Zoologists from the United States

"The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity."

"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex."

"The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species."

"Some scientists hesitate to continue in a given field of research as soon as its application becomes apparent. This refusal to apply knowledge when it exists seems to us, however, to be as unrealistic as the attempt to apply knowledge before it exists. (page 8)"

"With the right of the scientist to investigate most aspects of the material universe, most persons will agree; but there are some who have questioned the applicability of scientific methods to an investigation of human sexual behavior....It is as though the dietician and biochemist were denied the right to analyze foods and the processes of nutrition, because the cooking and proper serving of food may be rated a fine art, and because the eating of certain foods has been considered a matter for religious regulation. (page 8)."

"There is an honesty in science which demands that the best means be used for the determination of truth. Certainly there are many sorts of truth in the universe, and many aspects of truth must be taken into account if man is to live most effectively in the social organization to which he belongs. But in regard to matter---the stuff of which both non-living materials and living organisms are made---scientists believe that there is no better way of obtaining information than that provided by human sense organs. No theory, no philosophy, no body of theology, no political expediency, no wishful thinking, can provide a satisfactory substitute for the observation of material objects and of the way in which they behave. (page 9)."

"There is an honesty in science which leads to a certain acceptance of reality. There are some who, finding the ocean an impediment to the pursuit of their designs, try to ignore its existence. If they are unable to ignore it because of its size, they try to legislate it out of existence, or try to dry it up with a sponge. They insist that the latter operation would be possible if enough sponges were available, and if enough persons would wield them. There is no ocean of greater magnitude than the sexual function, and there are those who believe that we would do better if we ignored its existence, that we should not try to understand its material origins, and that if we sufficiently ignore it and mop at the flood of sexual activity with new laws, heavier penalties, more pronouncements, and greater intolerances, we may ultimately eliminate the reality. (page 10)."

"It cannot be too frequently emphasized that the behavior of any animal must depend upon on the nature of the stimulus which it meets, its anatomic and physiologic capacities, and its background of previous experience. Unless it has been conditioned by previous experience, an animal should respond identically to identical stimuli, whether they emanate from some part of its own body, from another individual of the same sex, or from an individual of the opposite sex."

"The inherent physiologic capacity of an animal to respond to any sufficient stimulus seems, then, the basic explanation of the fact that some individuals respond to stimuli originating in other individuals of their own sex-and it appears to indicate that every individual could so respond if the opportunity offered and one were not conditioned against making such responses. There is no need of hypothesizing peculiar hormonal factors that make certain individuals especially liable to engage in homosexual activity, and we know of no data which prove the existence of hormonal factors (p. 758). There are no sufficient data to show that specific hereditary factors are involved. Theories of childhood attachments to one or the other parent, theories of fixation at some infantile level of sexual development, interpretations of homosexuality as neurotic or psychopathic behavior or moral degeneracy, and other philosophic interpretations are not supported by scientific research, and are contrary to the specific data on our series of female and male histories."

"The impression that infra-human mammals more or less confine themselves to heterosexual activities is a distortion of the fact which appears to have originated in a man-made philosophy, rather than in specific observations of mammalian behavior. Biologists and psychologists who have accepted the doctrine that the only natural function of sex is reproduction, have simply ignored the existence of sexual activity which is not reproductive. They have assumed that heterosexual responses are a part of an animal's innate, "instinctive" equipment, and that all other types of sexual activity represent "perversions" of the "normal instincts". Such interpretations are, however, mystical. They do not originate in our knowledge of the physiology of sexual response (Chapter 15), and can be maintained only if one assumes that sexual function is in some fashion divorced from the physiologic processes which control other functions of the animal body."

"The mammalian record thus confirms our statement that any animal which is not too strongly conditioned by some special sort of experience is capable of responding to any adequate stimulus. This is what we find in the more uninhibited segments of our human species, and this is what we find among young children who are not too rigorously restrained in their early sex play. Exclusive preferences and patterns of behavior, heterosexual or homosexual, come only with experience, or as a result of social pressures which tend to force an individual into an exclusive pattern of one or the other sort. Psychologists and psychiatrists, reflecting the mores of the culture in which they have been raised, have spent a good deal of time trying explain the origins of homosexual activity; but considering the physiology of sexual response and the mammalian backgrounds of human behavior, it is not so difficult to explain why a human animal does a particular thing sexually. It is more difficult to explain why each and every individual is not involved in every type of sexual activity."

"At the risk of being repetitious, I would remind the group that we have found the highest frequency of induced abortion in the group which, in general, most frequently uses contraceptives."

"But whatever its defects, the classification of Linnæus was the first attempt at grouping animals together according to certain common structural characters."

"The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world."

"The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs."

"The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive light, there must have been light to enter it."

"Foldings of the earth's crust, low hills, extensive plains, mountain-chains and narrow valleys, broad table-lands and wide valleys, local chimneys or volcanoes, river-beds, lake-basins, inland seas,—such are some of the phenomena which, disconnected as they seem at first glance, have nevertheless been brought under certain principles, and explained according to definite physical laws."

"The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal."

"The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge."

"Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it."

"Therefore, Agassiz says that when a new doctrine is presented, it must go through three stages. First, people say that it isn't true, then that it is against religion, and, in the third stage, that it has long been known."

"In the subsequent meetings of the society, the geologist William Barton Rogers would skillfully dismantle most of these arguments. Rogers was the soon-to-be-president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his debates with Agassiz he employed an encyclopedic knowledge of North American geology to show that most of his opponent’s claims were either false or partially true at best. But Agassiz cared little for debating the topic; he was not interested in debating a subject about which he was already certain. As far as he was concerned, his own theory of special creation rendered Darwin’s null and void. This was one of the reasons he preferred discussing the topic with members of the Saturday Club, who were far more sympathetic to his ideas and who were also more likely to shape public opinion about Darwinian theory than a handful of scientific specialists."

"There, at the table's further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-à-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,— That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,— What ear has heard it and remembers not? How often, halting at some wide crevasse Amid the windings of his Alpine pass, High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer, Listening the far-off avalanche to hear, Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff, Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh, From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls! How does vast Nature lead her living train In ordered sequence through that spacious brain, As in the primal hour when Adam named The new-born tribes that young creation claimed!— How will her realm be darkened, losing thee, Her darling, whom we call our AGASSIZ!"

"Agassiz... was doomed to help the cause he hated. Agassiz not only maintained the fact of the progressive advance in organisation of the inhabitants of the earth at each successive geological epoch, but he insisted upon the analogy of the steps of this progression with those by which the embryo advances to the adult condition, among the highest forms of each group. In fact, in endeavoring to support these views he went a good way beyond the limits of any cautious interpretation of the facts then known."

"The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science."

"The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities. If they are not there, science cannot create them. If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry."

"We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction."

"Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. There is certainly no single remedy for this condition and I am offering no panacea. But it seems reasonable to believe — and I do believe — that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction."

"We have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man; it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow."

"The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife. To utilize them for present needs while insuring their preservation for future generations requires a delicately balanced and continuing program, based on the most extensive research. Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politics."

"Writing is a lonely occupation at best. Of course there are stimulating and even happy associations with friends and colleagues, but during the actual work of creation the writer cuts himself off from all others and confronts his subject alone. He moves into a realm where he has never been before — perhaps where no one has ever been. It is a lonely place, even a little frightening."

"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength. If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate."

"Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is — or should be — the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all — perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows."

"If we have been slow to develop the general concepts of ecology and conservation, we have been even more tardy in recognizing the facts of the ecology and conservation of man himself. We may hope that this will be the next major phase in the development of biology. Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces."

"To many of us, this sudden silencing of the song of birds, this obliteration of the color and beauty and interest of bird life, is sufficient cause for sharp regret. To those who have never known such rewarding enjoyment of nature, there should yet remain a nagging and insistent question: If this "rain of death" has produced so disastrous an effect on birds, what of other lives, including our own?"

"In our modern world nothing may be taken for granted-not even the spring songs that herald the return of the birds."

"I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives."

"Any concept of biology is not only sterile and profitless, it is distorted and untrue, if it puts its primary focus on unnatural conditions rather than on those vast forces not of man's making that shape and channel the nature and direction of life."

"The problem I dealt with in Silent Spring is not an isolated one. The excessive and ill-advised use of chemical pesticides is merely one part of a sorry whole-the reckless pollution of our living world with harmful and dangerous substances. Until very recently, the average citizen assumed that "someone" was looking after these matters and that some little understood but confidently relied upon safeguards stood like shields between his person and any harm. Now he has experienced, from several different directions, a rather rude shattering of these beliefs."

"I believe that only in that atmosphere of intellectual freedom can we solve the problems before us now."

"To me, Dr. Albert Schweitzer is the one truly great individuals our modern times have produced."

"As I look back through history I find a parallel. I ask you to recall the uproar that followed Charles Darwin's announcement of his theories of evolution. The concept of man's origin from pre-existing forms was hotly and emotionally denied, and the denials came not only from the lay public but from Darwin's peers in science. Only after many years did the concepts set forth in The Origin of Species become firmly established. Today, it would be hard to find any person of education who would deny the facts of evolution. Yet so many of us deny the obvious corollary: that man is affected by the same environmental influences that control the lives of all the many thousands of other species to which he is related by evolutionary ties."

"Fishes and plankton, whales and squids, birds and sea turtles, all are linked by unbreakable ties to certain kinds of water—to warm water or cold water, to clear or turbid water, to water rich in phosphates or in silicates."

"The sharpest peaks of the Ridge are the cluster of islets known as the Rocks of St. Paul, near the equator. The entire cluster of half a dozen islets is not more than a quarter of a mile across, and their rocky slopes drop off at so sheer an angle that water more than half a mile deep lies only a few feet off shore."

"The sediments are a sort of epic poem of the earth."

"The 1950's have comprised an exciting decade in the science of the sea. During this period a manned vehicle has descended to the deepest hole in the ocean floor. During the 'fifties, also, the crossing of the entire Arctic basin was accomplished by submarines traveling under the ice. Many new features of the unseen floor of the sea have been described, including new mountain ranges that now appear to be linked with others to form the longest and mightiest mountains of the earth-a continuous chain encircling the globe. Deep, hidden rivers in the sea, subsurface currents with the volume of a thousand Mississippis, have been found. During the International Geophysical Year, 60 ships from 40 nations, as well as hundreds of stations on islands and seacoasts, co-operated in an enormously fruitful study of the sea."

"Although man's record as a steward of the natural resources of the earth has been a discouraging one, there has long been a certain comfort in the belief that the sea, at least, was inviolate, beyond man's ability to change and to despoil. But this belief, unfortunately, has proved to be naive. In unlocking the secrets of the atom, modern man has found himself confronted with a frightening problem-what to do with the most dangerous materials that have ever existed in all the earth's history, the by-products of atomic fission. The stark problem that faces him is whether he can dispose of these lethal substances without rendering the earth uninhabitable. No account of the sea today is complete unless it takes note of this ominous problem. By its very vastness and its seeming remoteness, the sea has invited the attention of those who have the problem of disposal, and with very little discussion and almost no public notice, at least until the late 'fifties, the sea has been selected as a "natural" burying place for the contaminated rubbish and other "low-level wastes" of the Atomic Age."

