Symbiotic Quotes & Sayings

A biologist with a history of tooth decay invents a symbiotic microbe which lives in the human mouth and feeds by cleaning our teeth. It secreted calcium, which is poisonous to it, controlling its growth and preventing it from eating the teeth themselves. So this guy, he wants to spread the thing to the world, but it'd never fly, FDA and human squeamishness and all, so he becomes a party animal. He throws wild partys at the lab, kisses female grad students, where's, babies. He backwashes in sodas left on tables. He bums drags of cigarettes. He grants humanity eternally clean and healthy teeth but dies of a terrible cocktail of STDs. — James Curcio

In the land you come from, you call us your conscience. In the land of Oomaldee, they call us innerus. Both consciences and innerus hail from the same species of innerbeings; we've always had a symbiotic relationship with humans. — L.R.W. Lee

I love playing and I love singing, and the writing. There's kind of a symbiotic relationship between the writing and the playing. — Guy Clark

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. — Erich Fromm

I always try and bring screenplay, shooting and editing into a sort of symbiotic - as close into alignment as you possibly can get them, consistent, obviously, with the resources that you've got and the time you've got available. — Paul Greengrass

A charge often levied against organic agriculture is that it is more philosophy than science. There's some truth to this indictment, if that it what it is, though why organic farmers should feel defensive about it is itself a mystery, a relic, perhaps, of our fetishism of science as the only credible tool with which to approach nature ... The peasant rice farmer who introduces ducks and fish to his paddy may not understand all the symbiotic relationships he's put in play
that the ducks and fishes are feeding nitrogen to the rice and at the same time eating the pests. But the high yields of food from this ingenious polyculture are his to harvest even so. — Michael Pollan

Quiet Days, they look at you, and you will become one with the holy river - nature forms a symbiotic relationship - absolute infinity, truly found, in harmonious caressing arms. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way. — Damian Lewis

The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle ... yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word. — William S. Burroughs

Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book. — Julian Barnes

The moral aspect was merely a concomitant, a coverall for some deeper, almost forgotten purpose. That histoire should be story, lie and history all in one, was of a significance not to be despised. And that a story, given out as the invention of a creative artist, should be regarded as the most effective material for getting at the truth about its author, was also significant. Lies can only be imbedded in truth. They have no separate existence; they have a symbiotic relationship with truth. A good lie reveals more than the truth can ever reveal. To the one, that is, who seeks truth. To such a person there could never be cause for anger or recrimination when confronted with the lie. Not even pain, because all would be patent, naked and revelatory. — Henry Miller

My wish for humanity is to invent a way to communicate between us and whatever comes next. And in the end that we the creator of the sentient sapient and the created we have a symbiotic relationship. — Sugata Mitra

The world may think it idiotic,
Nor care at all we're symbiotic,
But I will say at once and twice:
I find it nice. I find it nice. — Edward Gorey

A book is a living, breathing thing. It spends the first chapters of its life curled up in the mind, symbiotic with its creator as it grows fat and round. And then the book is born. — Emily Murdoch

Given Freudian assumptions about the nature of children and the biological predestination of mothers, it is unthinkable for mothers voluntarily to leave their babies in others' care, without guilt about the baby's well-being and a sense of self-deprivation. Mothers need their babies for their own mental health, and babies need their mothers for their mental health
a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship. — Sandra Scarr

There is an undeniable truth that as one progresses further in his understanding of a craft the rest of his life progresses along with it. This symbiotic relationship between all things is experienced on a daily basis, but rarely articulated through conscious thought. — Chris Matakas

The cows shorten the grass, and the chickens eat the fly larvae and sanitize the pastures. This is a symbiotic relation. — Joel Salatin

A fantastic actor in a scene that's just closed off will be good. But when working with a director who knows little tricks - correct music, slowly pushing in - that stunning performance will somehow become even better. I've always seen it as a symbiotic relationship. — Matthew Gray Gubler

This is what we had become, after the first symbiotic year of our living together: a couple who needed another couple to be around. — Emily Perkins

