Quotes & Sayings About Species

Maybe we need to fall on the common-sense side of protecting these species, but continue harvesting wood products we all use and enjoy. We've got to be able to do both - protect water quality and species, as well as harvest trees. — John Hancock

The sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to secure the preservation of the species. — Adolf Hitler

Humans are the one species the world could do very well without. — George Schaller

Gods, the pamphlets asserted, were not supernatural beings, but tenuously living things, like ethereal plants, that evolved in concert with the human species. We were simply their medium - our brains and flesh the soil in which they sprouted and grew. — Robert Charles Wilson

What set us apart from most or all of the other hominid species was our ultrasociality, our ability to be highly cooperative, even with strangers, people who are not at all related to us. — Jonathan Haidt

It is a curious fact that small boys are more terrified of their babysitters than small girls are. In part, this is because small girls and babysitters, who are usually slightly larger girls, belong to the same species, and therefore understand each other. Small boys, on the other hand, do not understand girls, and therefore being looked after by one is a little like a hamster being looked after by a shark. If you are a small boy, it may be some consolation to you to know that even large boys do not understand girls, and girls, by and large, do not understand boys. This makes adult life very interesting. — John Connolly

As Mr. R. U. Sayee has well said: 'It should be clear a priori that fairy lore must have developed as a result of modifications and accretions received in different countries and at many periods, though we must not overlook the part played by tradition in providing a mould that to some extent determines the nature of later additions.' It must also be self-evident that a great deal of confusion has been caused by the assumption that some spirit-types were fairies which in a more definite sense are certainly not of elfin provenance. In some epochs, indeed, Faerie appears to have been regarded as a species of limbo to which all 'pagan' spirits - to say nothing of defeated gods, monsters, and demons - could be banished, along with the personnel of Olympus and the rout of witchcraft. Such types, however, are usually fairly easy of detection. — Lewis Spence

If insemination were the sole biological function of sex, it could be achieved far more economically in a few seconds of mounting and insertion. Indeed, the least social of mammals mate with scarcely more ceremony. The species that have evolved long-term bonds are also, by and large, the ones that rely on elaborate courtship rituals ... Love and sex do indeed go together. — E. O. Wilson

Jesus H. Christ. I have new respect for the female of the species suddenly. — Nalini Singh

Conservationists who want to cosset nature like a delicate flower, to protect it from the threat of alien species, are the ethnic cleansers of nature, neutralizing the forces that they should be promoting. — Fred Pearce

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing — John Steinbeck

Grief is a species of idleness. — Samuel Johnson

We send one species to the butcher and give our love and kindness to another apparently for no reason other than because it's the way things are. When our attitudes and behaviors toward animals are so inconsistent, and this inconsistency is so unexamined, we can safely say we have been fed absurdities. — Melanie Joy

Taxonomy, also called systematics, is the science-based hierarchical classification of the world's species. The area had traditionally been an obscure academic discipline dominated by erudite and professional dons who would memorize and interpret thousands of Latin species names. Advances seldom made the newspapers and caustic disputes lingered in the dust scientific literature for generations. That academic innocence would be lost forever when precise taxonomic recognition of species and subspecies came to be the basis for protection under the Endangered Species Act. — Stephen J. O'Brien

Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy. — Elizabeth Kolbert

The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species. — Warren Ellis

Both humans and dogs love to play well into adulthood, and individuals from both species occasionally display evidence of having a conscience. — Jon Winokur

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. — Samuel Johnson

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

It's impossible by micro-mutation to form any new species. — Richard Goldschmidt

The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence. — Freeman Dyson

Gratitude is a species of love, excited in us by some action of the person for whom we have it, and by which we believe that he has done some good to us, or at least that he has had the intention of doing so.