"The truth is that disposal has proceeded far more rapidly than our knowledge justifies. To dispose first and investigate later is an invitation to disaster, for once radioactive elements have been deposited at sea they are irretrievable. The mistakes that are made now are made for all time."

"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself."

"F or the globe as a whole, the ocean is the great regulator, the great stabilizer of temperatures. It has been described as 'a savings bank for solar energy, receiving deposits in seasons of excessive insolation and paying them back in seasons of want. Without the ocean, our world would be visited by unthinkably harsh extremes of temperature."

"Day by day and season by season, the ocean dominates the world's climate."

"In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate."

"Activities in the nonhuman world also reflect the warming of the Arctic-the changed habits and migrations of many fishes, birds, land mammals, and whales."

"The fifteen years that I spent in fishery and wildlife conservation work with the *Government have taken me into certain places where few other women have been."

"Tradition is important in the Government, but fortunately I had conspirators who were willing to help me shatter precedent. But among my male colleagues who had to sign the papers, the thought of one woman on a ship with some fifty men was unthinkable. After much soul searching, it was decided that maybe two women would be all right, so I arranged with a friend, who was also a writer, to go with me."

"There is something deeply impressive about the night sea as one experiences it from a small vessel far from land. When I stood on the afterdeck on those dark nights, on a tiny man-made island of wood and steel, dimly seeing the great shapes of waves that rolled about us, I think I was conscious as never before that ours is a water world, dominated by the immensity of the sea...."

"There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life-we are never bored. We can't be. There is always something new to be investigated. Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one..."

"The pleasures, the values of contact with the natural world, are not reserved for the scientists. They are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of a lonely mountain top-or the sea-or the stillness of a forest; or who will stop to think about so small a thing as the mystery of a growing seed."

"I am not afraid of being thought a sentimentalist when I stand here tonight and tell you that I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, or whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man's spiritual growth."

"As human beings, we are part of the whole stream of life."

"Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity."

"I believe it is important for women to realize that the world of today threatens to destroy much of that beauty that has immense power to bring us a healing release from tension. Women have a greater intuitive understanding of such things. They want for their children not only physical health but mental and spiritual health as well. I bring these things to your attention tonight because I think your awareness of them will help, whether you are practicing journalists, or teachers, or librarians, or housewives and mothers."

"We see the destructive trend on a national scale in proposals to invade the national parks with commercial schemes such as the building of power dams. The parks were placed in trust for all the people, to preserve for them just such recreational and spiritual values as I have mentioned. Is it the right of this, our generation, in its selfish materialism, to destroy these things because we are blinded by the dollar sign? Beauty-and all the values the derive from beauty-are not measured and evaluated in terms of the dollar."

"A preoccupation with the wonder and beauty of the earth has strongly influenced the course of my life."

"There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, in the ebb and flow of the tides; in the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in these repeated refrains of nature-the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter."

"Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, with steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water. Perhaps he is intoxicated with his own power, as he goes farther and farther into experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. For this unhappy trend there is no single remedy-no panacea. But I believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."

"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials."

"This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits."

"The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species-man-acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world."

"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible."

"Given time-time not in years but in millennia-life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time."

"The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped-500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience."

"Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides," but "biocides.""

"It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray. All this has been risked-for what? Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for reasons that collapse the moment we examine them. We are told that the enormous and expanding use of pesticides is necessary to maintain farm production. Yet is our real problem not one of overproduction?"

"It is a sobering fact...that the method of massive chemical control has had only limited success, and also threatens to worsen the very conditions it is intended to curb."

"Much of the necessary knowledge is now available but we do not use it. We train ecologists in our universities and even employ them in our governmental agencies but we seldom take their advice. We allow the chemical death rain to fall as though there were no alternative, whereas in fact there are many, and our ingenuity could soon discover many more if given opportunity."

"Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?"

"It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potential for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge. If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem."

"Future generations are unlikely to condone our lack of prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life."

"It is an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts."

"Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song."

"These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes — nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil — all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides," but "biocides.""

"For each of us, as for the robin in Michigan or the Salmon in the Miramichi, this is a problem of ecology, of interrelationships, of interdependence. We poison the caddis flies in a stream and the salmon runs dwindle and die. We poison the gnats in a lake and the poison travels from link to link of the food chain and soon the birds of the lake margins become its victims. We spray our elms and the following springs are silent of robin song, not because we sprayed the robins directly but because the poison traveled, step by step, through the now familiar elm leaf-earthworm-robin cycle. These are matters of record, observable, part of the visible world around us. They reflect the web of life — or death — that scientists know as ecology."

"We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road-the one "less traveled by"-offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth. The choice, after all, is ours to make."

"To the bird watcher, the suburbanite who derives joy from birds in his garden, the hunter, the fisherman or the explorer of wild regions, anything that destroys the wildlife of an area for even a single year has deprived him of pleasure to which he has a legitimate right. This is a valid point of view."

"If, having endured much, we have at last asserted our "right to know," and if, knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals; we should look about and see what other course is open to us."

"Now at last, as it has become apparent that the heedless and unrestrained use of chemicals is a greater menace to ourselves than to the targets, the river which is the science of biotic control flows again, fed by new streams of thought."

"Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life-with living populations and all their pressures and counter-pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves. The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life-a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper."

"The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth."

"Man has long talked somewhat arrogantly about the conquest of nature; now he has the power to achieve his boast. It is our misfortune-it may well be our final tragedy-that this power has not been tempered with wisdom, but has been marked by irresponsibility; that there is all too little awareness that man is part of nature, and that the price of conquest may well be the destruction of man himself."

"Measured against the vast backdrop of geologic time, the whole era of man seems but a moment-but how portentous a moment!"

"Who could have foretold that this being, who walked upright and no longer lived in trees, who lurked in caves, hiding in fear from the great beasts who shared his world-who could have guessed that he would one day have in his hands the power to change the very nature of the earth-the of life and death over so many of its creatures? Who could have foretold that the brain that was developing behind those heavy brow ridges would allow him to accomplish things no other creature had achieved-but would not at the same time endow him with wisdom so to control his activities that he would not bring destruction upon himself?"

"Only a few centuries have passed since those pre-Columbian days, yet today our whole earth has become only another shore from which we look out across the dark ocean of space, uncertain what we shall find when we sail out among the stars, but like the Norsemen and the Polynesians of old, lured by the very challenge of the unknown."

"In the western world our thinking has for many centuries been dominated by the Jewish-Christian concept of man's relation to nature, in which man is regarded as the master of all the earth's inhabitants. Out of this there easily grew the thought that everything on earth-animate or inanimate, animal, vegetable, or mineral-and indeed the earth itself-had been created expressly for man."

"But I am not certain that in spite of all our modern learning and sophistication, we have actually progressed far beyond the self-oriented philosophy of the Victorians. I fear that these ideas still lurk about, showing themselves boldly and openly at times, at oth-ers skulking about in the shadows of the subconscious."

"We still talk in terms of "conquest"-whether it be of the insect world or of the mysterious world of space. We still have not become mature enough to see ourselves as a very tiny part of a vast and incredible universe, a universe that is distinguished above all else by a mysterious and wonderful unity that we flout at our peril."

"Poets often have a perception that gives their words the validity of science. So the English poet Francis Thompson said nearly a century ago, ‘Thou canst not stir a flower/Without troubling of a star.’ But the poet's insight has not become part of general knowledge."

"Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important, simply because of his new-found power to destroy it."

"I clearly remember that in the days before Hiroshima I used to wonder whether nature-nature in the broadest context of the word-actually needed protection from man. Surely the sea was inviolate and forever beyond man's power to change it. Surely the vast cycles by which water is drawn up into the clouds to return again to the earth could never be touched. And just as surely the vast tides of life-the migrating birds-would continue to ebb and flow over the continents, marking the passage of the seasons. But I was wrong. Even these things, that seemed to belong to the eternal verities, are not only threatened but have already felt the destroying hand of man."

"Our streams are fouled with an incredible assortment of wastes-domestic, chemical, radioactive, so that our planet, though dominated by seas that envelop three-fourths of its surface, is rapidly becoming a thirsty world."

"So nature does indeed need protection from man; but man, too, needs protection from his own acts, for he is part of the living world. His war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. His heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the earth, and in time return to him."

"What we are today represents an adjustment achieved over the millions and hundreds of millions of years."

"the distinguishing feature of man's activities is that they have almost always been undertaken from the narrow viewpoint of short-range gain, without considering either their impact on the earth or their long-range effect upon ourselves. They have been distinguished, also, by a curious unwillingness to be guided by the knowledge that is available in certain areas of science. I mean especially the knowledge of biologists, of ecologists, of geneticists, all of whom have special areas of competence that should allow them to predict the effect of our actions on living creatures, including, of course, man himself."

"This is an age that has produced floods of how-to-do-it books, and it is also an age of how-to-do-it science. It is, in other words, the age of technology, in which if we know how to do something, we do it without pausing to inquire whether we should."

"We know how to split the atom, and how to use its energy in peace and war, and so we proceed with preparations to do so, as if acting under some blind compulsion;"

"Instead of always trying to impose our will on Nature we should sometimes be quiet and listen to what she has to tell us. If we did so I am sure we would gain a new perspective on our own feverish lives. We might even see the folly and the madness of a world in which half of mankind is busily preparing to destroy the other half and to reduce our whole planet to radioactive ashes in the doing."

"But the stream of time moves forward and mankind moves with it. Your generation must come to terms with the environment. Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth. Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity. You go out into a world where mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery-not of nature, but of itself. Therein lies our hope and our destiny. "In today already walks tomorrow.""

"After describing in detail the adverse reactions to Silent Spring of the farm bureaus in two Pennsylvania counties, the reporter continued: "No one in either county farm office who was talked to today had read the book, but all disapproved of it heartily.""

"I criticize the present methods because they are based on a rather low level of scientific thinking. We are capable of much greater sophistication in our solution of the problem."

"I would like to say that in Silent Spring I have never asked the reader to take my word. I have given him a very clear indication of my sources. I make it possible for him-indeed I invite him-to go beyond what I report and get the full picture. This is the reason for the 55 pages of references. You cannot do this if you are trying to conceal or distort or to present half truths."

"A penetrating observer of social problems has pointed out recently that whereas wealthy families once were the chief benefactors of the universities, now industry has taken over this role. Support of education is something no one quarrels with-but this need not blind us to the fact that research supported by pesticide manufacturers is not likely to be directed at discovering facts indicating unfavorable effects of pesticides."

"We see scientific societies acknowledging as "sustaining associates" a dozen or more giants of a related industry. When the scientific organization speaks, whose voice do we hear-that of science? or of the sustaining industry? It might be a less serious situation if this voice were always clearly identified, but the public assumes it is hearing the voice of science."

"What does it mean when we see a committee set up to make a supposedly impartial review of a situation, and then discover that the committee is affiliated with the very industry whose profits are at stake?"

"All of these things raise the question of the communication of scientific knowledge to the public. Is industry becoming a screen through which facts must be filtered, so that the hard, uncomfortable truths are kept back and only the harmless morsels allowed to filter through?"

"here the tailoring-the screening of basic truth is done, not to suit a party line-but to accommodate to the short-term gain-to serve the gods of profit and production."