The press don't wake up in the morning simply to be a mouthpiece for pols - they're out to uncover and expose news. That often is at odds with what politicians are setting out to do - it's both symbiotic and antagonistic. They need each other, they work in concert with one another, they work against one another. — Beau Willimon

The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiriting new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes even epiphanies. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer's work. It gives the author confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. "All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain," said Emerson. "They knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank them. — Nicholas Carr

There is a symbiotic desire to get closer and closer, to enter the self of what is being drawn, and, simultaneously, there is the foreknowledge of immanent distance. Such drawings aspire to be both a secret rendezvous and an au revoir! Alternately and ad infinitum. — John Berger

There are considered to be three symbiotic relationships in nature: parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism. — George Walker

Researchers studying emerging viruses have noticed an interesting phenomenon. As more human beings are born, there is a consistent spread of human habitation into once undeveloped ecoranges. The previously existing environment is removed, houses are built, people move in. The former populations of plants and animals are displaced. However, one of the major things that has been overlooked is that viruses have also lived in those regions for a very long time - in a healthy symbiotic balance with their hosts, both plant and animal. It is possible to think of them as an invisible herd or pack species, spread with the same kind of density throughout those ecoranges just as deer or birds are. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Our estrangement from nature and the unconscious became entrenched roughly two thousand years ago, during the shift from the Age of the Great God Pan to that of Pisces that occurred with the suppression of the pagan mysteries and the rise of Christianity. The psychological shift that ensued left European civilization staring into two millennia of religious mania and persecution, warfare, materialism, and rationalism.
The monstrous forces of scientific industrialism and global politics that have been born into modern times were conceived at the time of the shattering of the symbiotic relationships with the plants that had bound us to nature from our dim beginnings. This left each human being frightened, guilt-burdened, and alone. Existential man was born. — Terence McKenna

This was difficult to prove as most hydrogenosomes have lost their entire genome, but it is now established with some certainty.1 In other words, whatever bacteria entered into a symbiotic relationship in the first eukaryotic cell, its descendents numbered among them both mitochondria and hydrogenosomes. — Nick Lane

In the symbiotic community of the forest, not only trees but also shrubs and grasses - and possibly all plant species - exchange information this way. However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost their ability to communicate above or below ground - you could say they are deaf and dumb - and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests.12 That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they'll be more talkative in the future. Communication — Peter Wohlleben

The relationship between the Jews and pagan Arabs was symbiotic in that not only were the Jews heavily Arabized, but the Arabs were also significantly influenced by Jewish beliefs and practices. — Reza Aslan

With the Israel stories, it was for me the most surprising way the title would fit in. I kept thinking about, for a lot of my Israeli characters, what it was like to inherit such a complicated and symbiotic relationship to America and to feel how tangled that is, and it's nothing that they chose to do themselves. — Molly Antopol

If you accept mass production, you accept that a small number of people will supervise the daily existence of a much larger number of people. You accept that human beings will spend long hours, every day, engaged in repetitive work, while suppressing any desires for experience or activity beyond this work. The workers' behaviour becomes subject to the machine. With mass production, you also accept that huge numbers of identical items will need to be efficiently distributed to huge numbers of people and that institutions such as advertising will arise to do this. One technological process cannot exist without the other, creating symbiotic relationships among technologies themselves. — Jerry Mander

Frequently, and not only in the popular usage, sadomasochism is confounded with
love. Masochistic phenomena, especially, are looked upon as expressions of love.
An attitude of complete self-denial for the sake of another person and the
surrender of one's own rights and claims to another person have been praised as
examples of "great love". It seems that there is no better proof for "love" than
sacrifice and the readiness to give oneself up for the sake of the beloved person.
Actually, in these cases, "love" is essentially a masochistic yearning and rooted in the symbiotic need of the person involved. — Erich Fromm

