Theodosius Dobzhansky Quotes

#1. The more we know, the better we realize that our knowledge is a little island in the midst of an ocean of ignorance.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#2. When I lost a tennis match that made me upset or hurt emotionally I would find myself going to the piano and playing for hours. It was my place of refuge and solace.

Aaron Zigman

#3. No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#4. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can only be doubted by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or plain bigotry.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#5. This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.

Paulo Freire

#6. No known human group ... simply throw out its dead without any ritual or ceremony. In stark contrast, no animal practices burial of dead individuals of its own species.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#7. It's all about judging," I said. "I'm not sure I'm the judge type. I might be more of the criminal type."
"Judgement is power," he said.

Melissa Bank

#8. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#9. As Manhattan came into view, she experienced what she always felt on approaching the city from JFK; a mixture of excitement and calm, a sense of totality; of perfect, living, vibrant, chaotic peace.

Cathleen Schine

#10. We are an army of dreamers, and that's why we're invincible.

Subcomandante Marcos

#11. Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts
some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#12. Natural selection must be replaced by eugenical artificial selection. This idea constitutes the sound core of eugenics, the applied science of human betterment.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#13. Nature's stern discipline enjoins mutual help at least as often as warfare. The fittest may also be the gentlest.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#14. Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#15. Scientists often have a naive faith that if only they could discover enough facts about a problem, these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#16. Evolutionary plasticity can be purchased only at the ruthlessly dear price of continuously sacrificing some individuals to death from unfavourable mutations. Bemoaning this imperfection of nature has, however, no place in a scientific treatment of this subject.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#17. Pat answers to complex problems are the hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#18. The truth is supposed to hurt. That's how it lets you know you don't got it.

Brad Stine

#19. The living world is not a single array ... connected by unbroken series of intergrades.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#20. There is nothing like a man for bringing out the animal in an animal.

Roger Rosenblatt

#21. What is ethical to a lawyer differs from what's ethical to the rest of the world.

Jodi Picoult

#22. Marxists are more right than wrong when they argue that the problems scientists take up,. the way they go about solving them, and even the solutions they arc inclined to accept, arc conditioned by the intellectual, social, and economic environments in which they live and work.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#23. There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#24. An accident, a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. Poking a stick into the machinery of one's watch or one's radio set will seldom make it work better.

Theodosius Dobzhansky