Zoologist Quotes

Konrad Lorenz
Dian Fossey
Desmond Morris
Oscar Hertwig
Ray Lankester
Alfred Newton
Rudolf Leuckart

Morphological information has provided the greatest single source of data in the formulation and development of the theory of evolution and that even now, when the preponderance of work is experimental, the basis for interpretation in many areas of study remains the form and relationships of structures.

The bluebird is well named, for he wears a coat of the purest, richest, and most gorgeous blue on back, wings, and tail; no North American bird better deserves the name, for no other flashes before our admiring eyes so much brilliant blue.

Arthur Cleveland Bent
Arthur Cleveland Bent
I like the look of frogs, and their outlook, and especially the way they get together in wet places on warm nights and sing about sex.

Nowhere is it more true that "prevention is better than cure," than in the case of Parasitic Diseases.

Rudolf Leuckart
Rudolf Leuckart
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.

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

To the amoeba, the jelly-fish, or the worm, the "world" is the franchise of an hour in a drop of water; a niche in the rocks for a season; or a home in the sea for a decade. To man, the "world" is the universal whole of time and space, for their content are his to explore and to utilize. And therein lies our measure of freedom and attainment.

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.

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
The cell, this elementary keystone of living nature, is far from being a peculiar chemical giant molecule or even a living protein and as such is not likely to fall prey to the field of an advanced chemistry. The cell is itself an organism, constituted of many small units of life.

Oscar Hertwig
Oscar Hertwig
The whole aim of comparative anatomy is to discover what structures are homologous.

Libbie Hyman
Libbie Hyman
As an organ is exercised, circulation is more particularly directed to it and is more readily performed in it. Consequently, all its secretions and excretions increase. The more an organ is exercised, the more it is nourished.

Considered from the standpoint of chemistry, living bodies appear to us as laboratories of chemical processes, for they undergo perpetual changes in their material substrate. They draw materials from the outside world and combine them with the mass of their liquid and solid parts.

Friedrich Tiedemann
Friedrich Tiedemann
Widely dispersed knowledge concerning the important role of basic cooperative processes among living beings may lead to the acceptance of cooperation as a guiding principle both in social theory and as a basis for human behavior. Such a development when it occurs will alter the course of human history.

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.

Get the experience of looking at fresh things. If you watch live animals, you gain clearer insights in shorter time than you would watching dead animals for much longer.

Nearly all of the grand, fundamental discoveries and inventions by which man has lifted himself out of his dark animal past were but repetitions of discoveries and inventions which nature had made eras before our anthropoid ancestor first stood erect and looked up into the sky.

What is the use of their unceasing mutations, if they do not change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect.

A true bond of friendship is usually only possible between people of roughly equal status. This equality is demonstrated in many indirect ways, but it is reinforced in face-to-face encounters by a matching of the posture of relaxation or alertness.

Desmond Morris
Desmond Morris
Other things being equal, the investigator is always the best instructor. The highest grade of instruction in any science can only be furnished by one who is thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit, and who is actually engaged in original work.

Charles Otis Whitman
Charles Otis Whitman
If you believe in science you must have a rather strong faith.

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

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

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

The physical sciences deal with the external world, and in the laboratory we study the structure and activities of organisms by very similar methods; but if we stop here, neglecting the relation of the living being to its environment, our study is not biology or the science of life.