The domestic dog is an ancient companion of humans, and it is possible that domestication was taking place as we ourselves were emerging as a separate species. This helps us understand the close and symbiotic relationship between dogs and humans. I think it is reasonable to say that our attitude to animals and to nature is part of what defines us as humans. When we are in harmony with nature and treat other species with respect, we elevate ourselves as human beings. I believe this is a spiritual and ethical matter. Of course, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and many indigenous and ancient religions endorse this attitude, but I think it applies whatever your personal belief system. Respect for nature and kindness to animals are, I believe, fundamental human values, just as respect for and kindness to other people should be. I hope that the stories which follow help to illustrate that belief as it is actually lived, and hopefully, does so in an entertaining way. — Stewart McFarlane

In the imaginative movement which prompts the impulse to draw repeats implicitly the same pattern...there is a symbiotic desire to get closer and closer, to enter the self of what is being drawn, and, simultaneously, there is the foreknowledge of immanent distance. Such drawings aspire to be both a secret rendezvous and a au-revoir! Alternately and at infinitum. — John Berger

A World is not an ideology nor a scientific institution, nor is it even a system of ideologies; rather, it is a structure of unconscious relations and symbiotic processes. — William Irwin Thompson

We come into relationships often very much identified with our needs. I need this, I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship. And all of relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others' needs at some level or other. — Ram Dass

I think the relationship between print and film is symbiotic, it's more about evolving and complimenting your existing content. The two are very much interconnected. — Rankin

I speculate that we shall come to accept the more radical idea that each one of our genes is a symbiotic unit. We are gigantic colonies of symbiotic genes. — Richard Dawkins

China and the U.S. have a very symbiotic relationship which will not decline any time soon. There are more shared interests as compared to shared differences and for this reason relations will continue to be good. — Mark Mobius

The common element in both submission and domination is the symbiotic nature of relatedness. Both persons involved have lost their integrity and freedom; they live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence, and furthermore constantly threatened by the conscious or unconscious hostility which is bound to arise from the symbiotic relationship.10 The realization of the submissive (masochistic) or the domineering (sadistic) passion never leads to satisfaction. — Erich Fromm

Every major war in American history, except the Mexican and Spanish-American, has either led to central banking or resulted from it. Central banking and government have a symbiotic relationship that is often mediated by war. Central banking gives government a way to tap the productive power of the private sector and borrow from the future without the need to rely overmuch on unpopular tax increases. Government gives central banking the extreme profits that derive from immense borrowing to finance wars and other government projects. — Mark David Ledbetter

We are part of a symbiotic relationship with something which disguises itself as an extra-terrestrial invasion so as not to alarm us. — Terence McKenna

So, I was just a young guy, maybe with an idea, and Cecil Taylor, himself a rebel, would take a chance on a guy like me. It turned out to be a very symbiotic partnership. I learned a lot from him. — Archie Shepp

Hate is but a symbiotic need for love — Judy Azar LeBlanc

Reciprocity, a symbiotic relationship, is a relationship in which two people have worked out certain terms. I am using you in certain ways; you are using me in certain ways. That is a balanced relationship. — Frederick Lenz

It's a symbiotic process, writing. What I am makes the books - not part of me, all of me - and then the books themselves inform the sense of what I am. So the more I can be, the better the books will be. — Jeanette Winterson

Sometimes we meet people and are so symbiotic with them, it's as if we are one person, with one mind, one destiny — Gayle Forman

Our new economic approach is rooted in ideas which stress the importance of macro-economics, post neo-classical endogenous growth theory and the symbiotic relationships between growth and investment, and people and infrastructure. — Gordon Brown

There are three basic-types of communications, between people of equal status: Abrasion: I clash with you, you clash with me: process continues till we're both exhausted. Parasitic: I complain, you build me up: process continues till I suck all your energy out. Symbiotic: I build-you-up or make you laugh, you build-me-up or make me laugh: process can continue indefinitely, giving us both more energy, making us both feel better, than when the exchange started. Do not be abrasive or parasitic, nor allow others, to be that way with you. Seek: symbiotic exchanges; symbiotic people, and, be mindful of your every word. — Richard Skeet