"Through your interest in plant life, your fostering of beauty, your alignment with constructive conservation causes, you promote that onward flow of life that is the essence of our world. This is a time when forces of a very different nature too often prevail-forces careless of life or deliberately destructive of it and of the essential web of living relationships."

"The battle for a sane policy for controlling unwanted species will be a long and difficult one. The publication of Silent Spring was neither the beginning nor the end of that struggle."

"The most hopeful sign is an awakening of strong public interest and concern. People are beginning to ask questions and to insist upon proper answers instead of meekly acquiescing in whatever spraying programs are proposed. This in itself is a wholesome thing."

"Above all, we must not be deceived by the enormous stream of propaganda that is issuing from the pesticide manufacturers and from industry-related-although ostensibly independent organizations."

"we are engaged in a grim experiment never before attempted. We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effect. These exposures now begin at or before birth and-unless we change our methods-will continue through the lifetime of those now living. No one knows what the result will be, because we have no previous experience to guide us."

"What happens, then, when the public interest is pitted against large commercial interests? Those organizations wishing to plead for protection of the public interest do so under the peril of losing the tax-exempt status so necessary to their existence. The industry wishing to pursue its course without legal restraint is now actually subsidized in its efforts."

"The way is not made easy for those who would defend the public interest"

"There are other disturbing factors ... One is the growing interrelations between professional organizations and industry, and between science and industry."

"Another cause of concern is the increasing size and number of industry grants to the universities. On first thought, much support of education seems desirable, but on reflection we see that this does not make for unbiased research-it does not promote a truly scientific spirit. To an increasing extent, the man who commands the largest expense account-and who brings the largest grants to his university becomes an untouchable, with whom even the University president and trustees do not argue."

"As you listen to the present controversy about pesticides, I recommend that you ask yourself-Who speaks? And Why?"

"For we all are united in a common cause. It is a proud cause, which we may serve secure in the knowledge that the earth will be better for our efforts. It is a cause that has no end: there is no point at which we shall say, "Our work is finished." We build on the achievements of those who have gone before us; let us, in turn, build strong foundations for those who will take up the work when we must lay it down."

"Over the decades and the centuries, the scenes and the actors change. Yet the central theme remains-the greed and the shortsightedness of the few who would deprive the many of their rightful heritage. It is a theme supported by the false assurances that whatever is financially profitable is good for the nation and for mankind. These assurances were offered in the days of the timber barons and the land grabbers; they are heard today."

"If the crisis that now confronts us is even more urgent than those of the early years of the century-and I believe it is this is because of wholly new factors peculiar to our own time. These are, first of all, the phenomenal growth of the human population, threatening to over-run its own environment in a way that can bring only deep concern to thoughtful students of population problems. The second factor is a corollary of the first: that as people and their demands increase, there is a smaller share of the earth's resources for each of us to use and enjoy. There is less clean water, less uncontaminated air; there are fewer forests, fewer unspoiled wilderness areas. The third reason is the introduction of new and dangerous contaminants into soil, water, air, and the bodies of plants and animals as our new technology spreads its poisons and its discarded wastes over the land."

"we live in a time when change comes rapidly-a time when much of that change is, at least for long periods, irrevocable. This is what makes our own task so urgent. It is not often that a generation is challenged, as we today are challenged. For what we fail to do-what we let go by default, can perhaps never be done."

"I take courage, however, in the fact that the conservation effort has a broader base than ever before. There is more organized effort; there are many more individuals who are conscious of conservation problems and who are striving, in their own communities or on the national scene, to solve these problems."

"The contamination of the environment with harmful substances is one of the major problems of modern life. The world of air and water and soil supports not only the hundreds of thousands of species of animals and plants, it supports man himself. In the past we have often chosen to ignore this fact. Now we are receiving sharp reminders that our heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the earth and in time return to bring hazard to ourselves."

"We have acquired technical skills on a scale undreamed of even a generation ago. We can do dramatic things and we can do them quickly; by the time damaging side effects are apparent it is often too late, or impossible, to reverse our actions."

"I should also like to see legislation, possibly at the state level, restricting the sale and use of pesticides at least to those capable of understanding the hazards and of following directions. To me it is shocking that these chemicals can be bought and applied by illiterate and even by mentally deficient persons. We place much more stringent restrictions on the sale of drugs which at least are not sprayed from powerful machines!"

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."

"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength."

"I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused — a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love — then we wish for knowledge about the subject of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate."

"A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods. I always thought so myself; the Maine woods never seem so fresh and alive as in wet weather. Then all the needles on the evergreens wear a sheath of silver; ferns seem to have grown to almost tropical lushness and every leaf has its edging of crystal drops. Strangely colored fungi — mustard-yellow and apricot and scarlet — are pushing out of the leaf mold and all the lichens and the mosses have come alive with green and silver freshness."

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."

"I shall have to express a very deep conviction: that until we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is—whether its victim is human or animal—we cannot expect things to be much better in the world. There can be no double standard. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity."

"All I am certain of is this: that it is quite necessary for me to know that there is someone who is deeply devoted to me as a person, and who also has the capacity and the depth of understanding to share, vicariously, the sometimes crushing burden of creative effort. (1954)"

"And so it is--we always think our problems are peculiar to us, and then finally discover how many others have gone through exactly the same thing. And much as I suffer during the writing itself, I begin to think it is easy for me compared with the agonies she relates! (1955)"

"She knew how to explain science to ordinary readers in a way that they could understand; she knew also that if you don't love a thing you won't save it, and her love for the natural world shines through everything she wrote."

"I certainly was unaware that the ocean globally was on the verge of cataclysmic decline, that the pristine seas I had known as a child were in danger of becoming Paradise Lost. I was not alone in not knowing. Rachel Carson, famous for her 1962 classic Silent Spring, 11 years earlier wrote in The Sea Around Us: "Eventually man...found his way back to the sea.... And yet he has returned to his mother sea only on her own terms. He cannot control or change the ocean as, in his brief tenancy of earth, he has subdued and plundered the continents.""

"There is a long-standing debate within the environmental movement about its historical origins. Some point to the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's seminal book Silent Spring and accounts of the first Earth Day in 1970. Depending on the author, either of these two events is hailed as the beginning of the modern environmental movement. With her groundbreaking book, Rachel Carson alerted postwar America about the unintended consequences of the chemical industry on the natural world-and inevitably humans-leading to the banning of DDT in the US."

"what is driving these declines? In 1962, three years before I was born, Rachel Carson warned us in her book Silent Spring that we were doing terrible damage to our planet. She would weep to see how much worse it has become. Insect-rich wildlife habitats such as hay meadows, marshes, heathland and tropical rainforests have been bulldozed, burned or ploughed to destruction on a vast scale. Soils have been degraded and rivers choked with silt and polluted with industrial and agricultural chemicals or drained dry from over-use. The problems with pesticides and fertilizers that Carson highlighted have become far more acute, with an estimated 3 million tonnes of pesticides now going into the global environment every year. In the US, the weight of pesticides applied has increased by 150 per cent since Silent Spring was published, while at the same time new pesticides have been introduced that are much more toxic to insects than any that existed in Carson's day. For example, the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid is now the most widely used insecticide in the world, despite an EU-wide ban since 2018 brought on because of the harm it does to bees. Imidacloprid is about 7,000 times more toxic to bees than the insecticide DDT which was widely used in the 1960s and '70s. On top of all these pressures, wild insects now must cope with climate change, a phenomenon unrecognized in Carson's time."

"She was born in 1907 in the boom of the Industrial Age about 18 miles up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh, in the town of Springdale. From her bedroom window, she could see smoke billow from the stacks of the American Glue Factory, which slaughtered horses. The factory, the junkyard of its time, was located less than a mile away, down the gently sloping riverbank from the Carsons' four-room log cabin. Passers-by could watch old horses file up a covered wooden ramp to their death."

"Robin Wall Kimmerer says she admires Carson as a pioneering female scientist and one who “combined her knowledge with a sense of responsibility for that knowledge.”"

"It was Rachel Carson down in the dirt with DDT-contaminated worms. It was vividly descriptive prose, naturalist sketches, and, eventually, documentary photography and film seeking to awaken and inspire love for specific creatures and places-and, by extension, for creatures and places like them all over the world."

"I. F. Stone may have thought that environmentalism was distracting the youth of the 1960s and early 1970s from more urgent battles, but by today's standards, the environmentalists of that era look like fire-breathing radicals. Galvanized by the 1962 publication of Silent Spring and the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill (the Deepwater Horizon disaster of its day), they launched a new kind of North American environmentalism, one far more confrontational than the gentlemen's conservationism of the past. In addition to the newly formed Friends of the Earth (created in 1969) and Greenpeace (launched in 1971), the movement also included groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, then an idealistic gang of scrappy scientists and lawyers determined to heed Rachel Carson's warnings. The group's unofficial slogan was, "Sue the bastards," and so they did. The EDF fought for and filed the original lawsuit that led to the U.S. ban on DDT as an insecticide, resulting in the revival of many species of birds, including the bald eagle."

"If we were adding CO₂ to the air more slowly, geophysical processes, like the weathering of rock, would come into play to counteract acidification. As it is, things are moving too fast for such slow-acting forces to keep up. As Rachel Carson once observed, referring to a very different but at the same time profoundly similar problem: "Time is the essential ingredient, but in the modern world there is no time.""

"Certainly humans can be destructive and shortsighted; they can also be forward-thinking and altruistic. Time and time again, people have demonstrated that they care about what Rachel Carson called "the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures," and that they're willing to make sacrifices on those creatures' behalf. Alfred Newton described the slaughter that was occurring along the British coast; the result was the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds. John Muir wrote about the damage being done in the mountains of California, and this led to the creation of Yosemite National Park. Silent Spring exposed the dangers posed by synthetic pesticides, and within a decade, most uses of DDT had been prohibited."

"With Silent Spring's appearance in 1962, Rachel Carson, the quiet and unassuming writer and marine biologist, made Americans think about their dependence on nature. Pesticide manufacturers, long seen as helping to control nature, raged at her attack. They assaulted Carson's book and also criticized her scientific facts and her character, called her a "hysterical woman.""

"Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is a seminal work of environmental justice thought. A female scientist writing in the early 1960s, Carson described the impact of pesticides on birdlife and the eco-system, offering an early shift in Western scientific thinking toward recognition that the earth is a living system, one in which human shortsightedness has consequences. This text informed many environmental activists, who organized the first Earth Day actions and instigated establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. It also informed early environmental justice activists, who began to make a connection between chemical contamination and public health in communities along the fencelines of hazardous waste disposal and production sites."

"I was deeply impressed by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. It may well be the book by which the human race will stand or fall."

"Forty years ago, Silent Spring delivered a galvanic jolt to public consciousness and, as a result, infused the environmental movement with new substance and meaning...It was Rachel Carson's achievement to synthesize this knowledge into a single image that everyone, scientists and the general public alike, could easily understand...We are still poisoning the air and water and eroding the biosphere, albeit less so than if Rachel Carson had not written. Today we understand better than ever why we must press the effort to save the environment all the way home, true to the mind and spirit of the valiant author of Silent Spring."

