Quotes & Sayings About Living Organisms

there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. — Alan W. Watts

We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm
a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven. — Charles Darwin

We don't even know what species are out there, for the most part, particularly when you get down to the microbes and very small invertebrates. They make up the mass of the organisms around us, including the soil we depend on, the soil of cornfields as well as hardwood forests. We haven't taken ecology to the point where we can even make a crude prediction of what's going to happen when we've reduced the living world down to a certain level. — E. O. Wilson

Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly, engaged the whole of human personality. His insistence on the sanctity of nature was part of an attempt to develop Goethe's intuition that form cannot be put together in the mind by an additive process, but is to be deduced from the laws of growth in living organisms, and their resistance to the elements. — Kenneth Clark

The great age of the earth will appear greater to man when he understands the origin of living organisms and the reasons for the gradual development and improvement of their organization. This antiquity will appear even greater when he realizes the length of time and the particular conditions which were necessary to bring all the living species into existence. This is particularly true since man is the latest result and present climax of this development, the ultimate limit of which, if it is ever reached, cannot be known. — Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

There are more organisms living on the skin of a single human than there are humans living on earth * * * There are more living organisms in a teaspoonful of soil than there are people alive on Earth * * * — Tasnim Essack

In the beginning, there were bacteria ... [A] nearly universal assumption is that all subsequent life descended from the original life form through a continuous chain of ancestor-descendant pairs. This assumption looks good because all living organisms share biochemical traits. It is conceivable, of course, that life originated more than once on the early earth but that all except one life form died out early, leaving a single lineage as the ancestor of life as we know it. If this did happen, it was the first important species extinction. — David M. Raup

Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners ... — Daniel Dennett

We are evolutionary descendents of this marvellous panoply of life. And what that says unequivocally is we have an utter total obligation to make sure we have an environment that not only is good for us but is good for all living organisms. — Leroy Hood

We are in fact living organisms that exist in a living universe — L.J. Vanier

The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero. — Ilya Prigogine

Living organisms were not independently created, but have descended and diversified over time from common ancestors. And thus, no other biological theory so elegantly explains this. Evolutionary theory has withstood the test of time - by way of vicarious experimentation, observation, analysis, and relentless criticism, though opposing viewpoints still cling to the concept of "design." As a person of the biological sciences, I cannot subscribe to such misguided notions that suggest static biological states. Clearly, proper examination of the natural world reveal evolutionary trajectories - some random, others nonrandom - and all having observable genetic implications. It is only when we apply evolutionary explanations to living systems that it becomes ever so clear. The world was not specifically designed with us in mind, but rather we long since adapted and conformed to our surroundings, only giving it the illusionary appearance of "design. — Tommy Rodriguez

Pumpkins are the only living organisms with triangle eyes. — Harland Williams

It is certainly true in the United States that there is an uneasiness about certain aspects of science, particularly evolution, because it conflicts, in some people's minds, with their sense of how we all came to be. But you know, if you are a believer in God, it's hard to imagine that God would somehow put this incontrovertible evidence in front of us about our relationship to other living organisms and expect us to disbelieve it. I mean, that doesn't make sense at all. — Francis Collins

The soil is, as a matter of fact, full of live organisms. It is essential to conceive of it as something pulsating with life, not as a dead or inert mass. There could be no greater misconception than to regard the earth as dead: a handful of soil is teeming with life. The living fungi, bacteria, and protozoa, invisibly present in the soil complex, are known as the soil population. This population of millions and millions of minute existences, quite invisible to our eyes of course, pursue their own lives. They come into being, grow, work, and die: they sometimes fight each other, win victories, or perish; for they are divided into groups and families fitted to exist under all sorts of conditions. The state of a soil will change with the victories won or the losses sustained; and in one or other soil, or at one or other moment, different groups will predominate. — Albert Howard

No one know precisely how sentient is a pinyon pine, for example, or to what degree such woody organisms can feel pain or fear, and in any case the road builders had more important things to worry about, but this much is clearly established as scientific face: a living tree, once uprooted, takes many days to wholly die. — Edward Abbey

The investigation into the possible effects of cosmic rays on living organisms will also offer great interest. — Victor Francis Hess