Passions, III, 193. XI, 473-474. Trans. John Morris — Rene Descartes

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. In the next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws of variation and of correlation of growth. In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory will be given: namely, first, the difficulties of transitions, or in understanding how a simple being or a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed being or elaborately constructed organ; secondly the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals, thirdly, Hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed; and fourthly, the imperfection of the Geological Record. In — Charles Darwin

Every species embodies a solution to some environmental challenge, and some of these solutions are breathtaking in their elegance. — Linda Bender

The availability of domesticated animal species played an important role in the prohibition of cannibalism and the development of religions of love and mercy in the states and empires of the Old World. Christianity, it may yet turn out, was more the gift of the lamb in the manger than the child who was born in it. — Marvin Harris

Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith ... include the following: that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I had great femme mentors, I had good role models of gentle men, I found ways to be a butch that did not require being an ass in public, ways of masculinity that were not misogyny - which is what I see more often than I used to these days, this way of butches distancing themselves from any and all things feminine by embodying the worst excesses of men, from relatively harmless ones like spitting on the street and wearing too much cheap cologne to behaving as though women were an entirely separate species of second-class citizen, the objects of jokes and derision. — S. Bear Bergman

what use was it to observe the human species and try to understand it? Their rules were fathomless and no mire fixed than the wind — Sarah Perry

The point of sloths is to bring a sense of wonder, magic, and happiness to all other species. Did you know that every other animal's favorite animal is the sloth? — Ann Burton

I love to read, and so I've been reading everything I can, not intensely, but I love to read so I read "Origin of Species" by Darwin and I can't make head or tail of E=MC squared by Einstein, but I try to baffle my way through that. — Anthony Hopkins

What was the Sapiens' secret of success? How did we manage to settle so rapidly in so many distant and ecologically different habitats? How did we push all other human species into oblivion? Why couldn't even the strong, brainy, cold-proof Neanderthals survive our onslaught? The debate continues to rage. The most likely answer is the very thing that makes the debate possible: Homo sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique language. — Yuval Noah Harari

She and her friends would talk about their husbands like they were children, or pets - some strange species responsible for bad smells and strange noises and messes they'd have to clean up. — Jennifer Weiner

Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relationship to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. — Charles Darwin

Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders ... It is a species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals. — Francois Fenelon

What do you know about racing? Ronnie asked, curious. He looked fascinated, like a scientist confronted by a strange new species: dontgivadamnus from the phylum couldntcareless. — Karen Chance

Mankind has no right to employ its genius in the creation of another intelligent species, then treat it like property. If we've come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God. — Dean Koontz

It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.) — Christopher Hitchens

The ultimate insanity is to so organize society that power, wealth, and information are concentrated in the hands of so few people that they have the power, for whatever reason, to put to death our species and the living earth as well. But so we have. — Dee Hock

We humans, one species of animal amongst millions, have now become the de facto guardians of the planet's climate stability. — Mark Lynas

The key word is flexibility, the ability to adapt constantly. Darwin said it clearly. People thought that he mainly talked about survival of the fittest. What he said was that the species that survive are usually not the smartest or the strongest, but the ones most responsive to change. So being attentive to customers and potential partners is my best advice
after, of course, perseverance and patience. — Philippe Kahn

There is no good scientific reason to bring back an extinct species. Why would one bring them back? To put them in a theme park? — Hendrik Poinar

A cross between two species. Doomed with the thirst of the undead for human blood, yet tormented by the gargoyle drive to protect them. — Lisa Carlisle

In the Old Language, she hissed, "If any harm shall befall him, I will come after you, and find you where you sleep. I do not care where you lay your head or who with, my vengeance shall rain upon you until you drown."
That last word was drawn out, until its syllable was lost in more growling.
Dead silence.
Until Doc Jane said dryly, "Annnnd this is why they say the female of the species is more dangerous than the male. — J.R. Ward

Facing one of my own species terrified me far more than fighting an army of blood spitting bugs. — Pam Godwin

I'm in the role of helping these apes negotiate the human role. I'm just a temporary intermediary in what I think will be eventual communication between the two species. — Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

The many species of shark hunting for food in the seawater immediately south of New Orleans that morning which was individually particular morning had a feeding frenzy, until they finally drifted away, fully replete, into their own space within the deeper waters of the Gulf. — Ian McKenzie-Vincent

I forgot that with the green, the plushness, and shiny plant life that pushed up and surrounded us, with the nourishment it provided came - the fur, the claws, the teeth.
This was not our place. We were borrowers. No longer were we the dominant species. Our time had passed.
We were small in number and frame.
We were supposed to run.
Climb.
Cower
I forgot. — Lauren Nicolle Taylor

Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. — Ernest Cline

The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species. — Stanislav Grof

All the variety of species of life created be,
By combination of three basic material energy;
- 45 -
These Guna modus operandi of material energy,
They are called tamo, rajo and sattva clearly;
- 46 -
Tamo-guna associated with inertia, ignorance be,
The rajo-guna associated with passion, activity;
- 47 -
Sattva-guna associated with goodness, harmony,
And all three of them associated with thinking truly.
- 48 - — Munindra Misra

She was so far from his type she might as well have been another species. — Megan Hart

If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. — Edward O. Wilson

The Awa are a distinctive-looking, diminutive forest people, smaller than any of the dozen other Amazon tribespeople I have met. Reduced size is adaptive in a rain forest. You can move around more easily and unobtrusively. Not only humans but other species are smaller in rain forests. — Alex Shoumatoff

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

The facts of microevolution [change within the species] do not suffice for an understanding of macroevolution [theorized change from one species to another]. — Richard Goldschmidt

Werewolves are not the subject of academe," she said, "but you know what the professors would be saying if they were. 'Monsters die out when the collective imagination no longer needs them. Species death like this is nothing more than a shift in the aggregate psychic agenda. In ages past the beast in man was hidden in the dark, disavowed. The transparency of modern history makes that impossible: We've seen ourselves in concentration camps, the gulags, the jungles, the killing fields, we've read ourselves in the annals of True Crime. Technology turned up the lights and now there's no getting away from the fact: The beast is redundant. It's been us all along. — Glen Duncan

Sharks have swum the oceans for over 400 million years, but we're threatening this critically important species for the purpose of making soup - it's sad and wasteful. — Ted Danson

How can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that everytime a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning. — Pentti Linkola

Who speaks of art speaks of poetry. There is not art without a poetic aim. There is a species of emotion particular to painting. There is an effect that results from a certain arrangement of colors, of lights, of shadows. It is this that one calls the music of painting — Edouard Vuillard

And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself. — Bill Joy

The commitment must be much deeper - to let no species knowingly die; to take all reasonable action to protect every species and race in perpetuity. — E. O. Wilson

What Tyler says about the crap and the slaves of history, that's how I felt. I wanted to destroy something beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom. Pounding that kid, I really wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every endangered panda that wouldn't screw to save its species and every whale or dolphin that gave up and ran itself aground — Chuck Palahniuk

An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance. — Douglas Adams

If in your lifetime you watch a species go extinct, or plummet almost to the point of extinction, that is a sign that something really serious is going on. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Maybe the human species has evolved too far, maybe we all move around too much, too pointlessly, and consciousness will implode upon itself. — Margaret Drabble

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene. — Hannah Arendt

Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution? — Richard Dawkins

IT engineer is not a profession but a different species — Subhasis Das

The thing that defines a species is that all members have the same addressing system for their DNA. — Richard Dawkins

Trying to corral the suburban stampede with a bunch of school buses was like herding cats. Actually, it was worse than herding cats. It was herding white people, earth's only species with a greater sense of entitlement than a cat. — Tanner Colby

He sat there thinking of Man's capacity for the wiping out of species
sometimes in hate or fear, at other times for the simple love of gain. — Clifford D. Simak

Some believe that we will eventually sink back to the more simple-minded creatures which we evolved out of and the planet will bring another mind forward." "Isn't that the opposite of evolution?" "Only from a single-species perspective. A planet's life is paramount. It is such a fragile rare event, it should be treasured and nurtured for the potential it brings forth. If that means abdicating our physical dominance for our successors, then that is what we will accept. Such a time is a long way in our future. In terms of evolution, we have only just begun such a journey. — Peter F. Hamilton