"In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man's relation to nature without referring to "ecology"...such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices...so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the "Age of Ecology"."

"The race to make discoveries of the greatest generality, to solve the major problems in the 'mainstream of biology,' does not strike me as the best research strategy to teach to students. It results in an implosive convergence of effort on a few subjects, in a sharp decline in the number of discoveries per man per unit time, and in frustration on the part of young scientists who realize too late that their own professors have picked up the best pebbles on the beach."

"[Biology has] become the paramount science, exceeding other disciplines, including physics and chemistry at least, in the creative tumult of its disciplines and disputations. [...] I'll also be so bold at this point to suggest that we are now at the edge of establishing the two fundamental laws of biology: The first law is that all of the phenomena of biology, the entities and the processes, are ultimately obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry. Not immediately reducible to them, but ultimately consistent and in consilience with them, by a cause and effect explanation. The second law is that all biological phenomena, these entities and processes that define life itself, have arisen by evolution through natural selection."

"This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century."

"My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’,”"

"Wonderful theory, wrong species. (On Marxism, which he considered more suited to ants than to humans.)"

"The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us."

"Will we solve the crises of next hundred years? asked Krulwich. “Yes, if we are honest and smart,” said Wilson. “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally,” we’re on very thin ground."

"The pattern of human population growth in the 20th century was more bacterial than primate. When Homo sapiens passed the six billion mark we had already exceeded by perhaps as much as 100 times the biomass of any large animal species that had ever existed on the land. We and the rest of life cannot afford another 100 years like that."

"We have stone age emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology."

"In the process of natural selection, then. any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species."

"Samuel Butler's famous aphorism that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg has been modernized: the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA."

"The key to the sociobiology of mammals is milk."

"Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of philosophers and biologized."

"The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have."

"God remains a viable hypothesis as the prime mover, however undefinable and untestable that conception may be."

"We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity."

"The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute."

"Genetic determinism... On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences."

"The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else."

"The channels of human mental development... are circuitous and variable. Rather than specify a single trait, human genes prescribe the capacity to develop a certain array of traits."

"The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible."

"The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic."

"Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition."

"Evidence has... been adduced that schizophrenia is widespread in other kinds of human societies. ...and they form a substantial fraction of the clientele of the tribal shamans and healers."

"There is no such thing as a typically "schizophrenogenic" (schizophrenia-producing) family arrangement, one most likely to produce a mentally ill adult from a child with the potential for the disease."

"The central idea of the philosophy of behaviorism, that behavior and the mind have an entirely materialist basis subject to experimental analysis, is fundamentally sound."

"Piaget, who was originally trained as a biologist, views intellectual development as an interaction of an inherited genetic program with the environment. It is no coincidence that he calls this conception "genetic epistemology," in effect the study of the hereditary unfolding of understanding."

"The rules followed are tight enough to produce a broad overlap in the decisions taken by all individuals and hence a convergence powerful enough to be labelled human nature."

"Because the brain can be guided by rational calculation only in a limited degree, it must fall back on the nuances of pleasure and pain mediated by the limbic system and other lower centers of the brain."

"We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution."

"In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival..."

"The incest taboo is another major category of primed learning."

"We seem to be able to be fully comfortable only when the remainder of humanity can be labeled as members versus nonmembers."

"Because of mathematical indeterminancy and the uncertainty principle, it may be a law of nature that no nervous system is capable of acquiring enough knowledge to significantly predict the future of any other intelligent system in detail. Nor can intelligent minds gain enough self-knowledge to know their own future, capture fate, and in this sense eliminate free will."

"The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality but intentionality. What is the prime mover, the weaver who guides the flashing shuttles?"

"A schema is a configuration within the brain, either inborn or learned, against which the input of the nerve cells is compared. ...the conscious mind ...can fill in details that are missing from the actual sensory input and create a pattern in the mind which is not necessarily present in reality. In this way, the gestalt of objects—the impression...—is aided by the taxonomic powers of the schemata."

"Cultural change is the statistical product of the separate behavioral responses of large numbers of human beings who cope as best they can with social existence."

"Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow."

"Because it is... far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change."

"Intertribal aggression, escalating in some cultures to limited warfare, is common enough to be regarded as a general characteristic of hunter-gatherer social behavior."

"The only other mammalian carnivores that take outsized prey are lions, hyenas, wolves, and African wild dogs. Each... has an exceptionally advanced social life, prominently featuring the pursuit of prey in coordinated packs."

"Primitive men are ecological analogs of lions, wolves, and hyenas... they have adopted pack hunting in the pursuit of big game. ...habitually slaughtering surplus prey, storing food, feeding solid food to their young, dividing labor, practicing cannibalism, and interacting aggressively with competing species. ...this way of life persisted for millions of years or longer and was abandoned in most societies only during the last few thousand years."

"The selection pressures of hunter-gatherer existence have persisted for over 99 percent of human evolution."

"The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. ...No organ in the history of life has grown faster."

"The theory of population genetics and experiments on other organisms show that substantial changes can occur in the span of less than 100 generations, which for man reaches back to the time of the Roman Empire."

"The emergence of civilization has everywhere followed a definable sequence."

"At the apogee of the state's evolution, architecture was monumental, and the ruling class were exalted as a pseudospecies. The sacred rites of statehood became the central focus of religion."

"Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism."

"Daily life is a compromised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence."

"Early human beings... filled a special ecological niche: they were carnivorous primates of the African plains. ...When agriculture permitted the increase of population density, game was no longer abundant... carnivorism remained a basic dietary impulse, with cultural aftereffects that varied according to the special conditions of the environment in which the society evolved."

"Ancient Mexico, like most forest-invested New World tropics, was deficient in the kind of large game that flourished on the plains of Africa and Asia. ...The situation was partially relieved by cannibalizing the victims of human sacrifice. ...The [ Aztec ] priesthood... sanctified it... immediately after their hearts had been cut out, the victims were systematically butchered like animals and their parts distributed and eaten."

"I interpret contemporary human social behavior to comprise hypertrophic outgrowths of the simpler features of human nature joined together into an irregular mosaic."

"The fraction of Americans working in occupations concerned primarily with information has increased from 20 to nearly 50 percent of the work force."

"Pure knowledge is the ultimate emancipator. It equalizes people and sovereign states, erodes the archaic barriers of superstition and promises to lift the trajectory of cultural evolution. But I do not believe that it can change the ground rules of human behavior or alter the main course of history's predictable trajectory."

"Self-knowledge will reveal the elements of biological human nature from which modern social life proliferated in all its strange forms."

"Are human beings innately aggressive? ...The answer to it is yes. ...Only by redefining the words "innateness" and "aggression" to the point of uselessness might we correctly say that human aggressiveness is not innate."

"The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future."

"Most kinds of aggressive behavior among members of the same species are responsive to crowding in the environment."

"Animals use aggression as a technique for gaining control over necessities... that are scarce or are likely to become so... They intensify their threats and attack with increasing frequency as the population around them grow. As a result the behavior itself induces members of the population to spread out in space, raises the death rate, and lowers the birth rate. In such cases aggression is said to be a "density-dependent factor" in controlling population growth."

"If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plant and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere."

"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."

"True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety."

"The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured- especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised."

"Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false."

"If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth."

"The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another."

"Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles. We are also the greatest destroyer of life since the ten-kilometer-wide meteorite that landed near Yucatan and ended the Age of Reptiles sixty-five million years ago. Through overpopulation we have put ourselves in danger of running out of food and water. So a very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic."

"Nothing fundamental separates the course of human history from the course of physical history."

"Stable climates with muted seasons allow more kinds of organisms to specialize on narrower pieces of the environment, to outcompete the generalists around them, and so persist for longer periods of time. Species are packed more tightly. No niche, it seems goes unfilled. Specialization is likely to be pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes."

"The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendents are least likely to forgive us."

"The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry."

"To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively."

"Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages."

"Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy."

"The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper."

"To search for unasked questions, plus questions to put to already acquired but unsought answers, it is vital to give full play to the imagination. That is the way to create truly original science."

"For the first time in history a conviction has developed among those who can actually think more than a decade ahead that we are playing a global endgame. Humanity's grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker. Our population is too large for safety and comfort. Fresh water is growing short, the atmosphere and the seas are increasingly polluted as a result of what has transpired on the land. The climate is changing in ways unfavorable to life, except for microbes, jellyfish and fungi. For many species it is already fatal."

"If we choose the path of destruction, the planet will continue to descend irreversibly into the Anthropocene Epoch, the biologically final age in which the planet exists almost exclusively by, for, and of ourselves."

"The biology of extinction is not a pleasant subject. The death of a species is especially disheartening to the scientists who study endangered and newly extinct species. Together these vanishing remnants of Earth's biodiversity test the reach and quality of human morality. Species brought low by our hand now deserve our constant attention and care."

"Protected areas provide hope that the creatures of Ed Wilson's dream of an encyclopedia of life, or the census of marine life, will live not just as a list, a photograph, or a paragraph."

"His critics accuse him of a reductionist and mechanistic view of culture and morality, with dangerous eugenic and racist overtones, while his admirers claim that his work is Darwinian in scope and that... he is the target of philistines who object to his conclusions on ethical and emotional, rather than scientific, grounds."

"Wilson himself argued that it would be in the best interest of humanity if organized religions as we know them would disappear. There is, however, a misunderstanding. Wilson was not an atheist, nor was he against asking religious questions. Since his main interest were ants, it is to his interesting we should turn to understand more about his ideas on religion."

"Religion, Wilson theorizes, is so prevalent because it provided a definite evolutionary advantage for those early humans who adopted it. ...when our apelike ancestors gradually became more intelligent, individuals could rationally begin to question the power of their leader. ...a dangerous, dissipative force on the tribe. ...Thus, according to Wilson, a selective pressure was placed on intelligent apes to suspend reason and blindly obey the leader and his myths..."

"You see, if E. O. Wilson says that Indian scientists should do taxonomy, now of course, someone will say that you are preventing them from doing the sort of high science that is done elsewhere. So it should not come from there, it should come from us. I think that we must recognize where we have the advantages and where we have the disadvantages."

"Recently, E.O. Wilson's sociobiology has offered the traditionalist view on gender in an argument which applies Darwinian ideas of natural selection to human behavior. Wilson and his followers reason that human behaviors which are "adaptive" for group survival become encoded in the genes, and they include in these behavjors such complex traits as altruism, loyalty, and maternalism. They not only reason that groups practicing a sex-based division of labor in which women function as child-rearers and nurturers have an evolutionary advantage, but they claim such behavior somehow becomes part of our genetic heritage, in that the necessary psychological and physical propensities for such societal arrangements are selectively developed and genetically selected. Mothering is not only a socially assigned role but one fitting women's physical and psychological needs. Here, once again, biological determinism becomes prescriptive, in fact a political defense of the status quo in scientific language. Feminist critics have revealed the circular reasoning, absence of evidence and unscientific assumptions of Wilsonian sociobiology. From the point of view of the nonscientist, the most obvious fallacy of sociobiologists is their ahistoricity in disregarding the fact that modern men and women do not live in a state of nature. The history of civilization describes the process by which humans have distanced themselves from nature by inventing and perfecting culture. Traditionalists ignore technological changes, which have made it possible to bottle-feed infants safely and raise them to adulthood with caretakers other than their own mothers. They ignore the implications of changing life spans and changing life cycles. Until communal hygiene and modern medical knowledge cut infant mortality to a level where parents could reasonably expect each child born to them to live to adulthood, women did indeed have to bear many children in order for a few of them to survive. Similarly, longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality altered the life cycles of both men and women. These developments were connected with industrialization and occurred in Western civilization (for whites) toward the end of the nineteenth century, occurring later for the poor and for minorities due to the uneven distribution of health and social services. Whereas up to 1870 child-rearing and marriage were co-terminus-that is, one or both parents could expect to die before the youngest child reached adulthood-in modern American society husbands and wives can expect to live together for twelve years after their youngest child has reached adulthood, and women can expect to outlive their husbands by seven years." Nevertheless, traditionalists expect women to follow the same roles and occupations that were functional and species-essential in the Neolithic."

