Carl Linnaeus Quotes

39 Sourced Quotes

There is no generation from an egg in the Mineral Kingdom. Hence no vascular circulation of the humours as in the remaining Natural Kingdoms.

Carl Linnaeus
There are as many species as the infinite being created diverse forms in the beginning, which, following the laws of generation, produced many others, but always similar to them: therefore there are as many species as we have different structures before us today.

Carl Linnaeus
Stones grow, plants grow, and live, animals grow live and feel.

Carl Linnaeus
The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science.

Carl Linnaeus
A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.

Carl Linnaeus
The names of the plants ought to be stable [certa], consequently they should be given to stable genera.

Carl Linnaeus
Over the door of his room he caused this sentence to be inscribed: "lnnocuex vivito—- Numen Adest!" He always entertained veneration and admiration for his Creator, and endeavoured to trace his science to its Author. "Tu decus omne tuis, postquam te fata tulere." (Virgilio)

Carl Linnaeus
I saw the infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful God from behind as he went away, and I grew dizzy. I followed his footsteps over nature's fields and saw everywhere an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection.

Carl Linnaeus
The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.

Carl Linnaeus
There are some viviparous flies, which bring forth 2,000 young. These in a little time would fill the air, and like clouds intercept the rays of the sun, unless they were devoured by birds, spiders, and many other animals.

Carl Linnaeus
We say there are as many genera as there are similarly constituted fructifications of different natural species.

Carl Linnaeus
Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone's theory.

Carl Linnaeus
By a botanist I mean one who understands how to observe the genera of Nature. I judge unworthy of the name of botanist the meddlesome person who is indifferent to genera.

Carl Linnaeus
The first step of science is to know one thing from another. This knowledge consists in their specific distinctions; but in order that it may be fixed and permanent distinct names must be given to different things, and those names must be recorded and remembered.

Carl Linnaeus
The organs of generation, which in the animal kingdom are by nature generally removed from sight, in the vegetable kingdom are exposed to the eyes of all, and that when their nuptials are celebrated, it is wonderful what delight they afford to the spectator by their most beautiful colors and delicious odors.

Carl Linnaeus
I am quite aware that this road is obscured by mists that may pass over it from time to time. Yet these mists will be easily dispersed as soon as it is possible to employ widely the light of experiments. For Nature remains always the same; when she seems to be different it is because of the inevitable defects of our observations.

Carl Linnaeus
My mind reels when, on this height, I look down on the long ages that have flowed by like waves in the sound and have left traces of the ancient world, traces so nearly obscured that they can only whisper now that everything else has been silenced.

Carl Linnaeus
For wealth disappears, the most magnificent houses fall into decay, the most numerous family at some time or another comes to an end: the greatest and the most prosperous kingdoms can be overthrown: but the whole of Nature must be blotted out before the race of plants passes away, and he is forgotten who in Botany held up the torch.

Carl Linnaeus
To you, my dearly-beloved botanists, I submit my rules, the rules which I have laid down for myself, and in accordance with which I intend to walk. If they seem to you worthy, let them be used by you also; if not, please propound something better!

Carl Linnaeus
The stony rocks are not primeval, but daughters of Time.

Carl Linnaeus
Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made...If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes...For a single genus, a single name.

Carl Linnaeus
Great is our God, and great is His power, and his strength is immeasurable

Carl Linnaeus
A herbarium is better than any illustration; every botanist should make one.

Carl Linnaeus
As a natural historian according to the principles of science, up to the present time I have been not been able to discover any character by which man can be distinguished from the ape; for there are somewhere apes which are less hairy than man, erect in position, going just like him on two feet, and recalling the human species by the use they make of their hands and feet, to such an extent, that the less educated travellers have given them out as a kind of man.

Carl Linnaeus
The observer of nature see, with admiration, that "the whole world is full of the glory of God."

Carl Linnaeus
If a tree dies, plant another in its place.

Carl Linnaeus
Human beings, having, above all creatures, received the power of reason... need to be aware where nature is unaware. Nature reaches its culmination in humans, but human consciousness has not its essence in itself or nature.

Carl Linnaeus
Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

Carl Linnaeus
The Earth's Creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of Nature by Man alone.

Carl Linnaeus
No one has any right to be angry with me, if I think fit to enumerate man among the quadrapeds. Man is neither a stone nor a plant, but an animal, for such is his way of living and moving; nor is he a worm, for then he would have only one foot; nor an insect, for then he would have antennae; nor a fish, for he has no fins; nor a bird, for he has no wings. Therefore, he is a quadraped, had a mouth like that of other quadrapeds, and finally four feet, on two of which he goes, and uses the other two for prehensive purposes.

Carl Linnaeus