In business courtesy and efficiency have a symbiotic relationship. — Eleanor Roosevelt

My preference is live performance. Because you get the feedback. There's an energy. It's live theater. That's why I think actors like that. You know, musicians need it, comedians definitely need it. It doesn't matter what size and what club, whether it's 30 people in the club or 2,000 in a hall or a theater. It's live, it's symbiotic, you need it. — Robin Williams

Ayahuasca is a symbiotic ally of the human species. — Dennis McKenna

You've always got to be smart enough to go 'Well they're going to have to bring some of their own in'. We don't want to be a monopoly where we get shoved out, it has to be symbiotic. — Sam Worthington

We have to understand how the extremists got the way they are. Without that kind of understanding, we'd never really get to know them. I put in nothing about their childhoods. But what I have put in is stuff about the weird symbiotic relationship between us and them. — Jon Ronson

We humans need to do better with our vast minds and alchemical powers. Future radial poetries might be more symbiotic with the rest of consciousness. — Anne Waldman

In truth search can no more be considered independent of the Web than the Web can work without search. This symbiotic relationship brings forth all sorts of issues because it becomes part of a traditional push and pull where the Web, represented by those who actively work in it, wants to push all the wrong things, while search wants to pull in everything. — David Amerland

Eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship, enjoyment at a distance. — Ingrid Newkirk

Art and savagery, aesthetics and violence. Were they contradictory or symbiotic? — Christopher Brookmyre

The press has bravely and nobly eroded the public trust ... What I'm advocating is the media come work for us again. Remove themselves from the symbiotic relationship that they have developed with the power structure of corporations and of the politicians. — Jon Stewart

It's a word called symbiotic, you send the messages and it comes back in return. Together, it's a wonderful thing, it's why television is so great and film can never reach. — Robert Stack

If something's existence is contingent upon the existence of another entity, can we truthfully call them separate beings? — Chris Matakas

It's a symbiotic relationship: those two excel at being idiots, and I excel at shooting idiots. Everyone gets what they want. — Robert Jackson Bennett

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate. — Carla Gugino

Hollywood and fashion are symbiotic partners, especially during awards season. — Brad Goreski

If the detective should suffer overmuch from the artistic temperament, and his fellow lodger should dwell overlong upon the fairness of a wrist or the timber of a feminine voice, so much the better for us. Literature never produced a relationship more symbiotic nor a warmer and more timeless friendship. — Loren D. Estleman

The bond between a book reader and a book writer has always been a symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes, even epiphanies. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer's work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. — Nicholas Carr

When the Europeans first arrived in North America, the average depth of the topsoil was 53.34 cm (1¾ ft) and it was rich in the types of symbiotic organisms necessary for plant roots to absorb minerals from the soil. Today North America averages around 15.24 cm (6 in) of topsoil and most if it is exhausted of nutrients and much is devoid of life. — Thom Hartmann

It was true. Sugar did treat her bees like next of kin but then again, they were.
Along with her manners, the accent she tried so hard to soften, a single china cup covered in blue daisies and a weathered box of essential oils, they were all she carried with her from her past. Her bees relied on her for shelter and food but she relied on them too. She made her living from their honey, not just the healthful liquid itself but from the salves and gels and tinctures and remedies she created and sold at farm stands or farmers' markets wherever she lived.
It was the most symbiotic of relationships. — Sarah-Kate Lynch

When our Paleolithic ancestors began making tools from stone over three million years ago, they had no understanding they were entering into one of the most successful symbiotic relationships this planet has ever seen. From those humble, preverbal beginnings, humans and technology have lifted one another, improved each other's lot, made possible the most amazing partnership imaginable. — Richard Yonck

My johns adored and worshipped me, therefore they empowered me. When I was 18, 19, and 20, I had a poor self-image and needed attention. It's hard for people who haven't been prostitutes to imagine, but I think it's often true. There can be a very symbiotic relationship happening. — Annie Sprinkle