"Specifically, sociobiology entails using explanatory principles and empirical findings derived from evolutionary biology to describe and explain social behavior among animals, including humans. It also draws on and incorporates thinking and research in ecology, especially behavioral ecology. The contributions of biologists such as R. A. Fisher, W. D. Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and George Williams were foundational for the development and emergence of sociobiology, and that emergence culminated with the publication of Sociobiology: The Modern Synthesis by Edward O. Wilson in 1975. This chapter explores the impact of sociobiology on theory and research in sociology during the nearly four decades since the publication of Wilson’s opus. Wilson’s book is a tome, stretching to twenty-seven chapters and 697 pages of text. Had it not been for the fact that the title and subject of Chapter 27 was “Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology,” it might have been recorded in the annals of science as a magisterial synthesis of much of what was then known about the evolution of social behavior in animals, but its influence may not have extended much beyond a few other fields such as biological anthropology or comparative psychology. But by expanding the scope of his analysis to include humans, Wilson provoked one of the great intellectual and scientific debates of the late twentieth century and helped stimulate the development of entirely new programs of research in the social and behavioral sciences."

"Wilson clearly laid down a radical biosociological research programme, claiming that sociology should be reduced to biology. This idea has profoundly influenced sociobiology and its reception in the larger public. Because of his claims to 'biologicize' culture and even ethics and the changes in evolutionary biology, which he at least co-provoked, sociobiology was soon singled out for criticism. But this challenge to other subject areas also inspired interesting new theories for instance in psychology or in philosophy."

"Since 1978, when a pail of water was dumped over my Harvard friend E. O. Wilson for saying that genes influence human behaviour, the assault against human behavioural genetics by wishful thinking has remained vigorous. But irrationality must soon recede. It will soon be possible to read individual genetic messages at costs which will not bankrupt our health systems. In so doing, I hope we see whether changes in DNA sequence, not environmental influences, result in behaviour differences. Finally, we should be able to establish the relative importance of nature as opposed to nurture."

"The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans. Our challenge for the future is that we realize we are very much a part of the earth's ecosystem, and we must learn to respect and live according to the basic biological laws of nature."

"Almost all of the social tragedies occurring around the world today are caused by ignoring the basic biological laws of nature ... The quicker we humans learn that saving open space and wildlife is critical to our welfare and quality of life, maybe we'll start thinking of doing something about it."

"s are ecologically and economically important and, for a variety of reasons, have become ideal subjects for investigating many problems. These include problems of sensory perception during foraging (Spaethe and , 2001); recruitment communication among foragers (Dornhaus and Chittka, 2001; Domhaus and Cameron, 2003; Dornhaus et al., 2003), and the role of parasitism in the evolution of social behavior (Schmid-Hempel, 1998). Recent developments in artificial insemination of bumblebees (Baer and Schmid-Hempel, 2000) provide opportunities for understanding genetic influences on phenotypic traits."

"are attracted to the vigorously growing that follows s and operations, including . People who favor massive clear-cutting often claim that moose thrive in clear-cuts. But what they usually don't mention is that in some clear-cuts they get rid of the moose browse that would normally grow there. They use helicopters to spray s that kill the regenerating young hardwood trees to culture unpalatable and sterile and s."

"When I was a teenage boy in western Maine, I read the books of Jack London, books about a world of rugged people and hardy animals at home in the frozen woods of the north. Dreaming of that world, I ventured out into the forest on s, and if it was in the middle of a storm, all the better. Deep in the forest I would dig a shallow pit in the snow and using the papery bark peeled from a nearby and dead twigs broken from a , I'd start a crackling fire. The splendor of sparks shooting up into the dark sky, the acrid smoke rising through the falling s, and hare or porcupine meat roasting on a stick over the flames, all enhanced the winter romance."

"In my nostalgia for summers past and anticipation of summers to come, I think of swimming, basking in the sun while wiggling into warm sand at the beach, and reveling in the sights, sounds, and smells of flowers, bees, and birds. I think of the dances on balmy nights as we swung and ed our partners and sweated to fiddle at the town hall; and of on Bog Stream, where we d past floating lily pads and big white water lily blossoms. I think of the school year coming to a close. For me, summer used to begin on the first day of school vacation, the season of long days."

"There has been a shift in our attitude toward . Crows are becoming more suburban, and there are reports of crows leaving objects that seem to be thank-yous to people for feeding them. For example, an eight-year-old girl named Gabi Mann regularly received trinkets such as buttons, jewelry, and bits of colored glass. Her online story inspired readers to post details of their own experience with crows and to write comments such as "We love our crows," "I fell in love with this beautiful and intelligent creature," and "I treasure the connection.""

"I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing — to be sharp, yet open."

"Conditions are seldom ideal, and if one waits long enough for ideal conditions one is just making excuses."

"Birds are extraordinary creatures by almost any measure. But they are especially impressive when we are so brash as to compare them to ourselves in their astonishingly diverse ways of becoming parents and of parenting. We need three or four decades to accomplish what birds of many species routinely accomplish in less than a month—court, mate, build a nest, lay from one to about twenty eggs, incubate them, and then feed and protect them to adulthood. In some cases birds also provider their offspring's education. They may have to tens of thousands of miles just to start the nesting season."

"and are not tightly coupled in most birds. In so-called and species there is no apparent male-female bonding. There is instead relatively indiscriminate mating on the part of one sex coupled with often intense discriminating on the other. At the other extreme are apparently permanently bonded couples who mate only in a vary narrow time window (at or slightly before the time of egg laying), during which they may also mate with neighbors, depending on opportunity. In many birds who have successive broods through a season, such as s, for example, a female may be monogamous in the first brood but mate with several males (probably carefully chosen, that is not "promiscuous") in the second, even as she remains with the same original mate to rear their clutch."

"Ravens and magpies may be pure scavengers in the winter, but in the fall they are herbivores eating berries, and in the summer they are predators living on insects and mice and anything else they can kill."

"Cats may scrape leaves and grass over dead prey to conceal it, and some s drag drugged but living insects into previously constructed homes so the wasp larvae can safely feed on fresh meat. But to my knowledge, only one group of animals, beetles belonging to the group ', regularly moves carcasses to a suitable place and then deliberately buries them. Unlike humans, who generally bury only our own species and those pets who have become surrogate humans, these beetles bury a great diversity of birds and mammals but never their own kind. They bury dead animals as a food source for their larvae, and the burying is a central part of their mating and reproductive strategy."

"Heinrich fils, a professor emeritus of biology at the , is best known for his groundbreaking books on raven intelligence (“Ravens in Winter” and “Mind of the Raven”) and for his study of physiological stamina based on his exploits as an er (“Why We Run”). He first made his name, however, as a bug guy. “Bumblebee Economics,” a layman’s guide to insect sociobiology that grew out of his doctoral dissertation, was nominated for a 1979 , cementing his reputation as an uncommonly enlightening for popular audiences."

"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind."

"One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid."

"I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family. Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee. Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab."

"Watson: But legalities aside, I think we must reevaluate our basic assumptions about the meaning of life. Perhaps, as my former colleague Francis Crick suggested, no one should be thought alive until about three days after birth."

"Prism: But how would society react to such a proposal?"

"Watson: Our society just hasn't faced up to this problem. In a primitive society, if you saw that a baby was deformed, you would abandon it on a hillside. Today this isn't permissible, and with our medicine getting better and better in the sense of being able to keep sick people alive longer, we are going to produce more people living wretched lives. I don't know how you get a society to change on such a basic issue; infanticide isn't regarded lightly by anyone. Fortunately, now through such techniques as amniocentesis, parents can often learn in advance whether their child will be normal and healthy or hopelessly deformed. They then can choose either to have the child or opt for a therapeutic abortion. But the cruel fact remains that because of the present limits of such detection methods, most birth defects are not discovered until birth. If the child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have."

"The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind."

"There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work."

"When anti-DNA doomsday scenarios failed to materialize, even the modestly restrictive governmental regulations began to wither away. In retrospect, recombinant-DNA may rank as the safest revolutionary technology ever developed. To my knowledge, not one fatality, much less illness, has been caused by a genetically manipulated organism. The moral I draw from this painful episode is this: Never postpone experiments that have clearly defined future benefits for fear of dangers that can't be quantified. Though it may sound at first uncaring, we can react rationally only to real (as opposed to hypothetical) risks."

"Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution."

"To have success in science, you need some luck. But to succeed in science, you need a lot more than luck. And it's not enough to be smart — lots of people are very bright and get nowhere in life. In my view, you have to combine intelligence with a willingness not to follow conventions when they block your path forward."

"To succeed in science, you have to avoid dumb people (here I was still following Luria's example). Now that might sound inexcusably flip, but the fact is that you must always turn to people who are brighter than yourself."

"To make a huge success, a scientist must be prepared to get into deep trouble. Sometime or another, someone will tell you that you are not ready to do something. … If you are going to make a big jump in science, you will very likely be unqualified to succeed by definition. The truth, however, won't save you from criticism. Your very willingness to take on a very big goal will offend some people who will think that you are too big for your britches and crazy to boot."

"Be sure you have someone up your sleeve who will save you when you find yourself in deep s—."

"Never do anything that bores you. My experience in science is that someone is always telling to do something that leaves you flat. Bad idea. I'm not good enough to do something I dislike. In fact, I find it hard enough to do something that I like. … Constantly exposing your ideas to informed criticism is very important, and I would venture to say that one reason both of our chief competitors failed to reach the Double Helix before us was that each was effectively very isolated."

"Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."

"No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?"

"If we don't play God, who will?"

"I just can’t sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it’s nonsense."

"People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."

"Never be the brightest person in the room. … We're all imperfect."

"Science Ph.D. students have effectively become serfs. And who would become a serf when you can work for Goldman Sachs and get paid $300,000 a year to become a serf? Why drive a Chevy when you can drive a BMW — and now you're condemned to driving a car from Malaysia or something. Life should be fun."

"New ideas require new facts. You explain things by way of ideas. Why do we have a government that is run by rich trash? Because they've used their money to buy the presidency. Bush is a tool for the people who don't want an inheritance tax."

"For all my life, America was the place to be. And we somehow continue to be the place where there are real opportunities to change the world for the better. I'm basically a libertarian. I don't want to restrict anyone from doing anything unless it's going to harm me. I don't want to pass a law stopping someone from smoking. It's just too dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society. Since we are genetically so diverse and our brains are so different, we're going to have different aspirations. The things that will satisfy me won't satisfy you. On the other hand, if global warming is in any way preventable and it's likely to come, not doing something would be irresponsible to the future of our society."

"Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark? Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can't be criticized, that's very dangerous. The whole Larry Summers thing, to say that men are a bit strange and their strangest quality is their ability to understand mathematics -- you're not supposed to even think it."

"I turned against the left wing because they don't like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system."

"If you could make people with ten-point-higher IQs, we'd probably have fewer wars."

"I've seen no evidence of a god, so I'm not going to think about one. Being raised nonreligious made you free. You could look at the evidence. Whether being nonreligious or a Democrat was more important, I can't tell you."

"Do things as soon as you can. If a decision needs to be made, make it. It gives you more time to change your mind."

"Science is no stranger to controversy. The pursuit of discovery, of knowledge, is often uncomfortable and disconcerting. I have never been one to shy away from stating what I believe to be the truth, however difficult it might prove to be. This has, at times, got me in hot water. Rarely more so than right now, where I find myself at the centre of a storm of criticism. I can understand much of this reaction. For if I said what I was quoted as saying, then I can only admit that I am bewildered by it. To those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief. I have always fiercely defended the position that we should base our view of the world on the state of our knowledge, on fact, and not on what we would like it to be. This is why genetics is so important. For it will lead us to answers to many of the big and difficult questions that have troubled people for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. But those answers may not be easy, for, as I know all too well, genetics can be cruel. My own son may be one of its victims. Warm and perceptive at the age of 37, Rufus cannot lead an independent life because of schizophrenia, lacking the ability to engage in day-to-day activities."

"Since 1978, when a pail of water was dumped over my Harvard friend E. O. Wilson for saying that genes influence human behaviour, the assault against human behavioural genetics by wishful thinking has remained vigorous. But irrationality must soon recede. It will soon be possible to read individual genetic messages at costs which will not bankrupt our health systems. In so doing, I hope we see whether changes in DNA sequence, not environmental influences, result in behaviour differences. Finally, we should be able to establish the relative importance of nature as opposed to nurture."

"The thought that some people are innately wicked disturbs me. But science is not here to make us feel good. It is to answer questions in the service of knowledge and greater understanding. In finding out the extent to which genes influence moral behaviour, we shall also be able to understand how genes influence intellectual capacities."

"Right now, at my institute in the US we are working on gene-caused failures in brain development that frequently lead to autism and schizophrenia. We may also find that differences in these respective brain development genes also lead to differences in our abilities to carry out different mental tasks. In some cases, how these genes function may help us to understand variations in IQ, or why some people excel at poetry but are terrible at mathematics. All too often people with high mathematical abilities have autistic traits. The same gene that gives some people such great mathematical abilities may also lead to autistic behaviour. This is why, in studying autism and schizophrenia, we believe that we shall come very close to a better understanding of intelligence and, therefore, of the differences in intelligence."

"We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers. It is very likely that at least some 10 to 15 years will pass before we get an adequate understanding for the relative importance of nature versus nurture in the achievement of important human objectives. Until then, we as scientists, wherever we wish to place ourselves in this great debate, should take care in claiming what are unarguable truths without the support of evidence."

"No one really wants to admit I exist."

"Not at all. I would like for them to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven’t seen any knowledge. And there’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on I.Q. tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic."

"Crick, however, was right. Our discovery put an end to a debate as old as the human species: Does life have some magical, mystical essence, or is it, like any chemical reaction carried out in a science class, the product of normal physical and chemical processes? Is there something divine at the heart of a cell that brings it to life? The double helix answer that question with a definitive No."

"That is why the double helix was so important. It brought the Enlightenment revolution in materialistic thinking into the cell. The intellectual journey that had begun with Copernicus displacing humans from the center of the universe and continued with Darwin’s insistence that humans are merely modified monkeys had finally focused in on the very essence of life. And there was nothing special about it. The double helix is an elegant structure, but its message is downright prosaic: life is simply a matter of chemistry."

"The discovery of the double helix sounded the death knell for vitalism. Serious scientists, even those religiously inclined, realized that a complete understanding of life would not require the revelation of new laws of nature. Life was just a matter of physics and chemistry, albeit exquisitely organized physics and chemistry. The immediate task ahead would be to figure out how the DNA-encoded script of life went about its work."

"The problem was insoluble: you cannot, we thought, have DNA without proteins, and you cannot have proteins without DNA. RNA, however, being a DNA equivalent (it can store and replicate genetic information) as well as a protein equivalent (it can catalyze critical chemical reactions) offers an answer. In fact, in the “RNA world” the chicken-and-egg problem simply disappears. RNA is both the chicken and the egg. RNA is an evolutionary heirloom. Once natural selection has solved a problem, it tends to stick with that solution, in effect following the maxim “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In other words, in the absence of selective pressure to change, cellular systems do not innovate and so bear many imprints of the evolutionary past. A process may be carried out in a certain way simply because it first evolved that way, not because that is absolutely the best and most efficient way."

"The opposition to GM foods is largely a sociopolitical movement whose arguments, though couched in the language of science, are typically unscientific. Indeed, some of the anti-GM pseudoscience propagated by the media—whether in the interests of sensationalism or out of misguided but well-intentioned concern—would be actually amusing were it not evident that such gibberish is in fact an effective weapon in the propaganda war."

"Sure enough, the notion of decoding their personal DNA appealed to more than a few well-off individuals, even if it amounted to the scientific equivalent of purchasing a vanity license plate."

"Khan analyzed the data and was relieved to find that his son’s DNA was “pretty boring.” In the brave new world of personal genomics, “boring” is the new “great.”"

"Our low gene count by no means invalidates a reductionist approach to biological systems, nor does it justify any logical inference that we are not determined by our genes. A fertilized egg containing a chimp genome still inevitably produces a chimp, while a fertilized egg containing a human genome produces a human. No amount of exposure to classical music or violence on TV could make it otherwise. Yes, we have a long way to go in developing our understanding of just how the information in those two remarkably similar genomes is applied to the task of producing two apparently very different organisms, but the fact remains that the greatest part of what each individual organism will be is programmed ineluctably into its every cell, in the genome."

"This remarkable feat merely reaffirms what most of us in molecular biology have long known to be the truth: the essence of life is complicated chemistry and nothing more."

"The conclusion that we nearly all carry components of Neanderthal DNA in our genomes, although perhaps a blow to our collective ego, does not appear quite so surprising upon reflection. Indeed, the overall lesson of molecular studies of human evolution is just how astonishingly close we are genetically to the rest of the natural world. In fact, molecular data have often challenged (and overthrown) long-held assumptions about human origins."

"Given what a powerful determinant, mostly for ill, skin color has been in human history and individual experience, it is surprising how little we know about its underlying genetics. This deficit, however, may have had less to do with the limitations of our science and more with the intrusion of politics into science; in an academic world terrorized by political correctness, even to study the molecular basis of such a characteristic has been something of a taboo."

"The law has always had difficulty assimilating the implications, if not the very idea, of scientific evidence. Even the most intelligent lawyers, judges, and juries have customarily found it difficult to understand at first."

"My youthful reasoning on the subject, however absurdly misinformed, nevertheless taught me a very valuable lesson: the danger of assuming that genes are responsible for differences we see among individuals or groups. We can err mightily unless we can be confident that environmental factors have not played the more decisive role. This tendency to prefer explanations grounded in “nurture” over ones rooted in “nature” has served a useful social purpose in redressing generations of bigotry. Unfortunately, we have now cultivated too much of a good thing. The current epidemic of political correctness has delivered us to a moment when even the possibility of a genetic basis for difference is a hot potato: there is a fundamentally dishonest resistance to admitting the role our genes almost surely play in setting one individual apart from another."

"And so having signed on to the liberal end of the political spectrum, and finding themselves in a climate intolerant of truths that don’t conform to ideology, most scientists carefully steer clear of research that might uncover such truths. The fact that they duly hew to the prevailing line of liberal orthodoxy—which seeks to honor and entitle difference while shunning any consideration of its biochemical basis—is, I think, bad for science, for a democratic society, and ultimately for human welfare."

"Knowledge, even that which may unsettle us, it surely to be preferred to ignorance, however blissful in the short term the latter may be. All too often, however, political anxiousness favors ignorance and its apparent safety: we had better not learn about the genetics of skin color, goes the unspoken fear, lest such information be marshaled somehow by hatemongers opposed to mixing among the races."

"The tendency is to focus on the worst-case scenario and to shy away from potentially controversial science; it is time, I think, we looked instead at the benefits."

"Ideology—of any kind—and science are at best inappropriate bedfellows. Science may indeed uncover unpleasant truths, but the critical thing is that they are truths. Any effort, whether wicked or well-meaning, to conceal truth or impede its disclosure is destructive. Too often in our free society, scientists willing to take on questions with political ramifications have been made to pay an unjust price."

"Murray and Herrnstein’s assertion, however, was that the discrepancy was so great that environment likely couldn’t explain it all. Similarly, environmental factors alone may not account for why, globally, Asians have on average higher IQs than other racial groups. The idea of measurable variations in average intelligence among ethnic groups is not one, I admit, I want to live with. But though The Bell Curve’s claims remain questionable, we should not allow political anxieties to keep us from looking into them further."

"The finding that there is a substantial genetic component to our behavior should not surprise us; indeed, it would be far more surprising if this were not the case. We are products of evolution: among our ancestors, natural selection indubitably exerted a strong influence over all traits that have figured in our survival."

"The future promises a detailed genetic dissection of personality, and it is hard to imagine that what we discover will not tip the scales of the nature/nurture debate more and more in the direction of nature—a frightening thought for some, but only if we persist in being held hostage by a static, ultimately meaningless dichotomy. To find that any trait, even one with formidable political implications, has a mainly genetic basis is not to find something set immutably in stone. It is merely to understand the nature upon which nurture is ever acting, and those things we, as a society and as individuals, need to do if we are better to assist the process. Let us not allow transient political considerations to set the scientific agenda. Yes, we may uncover truths that make us uneasy in the light of our present circumstances, but it is those circumstances, not nature’s truth, to which policy makers ought to address themselves."

"Life, we now know, is nothing but a vast array of coordinated chemical reactions. The “secret” to that coordination is the breathtakingly complex set of instructions inscribed—again, chemically—in our DNA."

"If, therefore, we are serious about improving education, we cannot in good conscience ultimately limit ourselves to seeking remedies in nurture. My suspicion, however, is that education policies are too often set by politicians to whom the glib slogan “Leave no child behind” appeals precisely because it is so completely unobjectionable. But children will get left behind if we continue to insist that each one has the same potential for learning."

"The issue, rather, is this: Are we prepared to embrace the undeniably vast potential of genetics to improve the human condition, individually and collectively? Most immediate, would we want the guidance of genetic information to design learning best suited to our children’s individual needs?"

"The reality is that the idea of improving on the genes that nature has given us alarms people. When discussing our genes, we seem ready to commit what philosophers call the naturalistic fallacy, assuming that the way nature intended it is best. By centrally heating our homes and taking antibiotics when we have an infection, we carefully steer clear of the fallacy in our daily lives, but mentions of genetic improvement have us rushing to run the “nature knows best” flag up the mast. For this reason, I think that the acceptance of genetic enhancement will most likely come about through efforts to prevent disease."

