British Zoologist Quotes

Ray Lankester
Walter Garstang

The scientist who has an independent mind and is able to judge the evidence on its merits rather than in light of prevailing conceptions is the one most likely to be able to realize the potentialities in something really new.

Wolves had got under my skin and my mind was in turmoil. I felt nothing but contempt for my fellow man and nothing but admiration for these creatures that had admitted me into their world. Theirs was the world I wanted to stay in. It was safer than mine, more disciplined, and I had a greater sense of belonging.

I am not going to speculate about the emotions that might be involved in avian infidelity.

I sense that, without sensitivity to physical pain and pleasure, man would not have known self-interest, and consequently know just or unjust acts. Thus, physical sensitivity and self-interest are the authors of all justice.

The natural order of organisms is a divergent inclusive hierarchy and that hierarchy is recognized by taxic homology.

It is strongly suspected that a NEWTON or SHAKESPEARE excels other mortals only by a more ample development of the anterior cerebral lobes, by having an extra inch of brain in the right place.

The discoveries of Darwin, himself a magnificent field naturalist, had the remarkable effect of sending the whole zoological world flocking indoors, where they remained hard at work for fifty years or more, and whence they are now beginning to put forth cautious heads again into the open air.

The time may come when there will be no portion of the earth's surface that has not been surveyed and explored by man.

Nature, it has been said, gives no reply to a general inquiry - she must be interrogated by questions which already contain the answer she is to give; in other words, the observer can only observe that which he is led by hypothesis to look for: the experimenter can only obtain the result which his experiment is designed to obtain.

Ray Lankester
Ray Lankester
Bold Sea-mew — you whose soaring flight Inspires my envious Muse — Pray, with this compliment polite My liberty excuse.

Walter Garstang
Walter Garstang
So long as we insist on regarding biology as a crystallized creed, requiring no more than a possible rectification of some of its tenets, so long shall we continue groping in the dark to get an insight into the mysteries we are professedly trying to solve.