Quotes About The Species

#1. We're under some gross misconception that we're a good species, going somewhere important, and that at the last minute we'll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It's delusion.

Farley Mowat

#2. We became acutely aware of the profound healing that is needed in our species. We knew with conviction that what we were doing, as women and men together, was confronting the cultural dynamics that are killing us all- killing women and men, killing our children, killing the planet.

William Keepin

#3. It's the flock, the grove, that matters. Our responsibility is to species, not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals.

Sara Bonnett Stein

#4. Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.

Thomas Carlyle

#5. In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term.

Richard Leakey

#6. I love the idea of species fluidity, I guess, the sense of the maiden inherent in the swan or seal, the youth inherent in the bear or deer. After all, human beings are animals.

Delia Sherman

#7. England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#8. Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes.

George Mason

#9. Every day on this planet some species that doesn't draw the attention of humans goes extinct.

Liu Cixin

#10. If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod ... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

Mark Kurlansky

#11. Despite the differences between our species and cultures, there is an order that we all share. The development of a civilization is a scripted event. Minds join together to create new technologies, on its own against threats from the outside, that civilization crumbles.

Becky Chambers

#12. In this room we understand why this war might be fought ... it's about our common belief that no one has the right to tell two creatures that they cannot love each other
no matter what their species.

Deborah Harkness

#13. Thus evolved some members of the Core - not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy.

Dan Simmons

#14. The vulgarity of inanimate things requires time to get accustomed to; but living, breathing, bustling, plotting, planning, human vulgarity is a species of moral ipecacuanha, enough to destroy any comfort.

Thomas Carlyle

#15. Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers
and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt
of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of
sheep against the practice of eating mutton.

Bertrand Russell

#16. Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.

Sam Harris

#17. One of the most interesting things for me in playing another species is that you want to make them different enough to be alien but have enough human qualities to be relatable. This really forces you to look at what it is to be human from a totally new perspective!

Jaime Murray

#18. About the time you might start to think that science fiction - the real stuff, not the species of fantasy that goes under the name - is really dead, along comes a story by Cory Doctorow.

Lois Tilton

#19. Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call 'the dark side,' and greed is one of them. If you don't put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control.

Michael Moore

#20. The struggle for existence never gets easier. However well a species may adapt to its environment, it can never relax, because its competitors and its enemies are also adapting to their niches. Survival is a zero-sum game.

Matt Ridley

#21. Animals form an inalienable fragment of nature, and if we hasten the disappearance of even one species, we diminish our world and our place in it.

James A. Michener

#22. Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.

Richard Dawkins

#23. PALM, n. A species of tree ... of which the familiar "itching palm" ("Palma hominis") is most widely distributed ... This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver.

Ambrose Bierce

#24. I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet.That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vaccuum cleaners.

Jeff Stilson

#25. The various processes of belief acquisition which are native to a species include ones which may allow for the reliable pick-up of information, which, in turn, allows individual members of the species to successfully negotiate their environment and satisfy their various desires.

Hilary Kornblith

#26. The vast majority of species that are vanishing, we haven't even discovered yet. How can you possibly put them back in nature if the ecosystem is gone?

E. O. Wilson

#27. Few problems are less recognized, but more important than, the accelerating disappearance of the earth's biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched.

Paul R. Ehrlich

#28. Moreover, the concern of some that moving DNA among species would breach customary breeding barriers and have profound effects on natural evolutionary processes has substantially disappeared as the science revealed that such exchanges occur in nature.

Paul Berg

#29. If we, as a species, are the ultimate product of Darwinian selection, then so, too, is this incredible disease that lurks inside us.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

#30. Because men, compared to male chimps, have such relatively small testicles (large testicles indicate a species where many males mate, one after the other, with the same female), we might guess that promiscuous societies were uncommon in the immediate human past.

Carl Sagan

#31. Each species may have had its origin in a single pair, or individual, where an individual was sufficient, and species may have been created in succession at such times and in such places as to enable them to multiply and endure for an appointed period, and occupy an appointed space on the globe.

Charles Lyell

#32. In them was not the savage blankness of the reptile species. Instead there was something far worse - burning, unquenchable rage mixed with the self-mocking irony of great intelligence.

Whitley Strieber

#33. If the Devil says you cannot pray when you are angry, tell him it is none of his business, and pray until that species of insanity is dispelled and serenity is restored to the mind. (p. 175)

Brigham Young

#34. I absolutely believe the species, the planet and the Universe can't survive if we function on hate.