"I find such a moralistic response to be profoundly immoral."

"But even if we allow hypothetically that gene enhancement could—like any powerful technology—be applied to nefarious social ends, that only strengthens the case for our developing it. Considering the near impossibility of repressing technological progress, and the fact that much of what is now prohibited is well on its way to becoming practicable, do we dare restrain our own research community and risk allowing some culture that does not share our values to gain the upper hand? From the time the first of our ancestors fashioned a stick into a spear, the outcomes of conflicts throughout history have been dictated by technology."

"And so if there is a paramount ethical issue attending the vast new genetic knowledge created by the Human Genome Project, in my view it is the slow pace at which what we now know is being deployed to diminish human suffering. Leaving aside the uncertainties of gene therapy, I find the lag in embracing even the most unambiguous benefits to be utterly unconscionable. That in our medically advanced society almost no women are screened for the fragile X mutation two decades after its discovery can attest only to ignorance or intransigence."

"I do not dispute the right of individuals to look to religion for a private moral compass, but I do object to the assumption of too many religious people that atheists live in a moral vacuum. Those of us who feel no need for a moral code written down in an ancient tome have, in my opinion, recourse to an innate moral intuition long ago shaped by natural selection promoting social cohesion in groups of our ancestors."

"With its direct contradiction of religious accounts of creation, evolution represents science’s most direct incursion into the religious domain and accordingly provokes the acute defensiveness that characterizes creationism."

"There is in the first place its scientific interest. The discovery of the structure by Crick and Watson, with all its biological implications, has been one of the major scientific events of this century. The number of researches which it has inspired is amazing; it has caused an explosion in biochemistry which has transformed the science. I have been amongst those who have pressed the author to write his recollections while they are still fresh in his mind, knowing how important they would be as a contribution to the history of science. The result has exceeded expectation. The latter chapters, in which the birth of the new idea is described so vividly, are drama of the highest order; the tension mounts and mounts towards the final climax. I do not know of any other instance where one is able to share so intimately in the researcher's struggles and doubts and final triumph. Then again, the story is a poignant example of a dilemma which may confront an investigator. He knows that a colleague has been working for years on a problem and has accumulated a mass of hard-won evidence, which has not yet been published because it is anticipated that success is just around the comer. He has seen this evidence and has good reason to believe that a method of attack which he can envisage, perhaps merely a new point of view, will lead straight to the solution. An offer of collaboration at such a stage might well be regarded as a trespass. Should he go ahead on his own It is not easy to be sure whether the crucial new idea is really one's own or has been unconsciously assimilated in talks with others. The realization of this difficulty has led to the establishment of a some what vague code amongst scientists which recognizes a claim in a line of research staked out by a colleague up to a certain point. When competition comes from more than one quarter, there is no need to hold back. This dilemma comes out clearly in the DNA story. It is a source of deep satisfaction to all intimately concerned that, in the award of the Nobel Prize in 1962, due recognition was given to the long, patient investigation by Wilkins at King's College (London) as well as to the brilliant and rapid final solution by Crick and Watson at Cambridge. Finally, there is the human interest of the story the impression made by Europe and by England in particular upon a young man from the States. He writes with a Pepys like frankness. Those who figure in the book must read it in a very forgiving spirit. One must remember that his book is not a history, but an autobiographical contribution to the history which will some day be written. As the author himself says, the book is a record of impressions rather than historical facts. The issues were often more complex, and the motives of those who had to deal with them were less tortuous, than he realized at the time. On the other hand, one must admit that his intuitive understanding of human frailty often strikes home."

"He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”."

"Consistently rated as one of the greatest books written about science in the past century, it has been hailed as a work that combines the plot line of a racy novel with deep insights about the nature of modern research. But James Watson, author of The Double Helix, has revealed that his masterpiece came close to being suppressed. In an exclusive interview with the Observer, he admitted last week that his account of the discovery of the structure of DNA, when shown to friends and colleagues in the late 60s, triggered such hostility and outrage it seemed fated never to appear in print. … Many publishers were frightened off by threats of legal action from the manuscript's critics. Watson's depictions of several scientists were deeply unflattering and the book's secondary plot, which focuses on Watson's pursuit of young women – or "popsies" as he called them – around Cambridge, was considered irrelevant and patronising. Harvard University Press, having accepted Watson's manuscript for publication, came under pressure from the university's senior administrators and dropped the book. It took the intervention of Lady Alice Bragg, the wife of Watson's former boss, Sir [William] Lawrence Bragg, to save The Double Helix, Watson has revealed."

"The Double Helix opens with the words: "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." I have never seen James D Watson in a modest mood, either. He is not an innately modest person. In his later years he would consent to press briefings – usually on important anniversaries – and then, with long pauses and enigmatic mumbles, say almost nothing. This was not because he was self-effacing or disliked controversy. He would say almost nothing, one sensed, because he couldn't be bothered with stupid questions from stupid people. He has made it clear more than once that this is his default attitude."

"Where the environment is too soft and luxurious and no strife is required for survival, not only are weak strains and individuals allowed to survive and encouraged to breed but the strong types also grow fat mentally and physically."

"The name "Aryan race" must also be frankly discarded as a term of racial significance. It is today purely linguistic, although there was at one time, of course, an identity between the original Aryan mother tongue and the race that first spoke and developed it. In short there is not now, and there never was either a Caucasian or an Indo-European race, but there was once, thousands of years ago, an Aryan race now long since vanished into dim memories of the past."

"The boast of the modern Indian that he is of the same race as his English ruler, is entirely without basis in fact, and the little dark native lives amid the monuments of a departed grandeur, professing the religion and speaking the tongue of his long forgotten Nordic conquerors, without the slightest claim to blood kinship."

"Race feeling may be called prejudice by those whose careers are cramped by it, but it is a natural antipathy which serves to maintain the purity of type. The unfortunate fact that nearly all species of men interbreed freely leaves us no choice in the matter. Either the races must be kept apart by artificial devices of this sort, or else they ultimately amalgamate, and in the offspring the more generalized or lower type prevails."

"The continuity of physical traits and the limitation of the effects of environment to the individual only are now so thoroughly recognized by scientists that it is at most a question of time when the social consequences which result from such crossings will be generally understood by the public at large. As soon as the true bearing and import of the facts are appreciated by lawmakers, a complete change in our political structure will inevitably occur, and our present reliance on the influences of education will be superseded by a readjustment based on racial values."

"This [the Mediterranean] is the race that gave the world the great civilizations of Egypt, of Crete, of Phoenicia including Carthage, of Etruria and of Mycenaean Greece. It gave us, when mixed and invigorated with Nordic elements, the most splendid of all civilizations, that of ancient Hellas, and the most enduring of political organizations, the Roman State."

"One of its [the First World War’s] most certain results will be the partial destruction of the aristocratic classes everywhere in northern Europe … This will tend to realize the standardization of type so dear to democratic ideals. If equality cannot be obtained by lengthening and uplifting the stunted of body and of mind, it can be at least realized by the destruction of the exalted of stature and of soul."

"Africa north of the Sahara, from a zoological point of view, is now, and has been since early Tertiary times, a part of Europe. This is true both of animals and of the races of man. The Berbers of north Africa to-day are racially identical with the Spaniards and south Italians."

"The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects."

"Widely dispersed knowledge concerning the important role of basic cooperative processes among living beings may lead to the acceptance of cooperation as a guiding principle both in social theory and as a basis for human behavior. Such a development when it occurs will alter the course of human history."

"The grand old Book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more it will sustain and illustrate the Sacred word."

"Labeling a high-ranking wolf alpha emphasizes its rank in a dominance hierarchy. However, in natural wolf packs, the alpha male or female are merely the breeding animals, the parents of the pack, and dominance contests with other wolves are rare, if they exist at all. During my 13 summers observing the Ellesmere Island pack, I saw none. Thus, calling a wolf an alpha is usually no more appropriate than referring to a human parent or a doe deer as an alpha. Any parent is dominant to its young offspring, so "alpha" adds no information. Why not refer to an alpha female as the female parent, the breeding female, the matriarch, or simply the mother? Such a designation emphasizes not the animal's dominant status, which is trivial information, but its role as pack progenitor, which is critical information."

"The misinformation promulgated by wolf advocacy groups ranges from minor technical errors to major deception and fraud. Technical biological misinformation, though bothersome to professionals working with wolves, is not as serious as deception about such issues as the status and trends in wolf populations. This latter type of misinformation tends to motivate well-meaning wolf advocates to press their causes through letter-writing campaigns, public meetings, lobbying, and lawsuits. For example, animal welfare and wolf advocacy groups have been advertising for funds in major national newspapers for years, claiming that wolves were threatened in Denali National Park and other parts of Alaska, despite documentation to the contrary. These misrepresentations have even made it into conference proceedings. In the non-peer-reviewed proceedings of a nonprofit citizen organization, "Defenders of Wildlife's Restoring the Wolf Conference," undocumented claims were made that the wolf has been eliminated from "95% of its former range" and "95% of its historic range in Noth America". The actual figures are closer to 30% of its global range and 40% of its North American range."

"I hope that the general public will try to regard wolves like every other creature rather than giving them some sort of a very special position in the wild. The wolf is like a cougar or a bear or any other species. It was endangered, and it was regarded as the poster child for endangered species, but it is recovered now, and it should be managed like any other creature. If the public can accept that, that would be the biggest thing I could hope for."

"With wolf lay advocates it is just natural to want to promote their favorite animal and to try to counter the known negative effects of wolves and the claims fostered by people who vilify wolves, an increasing lot as wolves recover and proliferate. Thus wolf advocates eagerly seize on any study they consider favorable to wolves. The media become complicit by immediately publicizing such studies because of the controversial nature of the wolf. And all this publicity reverberates on the internet. Seldom, however, do studies contradicting the sensational early results receive similar publicity. The public is then left with a new image of the wolf that may be just as erroneous of the animal’s public image a century ago."

"It is beyond ridiculous that wolves need to study a human or that they are capable of it."

"Mr. Ellis is neither a scientist nor an expert on the natural behavior of wolves."

"New information shows that the original dire wolf itself was not really a wolf, ... Any release to the wild would be fraught with negative PR and legal consequences, which would probably also be the case with any of the other types of newly created animals, ... They occupied an entirely different ecological niche than exists today."

"After decades of advocacy for wolf conservation using all possible means to sell the goal of wolf recovery, it is now necessary to start advocating for compromise between wolf and human interests."

"Demanding that wolf populations be allowed to continue to increase is not only a false conservation goal, but also a counterproductive tactic that is bound for short-term failure. It is strategically preferable to promote wolf range expansion and to accept reduction of unacceptable levels of conflict through scientifically planned and managed culling rather than through uncontrolled poaching. Full protection of wolf populations living near, or interspersed with, human settlements leads sooner or later to surplus wolves being killed, legally or illegally. Opposing wolf killing altogether implies accepting that all wolves will eventually be removed from these areas, whereas accepting some wolf control will allow wolves over much larger ranges. This vision requires a fundamental shift in the way wolves are perceived by folks who consider every wolf a symbol of the conservation battle or an animal with special rights among all other species. In the end, this approach probably will yield many more wolves than we could afford to keep in a few fully protected areas, no matter how large."