Love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannot exist without the other. Desire is an enemy to contentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considered healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake. — Lauren Oliver

The more closely two organisms depend upon each other the harder it becomes to tell where one organism ends and the other begins. — Chris Matakas

Dogs and humans are symbiotic species. We need each other. — Cynthia Heimel

So you're a parasite? We like to think of it as symbiotic, but we can discuss biology another time. — Wesley Chu

He wonders if it's some sort of twisted joke the adults are having, shoving hormonal teens into tight quarters but making it impossible to do anything but breathe.
"I wouldn't mind suffocating if it was with you," the girl says, which is flattering, but makes him even less interested in her.
"There'll be a better time," he tells her, knowing that such a time will never come - at least not for her - but hope is a powerful motivator.
Eventually they settle into a sort of symbiotic breathing rhythm. He breathes in when she breathes out, so their chests don't fight for space.
After a while, there's a jarring motion. With his arm now around the girl, he holds her a little more tightly, knowing that easing her fear somehow eases his own. — Neal Shusterman

And I don't mean this metaphorically. I want to be taken seriously as proposing that the ennui of modernity is the consequence of a disruptive symbiotic relationship between ourselves and vegetable nature. — Terence McKenna

Tech companies don't exist in a bubble; they draw from and feed into a larger community. Ideally, the relationship is symbiotic. — Ryan Holmes

There has been significant debate in the scientific community about whether desire is a symptom of a system infected with amor deliria nervosa, or a pre-condition of the disease itself.
It is unanimously agreed, however, that love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannnot exist without the other. Desire is enemy to ncontentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considereed healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake. Fortunately, that can now be corrected.
- From The Roots and Repercussions of Amor Deliria Nervosa on Cognitive Functioning, 4th edition, by Dr. Phillip Berryman — Lauren Oliver

You need response from the fan to fuel your sense of musical rebellion. It's very symbiotic, it's very cyclic in a way. You can't have one without the other. So I think the rebellion is reflected in the audience, but at the same time, the artist has to have that passion too. And I think once you're a fan for life, you feed each other's sense of passion and rage and whatnot. You really can't have one without the other. — Corey Taylor

There's sort of a very symbiotic thing that happens on good TV shows with great writers, which is that they start to sort of embrace who the actors are and try to make the roles more specific to what they bring and what they can do. — Lucas Neff

Love is a positive, symbiotic, reciprocal flow between two or more entities. — Inga Muscio

When you see a white woman and a white man eating dinner together, watching a movie, or drinking at a bar you probably think they are a couple. Not so fast! White people often engage in something called a "platonic friendship." These arrangements feature a white male who is in love with a white female who needs companionship or access to someone with a car. The relationship is symbiotic for a long time as the white male believes he is making "progress" in his efforts to sleep with the white woman. The white female is in turn rewarded with companionship, someone to help her move, and an excellent "backup" plan in case she is unable to date the male of her choice. — Anonymous

I don't think anywhere is there a symbiotic relationship between caddie and player like there is in golf. — Johnny Miller

A writer needs to write and a reader wants to read so this creates a symbiotic relationship, at least most of the time. — Terrance Zepke

We get along by a symbiotic adjustment of habits and with a minimum of that pale-mauve hostility you often find among women. — Margaret Atwood

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don't have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory. — Bill Ayers

The 'public' has no history, has no future, lives in a golden moment created by credit, which binds them ineluctably to a fascist system that is never criticized. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off this symbiotic relationship with the vegetable, feminine, maternal matrix of the planet. — Terence McKenna

The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing is a cornerstone of our individual intellectual journey and our educational system. We write as an act of self-expression. We read because language renders unto us the vitality of real and imagined experience. — Marita Golden

The relationship between human and animal is wholly symbiotic. The person needs the animal for comfort and companionship, and the animal needs the love and caring of the human. It is a classic "win-win" situation. It sounds simple - and it is. That is why it works so well. In most cases, it will be remarkably spiritually uplifting to both human and animal. — Ken Wahl