Wayne Dyer

#35. It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion.

David Hume

#36. Why is it not just as likely that there were as many small general nearly at first as now, and as great a disproportion in the number of their species?

Asa Gray

#37. The Ocean Health Index is like the thermometer of the ocean. It will allow us to take the temperature to know what is going on at the global level, trying to integrate different impacts, including overfishing, invasive species, coastal development, and climate change.

Enric Sala

#38. I think that my main criticism in that book was directed at the general assumption that adaptation characterizes populations and species, rather than simply the individuals in the populations and species.

George C. Williams

#39. Not having children is seen as supremely selfish, as though the people having children were selflessly sacrificing themselves in a valiant attempt to ensure the survival of our endangered species and fill up this vast and underpopulated island of ours.

Geoff Dyer

#40. A child is the quickest to trust because they have no concept of the depravity of our species.

Alessandra Torre

#41. Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans.

Gary L. Francione

#42. He said he didn't like my kind and I was filled with the delirious expectation that he would identify me as a common species - that there were others like myself. I controlled my excitement, but he seemed to sense it - his gaze wavered uncertainly.

Steve Aylett

#43. Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.

Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

#44. The idea is that human culture as broadly defined
art, politics, technology, religion, and so on
evolves in much the way biological species evolve: new cultural traits arise and may flourish or perish, and as a result whole institutions can belief systems form and change.

Robert Wright

#45. I want to challenge all of you as people of deep conscience, people who are environment stewards of the earth and oceans ... By changing what you eat, you will change the entire contract between the human species and the natural world.

James Cameron

#46. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Rudyard Kipling

#47. Food culture in the United States has long been cast as the property of a privileged class. It is nothing of the kind. Culture is the property of a species.

Barbara Kingsolver

#48. We wonder, how do you instruct seven billion people as to the relationship to the Earth? Because unless they understand that, and relate the way they should be, the future is pretty dim for the human species.

Oren Lyons

#49. What our species needs, above all else, is a generally accepted ethical system that is compatible with the scientific knowledge we now possess.

Derek Freeman

#50. And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a mad species.

Rafael Sabatini

#51. I absolutely don't think a sentient artificial intelligence is going to wage war against the human species.

Daniel H. Wilson

#52. The order Chiroptera (the "hand-wing" creatures) encompasses 1,116 species, which amounts to 25 percent of all the recognized species of mammals. To say again: One in every four species of mammal is a bat. Such

David Quammen

#53. The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy.

Louis Kronenberger

#54. Only one kind of species of animals bites the hand that feeds them - mankind.

Fakeer Ishavardas

#55. We are committed with our lives to building a different model and a different future for humanity, the Earth, and other species. We have envisaged a moral alternative to economic globalization and we will not rest until we see it realized.

Maude Barlow

#56. The way to understand how different species evolved is to think about the niches that they fill in an ecosystem - basically, how they make a living.

Steven Pinker

#57. We can spend billions of dollars bailing out a fiscally irresponsible nation that doesn't want to work hard or be financially intelligent, but to propose that same amount to ensure the survival of our species is actually up for debate?

Bill Hargenrader

#58. Eradication of this unquenchable shrub [tamarisk] will save water, lower salinity levels and create a more congenial habitat for the Southwest Willow Flycatcher and a number of other riparian species.

Wayne Allard

#59. He who is unconscious of the ties which connect him with every individual of his species feels no obligation to make sacrifices for their welfare or happiness.

Benjamin Robbins Curtis

#60. The roast meat the animal had snatched was only a semblance. It was more than food, it was a meal not for human witness, a tangle of viscera, a species of human sacrifice - as if Emerence were feeding the actual person to the dog, along with all her fond memories and feelings.

Magda Szabo

#61. The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

Charles Lamb

#62. Would the Gardners and the workers at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth, or Cannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes?

Carl Sagan

#63. If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.

E. O. Wilson

#64. I am not very proud of being an human being; in fact, I distinctly dislike the species in many ways. I can readily conceive of beings vastly superior in every respect.

H.P. Lovecraft

#65. But the characteristic that is truly special about our species ... [is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme ...

Arthur C. Clarke

#66. Humans are a social species more than any other, and in order to build a community, which for some reason humans have to do in order to live, we have to solve the communication problem. Language is the tool that was invented to solve that problem.

