Species Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

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.

Revenge is the thinking man's reflex, a complex blend of action and consistency no other animal species has so far succeeded in evolving. Evolutionary speaking, the practice of taking revenge has shown itself to the so effective that only the most vengeful of us have survived.

The thing that defines a species is that all members have the same addressing system for their DNA.

Richard Dawkins

I suggest that going to Mars means permanence on the planet - a mission by which we are building up a confidence level to become a two-planet species.

The history of human use of plants, mushrooms, and animals for their psychedelic effects is far older than written history, and probably predates the appearance of the modern human species.

But that Franklin trip changed me profoundly. As I believe wilderness experience changes everyone. Because it puts us in our place. The human place, which our species inhabited for most of its evolutionary life. That place that shaped our psyches and made us who we are. The place where nature is big and we are small.

Geraldine Brooks (writer)

The rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself is actually a good example of an inexpedient development caused entirely by competition between members of the same species. Human beings of today are attacked by so-called manager diseases, high blood pressure, renal atrophy, gastric ulcers, and torturing neuroses: they succumb to barbarism because they have no more time for cultural interests.

It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.

To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.

John Maynard Keynes

Strange that mankind should ever have used the mushroom. All the various species of this substance are of a leathery consistence, and contain but little nutriment. The condiments or seasonings which are added are what are chiefly prized. Without these, we should almost as soon eat saw dust as mushrooms.

How can one say, 'No, this isn't a part of life,' since it always is? The contaminant of sex, the redeeming corruption that de-idealizes the species and keeps us everlastingly mindful of the matter we are.

My sister and I may have been crafted of the same genetic clay, baked in the same uterine kiln, but we were disparate species, doomed never to love each other except blindly.

In mathematics, genus and species are hardly known.

William Hamilton

As some species die out, forms better adapted to utilize the obstacles against which they struggled in vain come into being.

In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others

The saddest thing in the world was that human beings, for all their ardent striving and desire, could never achieve physical, emotional, or intellectual perfection. The species was doomed to imperfection; it thrashed forever in despair or denial of that fact.

It is a very remarkable fact that the species of shell-fish common to Greenland and Finmark are not all inhabitants of deep or moderately deep water.... That these littoral mollusks indicate by their presence on both sides of the Atlantic, some ancient continuity or contiguity of coast-line is what I firmly believe.

We need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble.

The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations.

Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master species, our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the same to them.

Charles Patterson (author)

Fun has no limits. It is like the human race and face; there is a family likeness among all the species, but they all differ.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Sexual energy is divided into three distinct types. First: the energy having to do with the reproduction of the species. Second: the energy having to do with the spheres of thought, feeling and will. Third: the energy that is found related with the world of pure Spirit.

Samael Aun Weor

If God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is not all-powerful; and if he is all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't give a damn.

Barbara Ehrenreich

On these expanded membranes [i.e., butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species... As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole organic world.

Henry Walter Bates

No other species lives with regret over past events, or makes deliberate plans for future ones.