You may have heard that America doesn't have enough scientists and is in danger of "falling behind" (whatever that means) because of it. Tell this to an academic scientist and watch her laugh. For the last thirty years, the amount of the U.S. annual budget that goes to non-defense related research has been frozen. From a purely budgetary perspective, we don't have too few scientists, we've got far too many, and we keep graduating more each year. America may say that it values science, but it sure as hell doesn't want to pay for it. Within environmental science in particular, we see the crippling effects that come from having been resource-hobbled for decades: degrading farmland, species extinction, progressive deforestation... The list goes on and on. — Hope Jahren

When she was pregnant with Teddy, she feared that she'd give birth to a child who disliked reading. It would be like giving birth to a foreign species. — J. Courtney Sullivan

The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Bacteria live in unbelievable mixtures of hundreds or thousands of species. Like on your teeth. There are 600 species of bacteria on your teeth every morning. — Bonnie Bassler

Power is just using energy in a wise way to get things done. Power has been misinterpreted to mean getting my way on the backs of other people. Getting whatever I want, forgetting that there are other beings and species and energies involved. — Elizabeth Lesser

The agony of being unable to answer the question of why are we the way we are, divisively instead of cooperatively behaved, has been the particular burden of life. It has been our species' particular affliction or condition - our human condition. — Jeremy Griffith

Since homo sapiens can survive only by unrestrained racial killing, a Jewish triumph of reason over impulse would mean the end of the species. What a race needed, thought Hitler, was a "worldview" that permitted it to triumph, which meant, in the final analysis, "faith" in its own mindless mission. — Timothy Snyder

When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death
not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The earth was flat and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching in the distance. the last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing. — Dan Wells

Eurasia ended up with the most domesticated animal species in part because it's the world's largest land mass and offered the most wild species to begin with. — Jared Diamond

Consciousness makes the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather a limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage. — James Randi

And then God, in his benevolence, tasked Adam with the nasty business of nomenclature, calling beasts of land and water and air for what he saw fit, giving them names, calling them names, pegging down their potentials to classifications, to genus, to species. — Carlos Malvar

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

Then there was the gray of human habitation. The blue places were turning brown, the yellow places to dust, the green places to smoke and ashes. Each time one of the animals disappeared
they went by species or sometimes by organizations of species, interconnected
it was as though all mountains were gone, or all lakes. A certain form of the world. But in the gray that metastasized over continents and hemispheres few appeared to be deterred by this extinguishing or even to speak of it, no one outside fringe elements and elite groups, professors and hippies, small populations of little general importance. The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed. — Lydia Millet

The killing of mature members of any species leads to a reduction not only in biomass and species density and diversity but also in that species' accumulated knowledge of how to most efficiently fill its ecological niche and interact with the rest of the ecosystem around it. The accumulated wisdom of the species is severely reduced or, sometimes, even lost in the process. Thus the tremendous loss of human languages around the globe that were generated out of thousands of generations of human interaction with specific habitats by unique groups and which encode unique understandings of ecosystem functioning is a tragedy greater than we yet know. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species. — Christopher Moore

He looked like a sexy ninja. Or a tiger ready to pounce on his prey. She just looked like she was sitting sideways on an invisible toilet. Curse the male species for making danger look so good! — Leia Shaw

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

The Internet is part of this ongoing, species-long project we've been working on since we climbed down out of the trees in the savanna. We've been working on it without really knowing it. — William Gibson

Miss Brobity's Being, young man, was deeply imbued with homage to Mind. She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, precipitated, on an extensive knowledge of the world. When I made my proposal, she did me the honour to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be able to articulate only the two words, "O Thou!" meaning myself. Her limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-transparent hands were clasped together, pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, though encouraged to proceed, she never did proceed a word further. I disposed of the parallel establishment by private contract, and we became as nearly one as could be expected under the circumstances. But she never could, and she never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her perhaps-too-favourable estimate of my intellect. To the very last (feeble action of liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished terms. — Charles Dickens

The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe's worth of darkness. — Matt Haig

My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

My father so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species. — Louise Leakey

There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty. To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can.
This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits which are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth. — Brigham Young

Periods are normal and natural, and the human species would not be here if periods did not exist. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Recent estimates suggest there are at least two million tropical insect species and perhaps as many as seven million. — Elizabeth Kolbert

If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? — Octavia E. Butler

We're the only species who hunts for sport. — Peter Steele