The naturalist E. O. Wilson gave a name to this warm, fuzzy feeling I'm experiencing: biophilia. He defined it as "the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms." Wilson argued that our connection to nature is deeply ingrained in our evolutionary past. That connection isn't always positive. Take snakes, for instance. The chances of encountering a snake, let alone dying from a snakebite, are extraordinarily remote. Yet modern humans continue to fear snakes even more, studies have found, than car accidents or homicide or any of the dozens of other more plausible ways we might meet our demise. The fear of snakes resides deep in our primitive brain. The fear of the Long Island Expressway, while not insignificant, was added much more recently. — Eric Weiner

God is dead,' Nick said. 'They found his carcass in 2019. Floating in space near Alpha.'
'They found the remains of an organism advanced several thousand times over what we are,' Charley said. 'And evidently could create habitable worlds and populate them with living organisms, derived from itself. But that doesn't prove it was God. — Philip K. Dick

Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be the strangest thing of all, absolutely incomprehensible. For we are not familiar with this kind of living. We do not have solitary, isolated creatures. It is beyond our imagination to conceive of a single form of life that exists alone and independent, unattached to other forms — Lewis Thomas

It is remarkable that the elements diffused through the host of stars are some of those most closely connected with the living organisms of our globe. — William Huggins

Time is a social institution and not a physical reality. There is no such thing as time in the natural world - the world of stars and waters, clouds, mountains and living organisms. There is such a thing as rhythm - rhythm of tides, rhythm of biological processes ... There is rhythm and there is motion. Time is a way of measuring motion. — Alan Watts

The morphological characteristics of plant and animal species form the chief subject of the descriptive natural sciences and are the criteria for their classification. But not until recently has it been recognized that in living organisms, as in the realm of crystals, chemical differences parallel the variation in structure. — Karl Landsteiner

As long as museums and universities send out expeditions to bring to light new forms of living and extinct animals and new data illustrating the interrelations of organisms and their environments, as long as anatomists desire a broad comparative basis human for anatomy, as long as even a few students feel a strong curiosity to learn about the course of evolution and relationships of animals, the old problems of taxonomy, phylogeny and evolution will gradually reassert themselves even in competition with brilliant and highly fruitful laboratory studies in cytology, genetics and physiological chemistry. — William King Gregory

Sometime in the first billion years, life appeared on the earth's surface. Slowly, the fossil record indicates, living organisms climbed the ladder from simple to more advanced forms. — Robert Jastrow

The living environment is the biosphere, the thin layer around the world of living organisms. We're part of that. Our existence is dependent on it in ways that people haven't even begun to appreciate. Our existence depends not just on its existence, but its stability and its richness. — E. O. Wilson

The concept of evolution postulates that living organisms have common roots, and in turn, the existence of common features is powerful support for the concept of evolution. — Hans Adolf Krebs

The ocean makes up roughly 70% of the planet; living on land, we fail to recognize the importance of our ocean and the marine life that inhabit it. Ocean acidification is making phytoplankton toxic, which is bad news for the organisms that depend on them as a source of food and oxygen. Phytoplankton generates a large portion of the world's O2. If they're out of balance, the rest of life on Earth is going to be out of balance. — Joseph P. Kauffman

The basic common denominator of all life is the urge to survive, and the survival of life on Planet Earth is achieved only as a shared initiative with and through all life-forms. Life is a joint effort; no 'man' separate from 'nature.' Homo sapiens as individuals and as species are as much a part of life's overall thrust for survival as any other species. As living organisms, we are part if the greater whole, and as such, we are embodied with exactly the same fundamental purpose: to survive. And to do so
as individuals, families, groups, and as a species
we have to live in dynamic collaboration with the plant and animal kingdoms in a healthy, life-sustaining environment. — Lawrence Anthony

Human settlements are like living organisms. They must grow, and they will change. But we can decide on the nature of that growth - on the quality and the character of it - and where it ought to go. We don't have to scatter the building blocks of our civic life all over the countryside, destroying our towns and ruining farmland. — James Howard Kunstler

The most serious disorders may be provoked by the injection of living organisms into the bloodinto a medium not intended for them may provoke redoubtable manifestations of the gravest morbid phenomena. — Antoine Bechamp

