Neil Shubin Quotes

#1. Imagine a house coming together spontaneously from all the information contained in the bricks: that is how animal bodies are made.

Neil Shubin

#2. When you see these deep similarities among different organs and bodies, you begin to recognize that the diverse inhabitants of our world are just variations on a theme.

Neil Shubin

#3. [T]he unknown should not be a source of suspicion, fear, or retreat to superstition, but motivation to continue asking questions and seeking answers.

Neil Shubin

#4. In a perfectly designed world - one with no history - we would not have to suffer everything from hemorrhoids to cancer.

Neil Shubin

#5. With respect to the ZPA, what kind of digit develops depends on how close the digit is to the source of Sonic hedgehog.

Neil Shubin

#6. Over 99 percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct.

Neil Shubin

#7. Whole batteries of genes are turned on and off during fly development, and this
pattern of gene activity serves to demarcate the different regions of the fly.

Neil Shubin

#8. In preparing for battle, I have found that planning is essential, but plans are useless. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Neil Shubin

#9. The molecules that allow microbes to catch their prey and hold on to them are likely candidates for the molecules that form the rivet attachments between cells in our bodies.

Neil Shubin

#10. We were staring at the origin of a piece of our own bodies inside this 375-million-year-old fish. We had a fish with a wrist.

Neil Shubin

#11. We were not designed rationally, but are products of a convoluted history.

Neil Shubin

#12. All the genetic switches that make fingers, arm bones, and toes do their thing during the third to eighth week after conception.

Neil Shubin

#13. Knowing something about the deep origins of humanity only adds to the remarkable fact of our existence: all of our extraordinary capabilities arose from basic components that evolved in ancient fish and other creatures.

Neil Shubin

#14. Some people can detect the odor molecules in a green bell pepper at a concentration of less than one part per trillion. That is like picking out one grain of sand from a mile-long beach.

Neil Shubin

#15. We would never have scales, feathers, or breasts if we didn't have teeth in the first place.

Neil Shubin