of calcium or other necessary elements). Other writers have put the blame on disease, parasites, wars, anatomical or metabolic disorders (slipped vertebral discs, malfunction or imbalance of hormone and endocrine systems, dwindling brain and consequent stupidity, heat sterilization, effects of being warm-blooded in the Mesozoic world), racial old age, evolutionary drift into senescent overspecialization, changes in the pressure or composition of the atmosphere, poison gases, volcanic dust, excessive oxygen from plants, meteorites, comets, gene pool drainage by little mammalian egg-eaters, overkill capacity by predators, fluctuation of gravitational constants, development of psychotic suicidal factors, entropy, cosmic radiation, shift of Earth’s rotational poles, floods, continental drift, extraction of the moon from the Pacific Basin, draining of swamp and lake environments, sunspots, God’s will, mountain building, raids by little green hunters in flying saucers, lack of standing room in Noah’s Ark, and palaeoweltschmerz.
'Riddles of the Terrible Lizards', American Scientist (1964) 52, 231.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Author (175)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blame (31)  |  Blood (144)  |  Brain (281)  |  Building (158)  |  Calcium (8)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Change (639)  |  Climate (102)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Cold (115)  |  Comet (65)  |  Competence (13)  |  Composition (86)  |  Consequent (19)  |  Constant (148)  |  Continental Drift (15)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Development (441)  |  Diet (56)  |  Dinosaur (26)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Disease (340)  |  Disorder (45)  |  Dry (65)  |  Dust (68)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effect (414)  |  Egg (71)  |  Element (322)  |  Endocrine (2)  |  Enough (341)  |  Entropy (46)  |  Excessive (24)  |  Extinct (25)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Extraction (10)  |  Fern (10)  |  Flood (52)  |  Fluctuation (15)  |  Flying (74)  |  Flying Saucer (3)  |  Food (213)  |  Gene (105)  |  God (776)  |  Green (65)  |  Heat (180)  |  Hormone (11)  |  Hot (63)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Lack (127)  |  Lake (36)  |  Little (717)  |  Malfunction (4)  |  Meteorite (9)  |  Mineral (66)  |  Moon (252)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Noah�s Ark (2)  |  Oil (67)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Other (2233)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Parasite (33)  |  Plant (320)  |  Poison (46)  |  Pole (49)  |  Predator (6)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Radiation (48)  |  Shift (45)  |  Sterilization (2)  |  Stupidity (40)  |  Substance (253)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Suicide (23)  |  Sunspot (5)  |  Swamp (9)  |  System (545)  |  UFO (4)  |  Volcano (46)  |  War (233)  |  Warm (74)  |  Warm-Blooded (3)  |  Water (503)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Writer (90)

Why should the leaders of chemical businesses be held responsible for polluting the marine environment with a few grams of effluent, which is sublethal to marine species, while celebrity chefs are turning out endangered fish at several dozen tables a night without enduring a syllable of criticism?
In The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat (2004), 189.
Science quotes on:  |  Celebrity (8)  |  Chef (3)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Effluent (2)  |  Endangered (2)  |  Endangered Species (6)  |  Fish (130)  |  Industry (159)  |  Leader (51)  |  Marine (9)  |  Overfishing (27)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Species (435)  |  Syllable (3)  |  Table (105)  |  Why (491)

Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved—as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds—because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed.
Letter (3 Dec 1960) written to David E. Pesonen of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. Collected in 'Coda: Wilderness Letter', The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West (1969), 147.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Brave (16)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Chance (244)  |  Character (259)  |  Committed (2)  |  Completely (137)  |  Controlled (3)  |  Drive (61)  |  Form (976)  |  Formed (5)  |  Headlong (2)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  People (1031)  |  Preserved (3)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Rest (287)  |  Still (614)  |  Technological (62)  |  Termite (7)  |  Wholly (88)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  World (1850)

Yes, we have to [do more to prioritise animals and the environment over human activity]. There are whole areas—the rainforest, for example—that have to be protected for the animals and for the whole of the climate of the planet. That’s a priority if ever there was one.
In Rowan Hooper, 'One Minute With… David Attenborough', New Scientist (2 Feb 2013), 217, No. 2902, 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Animal (651)  |  Climate (102)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Do (1905)  |  Human (1512)  |  More (2558)  |  Planet (402)  |  Priority (11)  |  Protect (65)  |  Rain Forest (34)  |  Whole (756)

Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well–for we will not fight to save what we do not love (but only appreciate in some abstract sense). So let them all continue–the films, the books, the television programs, the zoos, the little half acre of ecological preserve in any community, the primary school lessons, the museum demonstrations, even ... the 6:00 A.M. bird walks. Let them continue and expand because we must have visceral contact in order to love. We really must make room for nature in our hearts.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Acre (13)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Battle (36)  |  Bird (163)  |  Bond (46)  |  Book (413)  |  Community (111)  |  Contact (66)  |  Continue (179)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Do (1905)  |  Ecological (7)  |  Emotional (17)  |  Expand (56)  |  Fight (49)  |  Film (12)  |  Forge (10)  |  Half (63)  |  Heart (243)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Let (64)  |  Little (717)  |  Love (328)  |  Museum (40)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Order (638)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Primary (82)  |  Program (57)  |  Really (77)  |  Room (42)  |  Save (126)  |  School (227)  |  Sense (785)  |  Species (435)  |  Television (33)  |  Visceral (3)  |  Walk (138)  |  Will (2350)  |  Win (53)  |  Zoo (9)

You must simply show the thing so truthfully that it lends strength to people’s awareness of what you might call the politics of the environment. … People do not want to sit in their armchairs and be made to feel that everything is awful and it's all their fault.
Attenborough felt—in the reporter’s narrative words—it would be a misuse of his position to waggle his finger at people and put across film-laden messages. In Justine de Lacy, 'Around the World With Attenborough', New York Times (27 Jan 1985), Sec. 2, 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Armchair (7)  |  Awareness (42)  |  Awful (9)  |  Call (781)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fault (58)  |  Feel (371)  |  People (1031)  |  Politics (122)  |  Show (353)  |  Sit (51)  |  Strength (139)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Want (504)

You’ve got to be fairly solemn [about the environment]. I mean the mere notion that there are three times as many people on Earth as there were when I started making television. How can the Earth accommodate them? When people, including politicians, set their faces against looking at the consequences—it’s just unbelievable that anyone could ignore it.
In Andrew Pettie, 'Sir David Attenborough interview', The Telegraph (23 Dec 2010). [Checking one population data source, it seems that at the time of the article, in 2010 at age 84, there had been a 2.6 (rounds to roughly three) times increase since 1954 when Attenborough first broadcast. By the year of his 97th birthday, in 2023, the increase was indeed three times (2.99). —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Accommodate (17)  |  Against (332)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Face (214)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Looking (191)  |  Making (300)  |  Mean (810)  |  Notion (120)  |  People (1031)  |  Politician (40)  |  Population (115)  |  Set (400)  |  Solemn (20)  |  Solemnity (6)  |  Start (237)  |  Television (33)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unbelievable (7)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.