I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain. One of the great Catalan poets, Joan Maragall, wrote this famous poem in which he called Barcelona the great enchantress, or some kind of sorceress, and in which the city has this dark enticing presence that seduces and lures people. I think Barcelona has a lot of that. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There are more living organisms in a tablespoon of highly organic soil than there are people on the planet. — Howard Warren Buffett

Overhead, a Hawk was zeroing in on a watchbird. The armored murder machine had learned a lot in a few days. Its sole function was to kill. At present it was impelled toward a certain type of living organism, metallic like itself. But the Hawk had just discovered that there were other types of living organisms, too - Which had to be murdered. — Robert Sheckley

One of the deepest functions of a living organisms is to look ahead ... to produce future. — Francois Jacob

What I was concerned with was life: what are the major features that are common to all living organisms that subtly define life. So I looked at the whole problem as a chemist, as a biochemist, and as a molecular biologist. — Christian De Duve

Sometimes, when I'm alone, I wonder if it really counts as being alone, since I am covered in millions of other living organisms. — Travis J. Dahnke

As a Talmudic saying goes, over every blade of grass an angel whispers, "Grow, grow!" Living organisms and living faiths must grow, or die! — Bruce Epperly

Among the things most characteristic of organisms--most distinctive of living as opposed to inorganic systems--is a sort of directedness. Their structures and activities have an adaptedness, an evident and vital usefulness to the organism. Darwin's answer and ours is to accept the common sense view...[that] the end ("telos") [is] that the individual and the species may survive. But this end is (usually) unconscious and impersonal. Naive teleology is controverted not by ignoring the obvious existence of such ends but by providing a naturalistic, materialistic explanation of the adaptive characteristics serving them. [Book review in "Science," 1959, p. 673.] — George Gaylord Simpson

Reality [ ... ] at every level from photons to philosophical fancies to the consciousness of living organisms was fluid [ ... ]. To break apart and confine this reality into separate categories created by the mind was foolish and futile, much like trying to capture a ray of light inside a dark wooden box. This urge to categorize was the true fall of man [ ... ] the infinite became finite, good opposed evil, thoughts hardened into beliefs, one's joys and discoveries became dreadful certainties, man became alienated from what he perceived as other ways and other things, and, ultimately, divided against himself, body and soul. [ ... ] Always seeking meaning, always making their lives safe and comfortable, human beings do not truly live. — David Zindell

Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives are lived with passivity toward death - it's something that happens to you and those around you. — Paul Kalanithi

There is an inflow of vital power, which is received by all living organisms during sleep ... this vital energy is the only power by which the body may be healed, repaired, renewed or maintained — Wallace D. Wattles

And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person or system exposed to ceaseless novelty and change risks falling into chaos; but one that is too rigid or static ceases to grow and eventually dies. This never-ending dance between change and stability is like the anchor and the waves. Adult relationships mirror these dynamics all too well. We seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner. Yet at the same time we expect love to offer a transcendent experience that will allow us to soar beyond our ordinary lives. The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what's safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what's exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring. — Esther Perel

[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves - the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers - brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains - books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer. — Richard Dawkins

In their "deep" objectives - in what they evolved to do - humans are not qualitatively different from other living organisms. Like other living things, they evolved to get and use resources to survive and enhance the spread of their genes. — Bobbi S. Low

Physical science enjoys the distinction of being the most fundamental of the experimental sciences, and its laws are obeyed universally, so far as is known, not merely by inanimate things, but also by living organisms, in their minutest parts, as single individuals, and also as whole communities. It results from this that, however complicated a series of phenomena may be and however many other sciences may enter into its complete presentation, the purely physical aspect, or the application of the known laws of matter and energy, can always be legitimately separated from the other aspects. — Frederick Soddy

The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Cell division allows us as organisms to grow, to adapt, to recover, to repair - to live. And distorted and unleashed, it allows cancer cells to grow, to flourish, to adapt, to recover, and to repair - to live at the cost of our living. Cancer cells grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves. — Anonymous

Toshiaki learned that all living organisms were governed by their DNA. He was impressed by perfection of this system.Why did existence have the ability to design such a beautiful code? And how could such a simple structure account for endless diversity of life forms? — Hideaki Sena

