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: “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index B > Category: Beetle

Beetle Quotes (19 quotes)

Lepidoptera are for children to play with, pretty to look at, so some think. Give me the Coleoptera, and the kings of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepidoptera and Neuroptera for little folks; Coleoptera for men, sir!
In 'The Poet at the Breakfast Table: III', The Atlantic Monthly (Mar 1872), 29, 344.
Science quotes on:  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Entomology (9)  |  Fly (153)  |  Give (208)  |  King (39)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Play (116)  |  Pretty (21)  |  Think (1122)

After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.
'Beetles' Other People’s Trades (1985, trans. 1989).
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Calculation (134)  |  End (603)  |  Energy (373)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fire (203)  |  God (776)  |  Industry (159)  |  Insect (89)  |  Letter (117)  |  Light (635)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Mass (160)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  Parasite (33)  |  Pass (241)  |  Planet (402)  |  Scale (122)  |  Square (73)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Time (1911)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

All that biology tells us about the nature of God is that he has “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”
As stated in George Evelyn Hutchison, 'Homage to Santa Rosalia, or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals?', The American Naturalist (1959), 93, 145-159.
Science quotes on:  |  Biology (232)  |  Fondness (7)  |  God (776)  |  Inordinate (3)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Tell (344)

But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them, and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.
In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters (1892), 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Bark (19)  |  Bear (162)  |  Burn (99)  |  Cambridge (17)  |  Character (259)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Classification (102)  |  Collection (68)  |  Compare (76)  |  Description (89)  |  Dissection (35)  |  Eager (17)  |  Eagerness (5)  |  Fluid (54)  |  Follow (389)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lose (165)  |  Lost (34)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Name (359)  |  Nearly (137)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Passion (121)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Proof (304)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Rare (94)  |  Right (473)  |  Saw (160)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  Zeal (12)

Coming to the question of life being found on other planets, Professor Haldane apologized for discoursing, as a mere biologist, on a subject on which we had been expecting a lecture by a physicist [J. D. Bernal]. He mentioned three hypotheses:
(a) That life had a supernatural origin,
(b) That it originated from inorganic materials, and (c) That life is a constituent of the Universe and can only arise from pre-existing life. The first hypothesis, he said, should be taken seriously, and he would proceed to do so. From the fact that there are 400,000 species of beetle on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals, he concluded that the Creator, if he exists, has a special preference for beetles, and so we might be more likely to meet them than any other type of animal on a planet which would support life.
In Mark Williamson, 'Haldane’s Special Preference', The Linnean, 1992, 8, 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Arise (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Coming (114)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Creator (97)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exist (458)  |  Fact (1257)  |  First (1302)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Insect (89)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Material (366)  |  Mention (84)  |  More (2558)  |  Origin (250)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Planet (402)  |  Preference (28)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Professor (133)  |  Question (649)  |  Special (188)  |  Species (435)  |  Subject (543)  |  Supernatural (26)  |  Support (151)  |  Type (171)  |  Universe (900)

Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code; so there are, as a rule, two copies of the latter in the fertilized egg cell, which forms the earliest stage of the future individual. In calling the structure of the chromosome fibres a code-script we mean that the all-penetrating mind, once conceived by Laplace, to which every causal connection lay immediately open, could tell from their structure whether the egg would develop, under suitable conditions, into a black cock or into a speckled hen, into a fly or a maize plant, a rhododendron, a beetle, a mouse or a woman. To which we may add, that the appearances of the egg cells are very often remarkably similar; and even when they are not, as in the case of the comparatively gigantic eggs of birds and reptiles, the difference is not so much in the relevant structures as in the nutritive material which in these cases is added for obvious reasons.
But the term code-script is, of course, too narrow. The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power?or, to use another simile, they are architect's plan and builder’s craft-in one.
In What is Life? : The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (1944), 20-21.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Architect (32)  |  Bird (163)  |  Builder (16)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cell (146)  |  Chromosome (23)  |  Chromosomes (17)  |  Cock (6)  |  Code (31)  |  Complete (209)  |  Condition (362)  |  Connection (171)  |  Copy (34)  |  Course (413)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Difference (355)  |  Egg (71)  |  Executive (3)  |  Fertilization (15)  |  Fly (153)  |  Foreshadow (5)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Hen (9)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Individual (420)  |  Instrumental (5)  |  Pierre-Simon Laplace (63)  |  Law (913)  |  Maize (4)  |  Material (366)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mouse (33)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Open (277)  |  Plan (122)  |  Plant (320)  |  Power (771)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Rule (307)  |  Set (400)  |  Similarity (32)  |  Simile (8)  |  Speckled (3)  |  Stage (152)  |  Structure (365)  |  Tell (344)  |  Term (357)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Woman (160)

Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. “What inference,” asked the latter, “might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?” Haldane replied: “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”
As quoted in Clifton Fadiman (ed.), André Bernard (ed.), Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes (2000), 253.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Discussion (78)  |  Draw (140)  |  Fondness (7)  |  God (776)  |  Inference (45)  |  Inordinate (3)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Study (701)  |  Theologian (23)  |  Work (1402)

I can remember … starting to gather all sorts of things like rocks and beetles when I was about nine years old. There was no parental encouragement—nor discouragement either—nor any outside influence that I can remember in these early stages. By about the age of twelve, I had settled pretty definitely on butterflies, largely I think because the rocks around my home were limited to limestone, while the butterflies were varied, exciting, and fairly easy to preserve with household moth-balls. … I was fourteen, I remember, when … I decided to be scientific, caught in some net of emulation, and resolutely threw away all of my “childish” specimens, mounted haphazard on “common pins” and without “proper labels.” The purge cost me a great inward struggle, still one of my most vivid memories, and must have been forced by a conflict between a love of my specimens and a love for orderliness, for having everything just exactly right according to what happened to be my current standards.
In The Nature of Natural History (1950, 1990), 255.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Age (509)  |  Ball (64)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Child (333)  |  Childish (20)  |  Common (447)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Cost (94)  |  Current (122)  |  Discouragement (10)  |  Early (196)  |  Easy (213)  |  Emulation (2)  |  Encouragement (27)  |  Everything (489)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Exciting (50)  |  Fourteen (2)  |  Gather (76)  |  Great (1610)  |  Haphazard (3)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Home (184)  |  Influence (231)  |  Inward (6)  |  Label (11)  |  Limestone (6)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Love (328)  |  Memory (144)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mount (43)  |  Must (1525)  |  Old (499)  |  Orderliness (9)  |  Outside (141)  |  Parent (80)  |  Pin (20)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Proper (150)  |  Purge (11)  |  Remember (189)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Right (473)  |  Rock (176)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Settled (34)  |  Specimen (32)  |  Stage (152)  |  Standard (64)  |  Start (237)  |  Still (614)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Twelve (4)  |  Vivid (25)  |  Year (963)

In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism—beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Mozart symphony, or any other great work of art. Consider the typical case of the house mouse, Mus musculus. Each of its cells contains four strings of DNA, each of which comprises about a billion nucleotide pairs organized into a hundred thousand structural nucleotide pairs, organized into a hundred thousand structural genes. … The full information therein, if translated into ordinary-sized printed letters, would just about fill all 15 editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published since 1768.
'The Biological Diversity Crisis: A Challenge to Science', Issues in Science and Technology (Fall 1985), 2:1, 22. Reprinted in Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949-2006 (2006), 622.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Billion (104)  |  Consider (428)  |  DNA (81)  |  Gene (105)  |  Great (1610)  |  House (143)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Information (173)  |  Letter (117)  |  Moss (14)  |  Mouse (33)  |  Nucleotide (6)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Painting (46)  |  Purely (111)  |  Sense (785)  |  Species (435)  |  Structural (29)  |  Symphony (10)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Work (1402)

It may be argued that to know one kind of beetle is to know them all. But a species is not like a molecule in a cloud of molecules—it is a unique population.
'The Biological Diversity Crisis: A Challenge to Science', Issues in Science and Technology (Fall 1985), 2:1, 22. Reprinted in Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949-2006 (2006), 622.
Science quotes on:  |  Cloud (111)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Population (115)  |  Species (435)  |  Unique (72)

It may be argued that to know one kind of beetle is to know them all. But a species is not like a molecule in a cloud of molecules—it is a unique population.
In 'Edward O. Wilson: The Biological Diversity Crisis: A Challenge to Science', Issues in Science and Technology (Fall 1985), 2, No. 1, 22.
Science quotes on:  |  Cloud (111)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Population (115)  |  Species (435)  |  Unique (72)

Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been; then they stared ahead again. I had thought that only beetles had this delusion of Progress.
The Direction of the Road (1973)
Science quotes on:  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Car (75)  |  Delusion (26)  |  Little (717)  |  Mirror (43)  |  Progress (492)  |  See (1094)  |  Star (460)  |  Thought (995)

Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world. Not only shall we be able to cruise in space, but I’ll be hanged if I see any reason why some future generation shouldn’t walk off like a beetle with the world on its back, or give it another rotary motion so that every zone should receive in turn its due portion of heat and light.
Letter to his brother, Charles Francis Adams Jr., London, (11 Apr 1862). In J. C. Levenson, E. Samuels, C. Vandersee and V. Hopkins Winner (eds.), The Letters of Henry Adams: 1858-1868 (1982), Vol. 1, 290.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Blowing (22)  |  Commit (43)  |  Control (182)  |  Due (143)  |  Engine (99)  |  Existence (481)  |  Future (467)  |  Generation (256)  |  Hang (46)  |  Heat (180)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Master (182)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Mount (43)  |  Portion (86)  |  Power (771)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Receive (117)  |  Run (158)  |  See (1094)  |  Someday (15)  |  Space (523)  |  Strength (139)  |  Suicide (23)  |  Turn (454)  |  Walk (138)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

My father, the practicing physician, … was a passionate collector of natural objects (amber, shells, minerals, beetles, etc.) and a great friend of the natural sciences. … To my energetic and intellectually vigorous mother I owe an infinite debt.
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 525. Cited from 'Autobiographische Skizze', Gesammelte Schriften, Vol 4, 673–682.
Science quotes on:  |  Amber (3)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Collector (8)  |  Debt (15)  |  Energetic (6)  |  Father (113)  |  Friend (180)  |  Great (1610)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Mineral (66)  |  Mother (116)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Owe (71)  |  Passionate (22)  |  Physician (284)  |  Shell (69)  |  Vigorous (21)

The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine … bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 … this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species.
In 'General Ideas in Medicine', The Lloyd Roberts lecture at House of the Royal Society of Medicine (30 Sep 1935), British Medical Journal (5 Oct 1935), 2, 609. In The Collected Papers of Wilfred Trotter, FRS (1941), 151.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Bedside (3)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Caricature (6)  |  Certain (557)  |  Class (168)  |  Classification (102)  |  Clinical (18)  |  Correction (42)  |  Disease (340)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fail (191)  |  Failure (176)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Genus (27)  |  Harmless (9)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Carolus Linnaeus (36)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Never (1089)  |  Observation (593)  |  Physician (284)  |  Product (166)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Rational (95)  |  Rationality (25)  |  Reason (766)  |  Relentless (9)  |  Richness (15)  |  Seem (150)  |  Show (353)  |  Species (435)

The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other.
In What is Life? The Layman’s View of Nature (1947), 239. The text continues with an explanation that “there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known…as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds… Beetles are actually more numerous than the species of any other insect order.”
Science quotes on:  |  Creator (97)  |  Passion (121)  |  Star (460)

The interior of the rain forest is overwhelming in its complexity. There is not a bare surface anywhere. Branches are hung with curtains of mosses and sprays of orchids dangle among them. Tree trunks are filmed over with algae, studded by giant ferns, and wound about with vines. Ants travel in convoys across the ground and up the trees, and metallic beetles glint in sun-flecks on the forest floor. The forest itself is richly textured, stems embossed with every manner of protuberance, leaves ornamented by spines and pleats, scales and fringes. Long shafts of sunlight cut through the dark canopy and catch the flash of iridescent butterfly wings before diffusing in the vegetation below.
In 'In the Forest of the Waterbear', Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003), 55.
Science quotes on:  |  Ant (34)  |  Biodiversity (25)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Canopy (8)  |  Fern (10)  |  Moss (14)  |  Orchid (4)  |  Rain Forest (34)  |  Sunlight (29)  |  Surface (223)  |  Vine (4)

The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills and potions. … No man is really happy or safe without one, and it makes precious little difference what the outside interest may be—botany, beetles or butterflies, roses, tulips or irises, fishing, mountaineering or antiquities—anything will do so long as he straddles a hobby and rides it hard.
In 'The Medical Library in Post-Graduate Work', British Medical Journal (1909), 2, 927.
Science quotes on:  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Avocation (5)  |  Botany (63)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Early (196)  |  Fish (130)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hobby (14)  |  Interest (416)  |  Iris (2)  |  Mountaineering (5)  |  Pastime (6)  |  Patient (209)  |  Pill (7)  |  Potion (3)  |  Ride (23)  |  Rose (36)  |  Safe (61)  |  Tulip (3)  |  Young (253)

Who are so rich as the poet and the man of science? “The meanest flower that blows” is an unfathomable mine of thought to the one, and “the poor beetle that we tread upon” holds a whole museum of nature’s miracles for the other.
In 'Professor Jeffries Wyman: A Memorial Outline', The Atlantic Monthly (Nov 1874), 621.
Science quotes on:  |  Entomologist (7)  |  Flower (112)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Museum (40)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Poet (97)  |  Science And Poetry (17)  |  Thought (995)


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.