Lineages Quotes & Sayings

Poverty is the curse of ancient but numerous lineages. — Judith Merkle Riley

Unlike some other immune-system gene families, whose genes are all clustered together on one chromosome, the 10 human TLR genes are distributed between five chromosomes. This reflects the ancient, invertebrate origin of the Toll-like receptors, which were present before the two genome-wide duplications that occurred during the early evolution of the vertebrates around 500 million years ago. On the basis of sequence similarities, the Toll-like receptors form four evolutionary lineages (I, II, III, and IV) that are descendants of the four Toll-like receptor loci formed by these two ancient genome duplications. — Peter Parham

Can't we sleep ten minutes more? I was having a lovely dream about sneezing without covering my mouth, and giving everybody germs. — Lemony Snicket

On Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me believe its utter improbablity. — Ernst Mayr

Life's Solution builds a forceful case for the predictability of evolutionary outcomes, not in terms of genetic details but rather their broad phenotypic manifestations. The case rests on a remarkable compilation of examples of convergent evolution, in which two or more lineages have independently evolved similar structures and functions. — Simon Conway Morris

There is no theoretical reason to expect evolutionary lineages to increase in complexity with time, and no empirical evidence that they do so. Nevertheless, eukaryotic cells are more complex than prokaryotic ones, animals and plants are more complex than protists, and so on. This increase in complexity may have been achieved as a result of a series of major evolutionary transitions. These involved changes in the way information is stored and transmitted.
[The major evolutionary transitions, Nature 374, 227 - 232 (16 March 1994)] — John Maynard Smith

An algorithm is like a recipe. — Waseem Latif

The phrase "the violent bear it away" fascinated the 20th century Irish-American storyteller Flannery O'Connor, who used it as the title of one of her novels. O'Connor's surname connects her to an Irish royal family descended from Conchobor (pronounced "Connor"), the prehistoric king of Ulster who was foster father to Cuchulainn and "husband" of the unwilling Derdriu. In the western world, the antiquity of Irish lineages is exceeded only by that of the Jews. — Thomas Cahill

Just as individuals age and die, so do lineages: Only debt is forever. — Charles Stross

Two million years ago, several proto-human lineages had coexisted side by side until a shake-up left only one. It now appears that a similar shake-up occurred within the last 60,000 years, and that all of us alive in the world today are descended from the winner of that upheaval. What was the last missing ingredient whose acquisition helped our ancestor to win? — Jared Diamond

And the woman in the vegetable shop, she oppresses me all the time. — Terry Pratchett

Too often, the notion of progress is used as a code word for perfection, the chain of being in a different guise. The term should be employed with caution. Some see an arrow of time in biology, as in physics, but in the opposite direction- a relentless tendency to improve, just as a universe has a built-in trend towards chaos and disorder. That is too optimistic. Some lineages get more complicated, some simpler, and much of life has to struggle to stay in the same place. If everyone is evolving, nobody can afford to stop, and there may be constant change with no overall advance at all. — Steve Jones

Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record. — Niles Eldredge

I was clever enough to know that John Donne was offering something that was awfully enjoyable. I just wasn't clever enough to actually enjoy it. — Wallace Shawn

I lived in Boston until last year," he said, in a falsely low-key way, because "Boston" was code for Harvard (otherwise he would say MIT or Tufts or anywhere else), just as another woman said, "I was in New Haven," in that coy manner that pretended not to be coy, which meant that she had been at Yale. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Commoners had to prostrate themselves before high-ranking chiefs. All the members of chiefly lineages, bureaucrats, and some craft specialists were freed from the work of food production. — Jared Diamond

You know, even with the 'Awkward Black Girl' episodes, they come out once a month. That's great for me, it's comfortable, it gives each time to digest, time for new people to get on to it and caught up, but oftentimes I have people who are almost demanding a higher output from me. — Issa Rae

Confidence cannot escalate to arrogance, it only happens if the blood of pride is running through your veins. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it. — George C. Williams

The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability. — Ernst Mayr

You have no idea if your idea matters until you share it. — Rands

A long long time ago I took an oath to tell all secrets that came my way. Don't tell me a secret, I won't keep it. I'm against secrets, I'm against hierarchies, lineages, all assumption of special knowledge on the part of anyone in the presence of anyone else is abhorrent to me. I mean, I am a true anarchist first and foremost. — Terence McKenna

A unifying factor between the different traditions and lineages of Tantra, is that it is feminine in nature. It acknowledges the feminine as the basis from which all the practices spring. Therefore, Tantra is by its nature, the understanding that all phenomenal existence, the universe, or cosmos, that we experience is feminine in nature. — Zeena Schreck

For one of the toxic things about Lineages was that rich avout could get not-so-rich ones to do things for them in exchange for better food, better drink, and better lodging. — Neal Stephenson