Yet is it possible in terms of the motion of atoms to explain how men can invent an electric motor, or design and build a great cathedral? If such achievements represent anything more than the requirements of physical law, it means that science must investigate the additional controlling factors, whatever they may be, in order that the world of nature may be adequately understood. For a science which describes only the motions of inanimate things but fails to include the actions of living organisms cannot claim universality. — Arthur Compton

Most people think of viruses as parasites, but they aren't parasites at all. An organism has to be considered alive to be classified as a parasite. Viruses don't do any of things living organisms do. They don't grow, they can't move on their own, and they don't metabolize. They don't even have cells. But the one thing a virus is very good at is reproducing. When it finds a suitable host cell, it attaches itself and injects its DNA through the cell's plasma wall. The virus's genes are transcribed into the host cell's DNA, and the host cell's genetic code is rewritten. Whatever its job was before, its new job is to do nothing but produce copies of the original virus, usually until it's created so many that the cell bursts open and spreads the infection. — Christian Cantrell

This rock has seen billions of years of living organisms and will see many more once we die and turn to dirt. Our life is but one tiny, brief, insignificant piece of this vast universe. So, why, the nihilist argues, do people really think that it is important to be a "good person", get good grades, or get a good job? What difference could that possibly make to anything?

Nihilism is an honest evaluation of what a universe without God would look like. Nietzsche was right about that. Where he went wrong was in thinking this was true of the actual universe. — Jon Morrison

First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence. — Phillip E. Johnson

People are beautiful. All people, of all shapes and sizes. The fact that we are living, breathing organisms that happen to have opposable thumbs, allowing us to pick up our phones and be on it for the entire damn day, is nothing short of brilliant. What makes us even more magnificent as a species is that we are lucky enough to be uniquely different - and it's THAT individuality we must each harness and celebrate. — Connor Franta

Movies become living organisms that graduate from a filmmaker's sphere of influence and pretty much look back and tell you how they need to be said goodbye to. A movie often turns around and looks at you and says, "Here is who I am, and that's maybe now how you see me, but that's who I've become." And you've got to be open enough to go with that. — Steven Spielberg

The ecological complexities of existence overwhelm the human mind, even though some of that richness is an integral part of man's own nature. It is only by isolating some little part of that existence for a short time that it can be momentarily grasped: we learn only from samples. By separating primary from secondary qualities, by making mathematical description the test of truth, by utilizing only a part of the human self to explore only a part of its environment, the new science successfully turned the most significant attributes of life into purely secondary phenomena, ticketed for replacement by the machine. Thus living organisms, in their most typical functions and purposes, became superfluous. — Lewis Mumford

The other line of argument, which leads to the opposite conclusion, arises from looking at artificial automata. Everyone knows that a machine tool is more complicated than the elements which can be made with it, and that, generally speaking, an automaton A, which can make an automaton B, must contain a complete description of B, and also rules on how to behave while effecting the synthesis. So, one gets a very strong impression that complication, or productive potentiality in an organization, is degenerative , that an organization which synthesizes something is necessarily more complicated, of a higher order, than the organization it synthesizes. This conclusion, arrived at by considering artificial automaton, is clearly opposite to our early conclusion, arrived at by considering living organisms. — John Von Neumann

We're organisms; we're conceived, we're born, we live, we die, and we decay. But as we decay we feed the world of the living: plants and bugs and bacteria. — William M. Bass

Since Dart's time, paleoanthropologists, geneticists, and molecular biologists have used fossils and DNA sequences to establish our place in the tree of evolution. We are apes descended from other apes, and our closest cousin is the chimpanzee, whose ancestors diverged from our own several million years ago in Africa. These are indisputable facts. And rather than diminishing our humanity, they should produce satisfaction and wonder, for they connect us to all organisms, the living and the dead. But — Jerry A. Coyne

The nucleic acids, as constituents of living organisms, are comparable In importance to proteins. There is evidence that they are Involved In the processes of cell division and growth, that they participate In the transmission of hereditary characters, and that they are important constituents of viruses. An understanding of the molecular structure of the nucleic acids should be of value In the effort to understand the fundamental phenomena of life. — Linus Pauling

I am of course getting angry if biologists try to use the general concept 'chance' in order to explain phenomena which are so typical for living organisms as, for instance, those appearing in the biological evolution. — Wolfgang Paul

Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity — Leslie Orgel

In living organisms, nucleic acid molecules are the only indefinite hereditary replicators, or at least they were until the invention of language and music. — John Maynard Smith