Daniel Everett

#67. Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it begins to simply reward those who reproduce the most and leave the intelligent to become an endangered species.

Mike Judge

#68. The construction of the nuclear doomsday machine - and its continued maintenance and development since the mid-twentieth century - is surely one of the most astounding acts of collective insanity in the history of the human species.

Richard L. Currier

#69. Ever since there have been people, there have been explorers, looking in places where other hadn't been before. Not everyone does it, but we are part of a species where some members of the species do-to the benefit of us all.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#70. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Richard Dawkins

#71. We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion what is and what is not their 'proper sphere.' The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to.

Harriet Taylor Mill

#72. As a species, we tend to be doers, forever shaping and reshaping the world to better suit our purposes.

Mariella Frostrup

#73. A man, who can, in cold blood, hunt and torture a poor, innocent animal, cannot feel much compassion for the distress of his own species.

Frederick The Great

#74. Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor's guilt about all the other species we'd wiped out on our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn. Now we're the Flashlight People.

Stephen King

#75. The fewer species there are and the fewer species we know about, the fewer questions we even know to ask.

Lynn Margulis

#76. Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.

John Rawls

#77. Oh, those golden-yellow eyes of the wolf! You can feel yourself being pulled in. I knew I had been accepted - and that I had spoken to another species.

Jean Craighead George

#78. The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations.

Havelock Ellis

#79. Because predators tend to eat the weakest of a species, they keep the remaining population strong. Without predators, herds become weak and disabled. In contrast, when humans hunt animals for trophies, they kill the strongest of the species, thereby weakening the herd.

Stacey O'Brien

#80. The urgency to mate persists in all people as in all other mammals because of the evolutionary drive to continue the species, the inborn imperative for genes to reproduce and hormonal differences that evolved over millions of years.

Lynn Margulis

#81. WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.

Ambrose Bierce

#82. As a revelation from God, they have stood the test of many ages; and as such maintained their ground against every species of enemy, and every mode of attack. Truth is mighty, and must prevail.

Adam Clarke

#83. It had long been accepted that if a species put mankind on its food-chain menu the species would be extinct before long.

Dan Simmons

#84. There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.

Thomas Paine

#85. What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity.

Diane Ackerman

#86. It doesn't matter how big your neocortex is or how abstractly you can reason: unless you can trust others, your species will forever remain stuck in the Stone Age.

Bruce Schneier

#87. If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

George Carlin

#88. Beetles and butterflies are sometimes restricted to small areas. Each mountain in a range, and even the different zones of a mountain, may have its own peculiar species. But the house-fly seems to be everywhere. I wonder if any island in mid-ocean is flyless.

John Muir

#89. Pain is pain, and the importance of preventing unnecessary pain and suffering does not diminish because the being that suffers is not a member of our own species.

Peter Singer

#90. Land bridges were everywhere during the extinction, many species were spreading, and there were many diseases.

Robert T. Bakker

#91. At worst, we're considered selfish or immature; women who don't want to have children are regarded as unnatural, traitors to their sex, if not the species.

Tim Kreider

#92. My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.

Ellen Goodman

#93. So you love me," said Petra softly when the kiss ended.
I'm a raging mass of hormones thet I'm too young to understand," said Bean. "You're a female of a closely related species. According to all the best primatologists, I really have no choice."
That's nice," she said ...

Orson Scott Card

#94. Certainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction.

George Gaylord Simpson

#95. A duck's nest was found today near the trail on the dry open prairie with as far as could be seen no water or marsh near. The bird flew off but could not tell what species. The eggs nine originally.

George Mercer Dawson

#96. I used to have 30 different species of tarantulas, as well as two Australian scorpions that are considered the deadliest in the world. If stung by one, a person would die in 30 minutes. But when I had kids I had to get rid of them, of course. Those were intense!

Jonathan Davis

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

Richard Dawkins

#98. Actually, however, life begins less by reaching upward, than by turning upon itself. But what a marvelously insidious, subtle image of life a coiling vital principle would be! And how many dreams the leftward oriented shell, or one that did not conform to the rotation of its species, would inspire!

Gaston Bachelard

#99. It's only been in the past two generations that we truly understood the impact our civilization has had on the natural world. To our credit as a species, we have turned this obscure scientific fact about carbon cycles into one of the most important political issues of the 21st century.

Annalee Newitz

#100. All geologic history is full of the beginning and the ends of species-of their first and last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of development.

Hugh Miller