A sound Physics of the Earth should include all the primary considerations of the earth's atmosphere, of the characteristics and continual changes of the earth's external crust, and finally of the origin and development of living organisms. These considerations naturally divide the physics of the earth into three essential parts, the first being a theory of the atmosphere, or Meteorology, the second, a theory of the earth's external crust, or Hydrogeology, and the third, a theory of living organisms, or Biology. — Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

We are here because over billions of years, countless variables fell into place, any of which could have taken another path. We are essentially a beautiful fluke, as are the millions of other species with which we share this planet. Our cells are composed of atoms and dust particles from distant galaxies, and from the billions of living organisms that inhabited this planet before us. — Wendy Mass

Next it was found that it was physiologically and structurally the same in the plant, that it was the living part of the plant, that which manifested the life and did the work in vegetable as well as in animal organisms. — Asa Gray

I scoured myself with lye soap from head to toe to get the evil funk of demon snot off me. I have flossed things the gods never meant to be flossed and used things that would be toxic to most living organisms. All to sanitize my body for your chewing pleasure. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy. — John B. S. Haldane

Think of it : zillions and zillions of organisms running around, each under the hypnotic spell of a single truth, all these truths identical, and all logically incompatible with one another : 'My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death'. And you are one of those organisms, living your life in the thrall of a logical absurdity. — Robert Wright

Anyone familiar with the numerous accounts of the Buddha's extraordinary compassion and reverence for living beings - for example his insistence that his monks strain the water they drink lest they inadvertently cause the death of any micro-organisms - could never believe that he would be indifferent to the sufferings of domestic animals caused by their slaughter of food — Philip Kapleau

If any value is deeply evolutionarily familiar, it is reproductive success. If any value is truly unnatural, if there is one thing that humans (and all other species in nature) are decisively not designed for, it is voluntary childlessness. All living organisms in nature, including humans, are evolutionarily designed to reproduce. Reproductive success is the ultimate end of all biological existence. — Satoshi Kanazawa

Beverly once read a science magazine article about bioluminescence, the natural glow emitted by organisms like fireflies and jellyfish, but she knows the dead also give off a strange illumination, a phosphor that can permanently damage the eyes of the living. Necroluminescence - the light of the vanished. A hindsight produced by the departed body. Your failings backlit by the death of your loved ones. — Karen Russell

The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. — Theodore Kaczynski

The ethics of reverence for life makes no distinction between higher and lower, more precious and less precious lives. It has good reasons for this omission. For what are we doing, when we establish hard and fast gradations in value between living organisms, but judging them in relation to ourselves, by whether they seem to stand closer to us or farther from us. This is a wholly subjective standard. How can we know what importance other living organisms have in themselves and in terms of the universe? — Albert Schweitzer

As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [chemistry]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem. For the further analysis of these phenomena which are in flux and flow, the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study. — John Jacob Abel

For modern science, at least from a philosophical point of view, the critical divide seems to be between inanimate matter and the origin of living organisms, while for Buddhism the critical divide is between non-sentient matter and the emergence of sentient beings. — Dalai Lama XIV

Animals are not property or "things" but rather living organisms, subjects of a life, who are worthy of our compassion, respect, friendship, and support. — Marc Bekoff

Four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the "organic" molecules that constitute living organisms on a planet, and the nuclei of these same elements interact to generate the light of its star. Then the organisms on the planet come to depend wholly on that starlight, as they must if life is to persist. So it is that all life on the Earth runs on sunlight. [Referring to photosynthesis] — George Wald

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system ... We find such systems within living organisms. — Scott A. Minnich

Modern scientific knowledge appeared piecemeal. Historians wrote about human history; physicists tackled the material world; and biologists studied the world of living organisms. But there were few links between these disciplines, as researchers focused on getting the details right. — David Christian

It would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homogeneous thing; it is immensely diversified, having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different organisms. Every organism is, so to speak, a monadic being. It has a world of its own because it has an experience of its own. The phenomena that we find in the life of a certain biological species are not transferable to any other species. The experiences - and therefore the realities - of two different organisms are incommensurable with one another. In the world of a fly, says Uexkull, we find only "fly things"; in the world of a sea urchin we find only "sea urchin things. — Ernst Cassirer

Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. — E. O. Wilson

Stories, like living organisms, acquire and lose traits over time. — Anonymous

We do not draw conclusions with our eyes, but with our reasoning powers, and if the whole of the rest of living nature proclaims with one accord from all sides the evolution of the world of organisms, we cannot assume that the process stopped short of Man. But it follows also that the factors which brought about the development of Man from his Simian ancestry must be the same as those which have brought about the whole of evolution. — August Weismann

All living things must grow or they will die. Adaptation to change is a characteristic of all living systems. Thus, all living things must grow, adapt, evolve, or die. Evolution is nature's creative way of pushing living organisms to higher degrees of complexity. We adapt up, not compromise down. — Alvin Conway

The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle-an architect. — Allan Sandage

The surface of the earth is not simply a stage on which the thousands of present and past inhabitants played their parts in turn. There are much more intimate relations between the earth and the living organisms which populated it, and it may even be demonstrated that the earth was developed because of them. — Louis Agassiz

Only yesterday mankind lived in fear of the scourges of smallpox, cholera and plague that once swept nations before them. Now our major concern is no longer with the disease organisms that once were omnipresent; sanitation, better living conditions, and new drugs have given us a high degree of control over infectious disease. Today we are concerned with a different kind of hazard that lurks in our environment-a hazard we ourselves have introduced into our world as our modern way of life has evolved. — Rachel Carson

If our society continues to support basic research on how living organisms function, it is likely that my great grandchildren will be spared the agony of losing family members to most types of cancer. — Paul D. Boyer

The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

DNA is the master blueprint for life and constitutes the genetic material in all free-living organisms and most viruses. RNA is the genetic material of certain viruses, but it is also found in all living cells, where it plays an important role in certain processes such as the making of proteins. — Richard J. Roberts

Sometimes people don't get sick from bacteria or a virus- -living organisms alien to the human body- -but from the human brain itself. Our brains can be our worst enemy, our cruelest opponent. — Buket Uzuner

Living organisms are created by chemistry. We are huge packages of chemicals. — David Christian

All living organisms are but leaves on the same tree of life. The various functions of plants and animals and their specialized organs are manifestations of the same living matter. This adapts itself to different jobs and circumstances, but operates on the same basic principles. Muscle contraction is only one of these adaptations. In principle it would not matter whether we studied nerve, kidney or muscle to understand the basic principles of life. In practice, however, it matters a great deal. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

The problem that we, as living organisms, face - and not we only, humans, but any living organism faces - is the management of life. — Antonio Damasio

Life is so diversified that to any statement I could make about living organisms there are exceptions. Because of the many exceptions, I should qualify everything I say with hedging phrases such as 'generally,' 'usually,' and 'almost always' But I'm afraid the constant repetition of these hedges will slow me down and bore you. So let's make a pact now that I forego the hedging phrases and you are to understand that almost all my statements may have rare exceptions. — Lee Spetner

The difference is an objective phenomenon of soil science; what we call "soil" is a community of living, mostly microscopic organisms in a nutrient matrix. Organic farming, by definition, enhances the soil's living and nonliving components. Modern conventional farming is an efficient reduction of that process that adds back just a few crucial nutrients of the many that are removed each year when biomass is harvested ... Chemicals that sterilize the soil destroy organisms that fight plant diseases, aerate, and manufacture fertility. Recent research has discovered that just adding phosphorus (the P in all "NPK" fertilizers) kills the tiny filaments of fungi that help plants absorb nutrients. — Barbara Kingsolver

Owing to the difficulty of dealing with substances of high molecular weight we are still a long way from having determined the chemical characteristics and the constitution of proteins, which are regarded as the principal con-stituents of living organisms. — Karl Landsteiner

The gifts of microscopes to our understanding of cells and organisms is so profound that one has to ask: What are the gifts of the microscopist? Here is my opinion. The gift of the great microscopist is the ability to Think with the eyes and see with the brain. Deep revelations into the nature of living things continue to travel on beams of light. — Daniel Mazia

You are one miniscule piece of a never-ending cycle. In fact, you're not even a piece. You're just a holder for billions and billions of other pieces. Whether that's organic components, living organisms inside your body, bacteria or whatever it is, you're just part of the soup of the universe, so just try to enjoy what's good about it. — Joe Rogan