"Wolves should be saved and managed as part of the whole context, not because they are singled out as a special species."

"In the recent past, wolves were labeled a flagship species or an umbrella, indicator, or keystone species, depending on what conservation market one was trying to penetrate... A flagship species is an attraction to nearly all society's strata, but wolves are not welcomed by all factions of society. With a few rare exceptions, the rural world opposes wolves, so the animal's flagship role is restricted primarily to urbanites or to local areas. Wolves are certainly a powerful flagship species for the conservation movement, particularly that of affluent societies with strong lobbies in large cities, but a true flagship species should be able to move an entire society toward a goal. Neither are wolves a good umbrella species (i.e., a species, usually high in the ecological pyramid, whose conservation necessarily fosters that of the rest of the chain) in that they can live well on a variety of food resources and in areas with an impoverished prey base. Wolves are not a keystone species either, in that they are not essential for the presence of many other species (e.g., herbivores flourish in areas devoid of wolves). And wolves are not necessarily indicators of good habitat quality or integrity because they are too generalist to be good indicators of the presence of a pristine trophic chain.The above labels have been very useful in many circumstance and have contributed significantly to wolf recovery. They may still be useful in the future, but we should be aware that they are shortcuts to "sell a product" rather than good scientific grounds on which to build conservation."

"Heredity is to-day the central problem of biology. This problem may be approached from many sides—that of the breeder, the experimenter, the statistician, the physiologist, the embryologist, the cytologist—but the mechanism of heredity can be studied best by the investigation of the germ cells and their development."

"When I had felt compelled by increasing knowledge of nature to revise some of my traditional articles of religious faith, I was delighted to find that these changes had not modified in any essential respects my system of ethics. As I expressed it in my presidential address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1937: "The ethics of science regards the search for truth as one of the highest duties of man; it regards noble human character as the finest product of evolution; it considers the service of all mankind as the universal good; it teaches that human nature and humane nurture may be improved, that reason may replace unreason, cooperation supplement competition, and the progress of the human race through future ages be promoted by intelligence and goodwill.""

"The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory."

"Life is not found in atoms or molecules or genes as such, but in organization; not in symbiosis but in synthesis."

"A man of vigorous, definite, judicial, but amiable personality. It seems almost unnecessary to attempt to put into words a characterization of one so well known to zoologists of this country. He is easy to meet, interested in those with whom he comes in contact, and gifted with a good memory for names and faces. A genuine sense of humor crops out unexpectedly to illuminate many a situation, as in his famous remark that 'wooden legs are not inherited, although wooden heads may be' or his equally well-known observation in regard to the anti-evolutionists, 'Apparently the anti-evolutionist expects to see a monkey or an ass transformed into a man, though he must be familiar enough with the reverse process."

"Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves, and so it cannot so easily be fixed with a single number."

"I work in evolutionary biology, but with cells and microorganisms. Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Richard Lewontin, Niles Eldredge, and Stephen Jay Gould all come out of the zoological tradition, which suggests to me that, in the words of our colleague Simon Robson, they deal with a data set some three billion years out of date. Eldredge and Gould and their many colleagues tend to codify an incredible ignorance of where the real action is in evolution, as they limit the domain of interest to animals... very tardy on the evolutionary scene, and they give us little real insight into the major sources of evolution's creativity. By "codifying ignorance" I refer in part to the fact that they miss four of the five kingdoms of life... bacteria, protoctista, fungi, and plants."

"The oxygen crisis that began only two billion years ago prompted the evolution of respiring bacteria. These microbes that used oxygen to derive biochemical energy more efficiently than ever before eventually took over most of the world. Some of the oxygen-breathing bacteria became symbiotic, merging with different (oxygen-eschewing) bacteria to form nucleated cells, which, after becoming sexual, evolved into fungi, plants, and animals."

"[The smallest bacterium] is so much more like people than Stanley Miller’s mixtures of chemicals, because it already has these system properties. So to go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to that bacterium."

"Why does everybody agree that atmospheric oxygen... comes from life, but no one speaks about the other gases coming from life?"

"There is little doubt that the planetary patina—including ourselves—is autopoietic. Life at the surface of the Earth seems to regulate itself in the face of external perturbation, and does so without regard for the individuals and species that compose it. More than 99.99 percent of the species that have ever existed have become extinct, but the planetary patina, with its army of cells, have continued for more than three billion years. ...trillions of communicating, evolving microbes. The visible world is a late-arriving, overgrown portion of the microcosm, and it functions only because of its well-developed connection with the microcosm's activities."

"From the paramecium to the human race, all life forms are meticulously organized, sophisticated aggregates of evolving microbial life. Far from leaving microorganisms behind on an evolutionary "ladder," we are both surrounded by them and composed of them. Having survived in an unbroken line from the beginnings of life, all organisms today are equally evolved."

"The view of evolution as a chronic bloody competition among individuals and species, a popular distortion of Darwin's notion of "survival of the fittest," dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation, strong interaction, and mutual dependence among life forms. Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networkiing. Life forms multiplied and complexified by co-opting others, not just by killing them."

"Not only did life originate on earth very early in its history as a planet, but for the first two billion years, Earth was inhabited solely by bacteria."

"The fundamental division of forms of life on Earth is not that between plants and animals, as is commonly assumed, but between prokaryotes—organisms composed of cells with no nucleus, that is, bacteria—and eukaryotes—all other life forms."

"In the long run, the most vicious predators, like most dread disease-causing microbes, bring about their own ruin by killing their victims. Restrained predation—the attack that doesn't kill or does kill only slowly—is a recurring theme in evolution. The predatory precursors of mitochondria invaded and exploited their hosts, but the prey resisted. Forced to be content with an expendable part of the prey (its waste)... some mitochondria precursors grew but never killed their providers. ...The original prey was probably a larger bacterium like Thermoplasma."

"The question "What is Life?" is... a linguistic trap. To answer according to the rules of grammar, we must supply a noun, a thing. But life on Earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself."

"Soil is not unalive. It is a mixture of broken rock, pollen, fungal filaments, ciliate cysts, bacterial spores, nematodes and other microscopic animals and their parts. 'Nature,' Aristotle observed, 'proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation.' Independence is a political, not a scientific, term."

"Life today is an autopoietic, photosynthetic phenomenon, planetary in scale. A chemical transmutation of sunlight, it exuberantly tries to spread, to outgrow itself. Yet by reproducing, it maintains itself and its past even as it grows. Life transforms to meet the contingencies of its changing environment and in doing so changes that environment. By degrees the environment becomes absorbed into the processes of life, becomes less a static, inanimate backdrop and more and more like a house, nest, or shell—that is, an involved, constructed part of an organic being."

"Life is bacterial and those organisms that are not bacteria have evolved from organisms that were. ...Gene exchanges were indispensable to those that would rid themselves of environmental toxins. ...Replicating gene-carrying plasmids owned by the biosphere at large, when borrowed and returned by bacterial metabolic geniuses, alleviated most local environmental dangers, provided said plasmids could temporarily be incorporated into the cells of the threatened bacteria. The tiny bodies of the planetary patina spread to every reach, all microbes reproducing too rapidly for all offspring to survive in any finite universe. Undercover and unwitnessed, life back then was the prodigious progeny of bacteria. It still is."

"The scientific backgrounds and areas of expertise of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis turned out out to be a perfect match. Margulis had no problem answering Lovelock's many questions about biological origins of atmospheric gases, while Lovelock contributed concepts from chemistry, thermodynamics, and cybernetics to the emerging Gaia theory. Thus the two scientists were able gradually to identify a complex network of feedback loops that—bring about self-regulation of the planetary system."

"The confidence of Lynn Margulis in the idea of a planetary autopoietic web stems from three decades of pioneering work in microbiology. ...Margulis has not only contributed a great deal to that understanding within the scientific community but has also been able, in collaboration with Dorion Sagan, to explain her radical discoveries in clear and engaging language to the lay reader."

"In the minds of many people, she went around the powers that be and took her theories directly to the public, which annoyed them all. It particularly annoyed them because she turned out to be right. It's a sin to take your theories to the public, then it is a double sin to take your theories to the public and be right."

"Lynn pioneered some of the most important insights in modern evolutionary science, particularly regarding the role of symbiosis in the origin of evolutionary innovations. Hearing a scientific presentation by Lynn... was one of the mind-expanding events that led me into a career in science."

"Sagan's first wife, Lynn Margulis, was one of the principle architects of the Gaia Hypothesis. Put their viewpoints together, and the conclusion you would reach would be that nuclear war could have a significant enough effect that it could even kill Gaia."

"If she burned out in a sudden burst of hemorrhagic overactivity, like a blazing celestial object vanishing in its own glory, the end-blaze was not so different than the burning life, as she died near the height of her powers, at the peak of her coruscating personality."

"Her book Symbiosis in Cell Evolution is one of the classics of biology... In recent years, she has taken some of her important scientific ideas into a more cultural sphere... This is bad. Her story on the origins of sex, in Mystery Dance, written with Dorion Sagan, for example, is naive, full of clichés, and devoid of historical perspective. ...It's unfortunate that she has ventured into some weird second stage."

"A young Lynn Margulis fell in love with symbiosis—it was she who finally managed to precisely describe the stages in the process that lead bacteria to become eukaryotic cells—and was emboldened rather than dissuaded by criticism. ...Her seminal article, "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells," was published in 1967... but only after being rejected fifteen times... thanks to her insistence... SET, or serial endosymbiosis theory—became accepted as true."

"Ethologists and comparative psychologists have discovered a host of refined adaptations in animal behavior during the past few decades. Food-finding, avoidance of predators, and behavioral adaptations to environmental stresses, including constructing shelters, nests, and burrows, all involve impressively versatile tactics on the animal's part, rather than rigid, stereotyped reflexes. Social behavior, especially courtship and care of developing young, call forth an efficiently tuned and controlled matrix of interactions among many different and potentially conflicting behavior patterns. Animal orientation and navigation have provided several striking examples of previously unsuspected modes of perception. Finally, the versatility of animal communication used to coordinate group activities has implications that can only be described as revolutionary. The flexibility and appropriateness of animal behavior suggest both that complex processes occur within their brains, and that these events may have much in common with our own conscious mental experiences."

"The investigation of the possibility that animals might think in terms of concepts and even categories of important objects has been seriously impeded because comparative psychologists have seemed to be almost petrified by the notion of animal consciousness. Historically, the science of psychology has been reacting for fifty years or more against earlier attempts to learn how we think by thinking about our thoughts. ...In other realms of scientific endeavor we have to accept proof that is less than a hundred percent rigorous... think of cosmology, think of geology. And Darwin couldn't prove the fact of biological evolution in a rigorous way."

"The freshwater fish fauna of Florida is one of the most interesting in the United States. It is a fauna developed in a region of recent geologic origin, low topographic relief, poor drainage, and unusual geographic configuration, and consequently exhibits certain very peculiar features. Some of the characteristic continental groups apparently have not had time to establish themselves in the peninsula since its elevation above the sea, while others have doubtless failed to find suitable conditions in its low and swamp-bordered water courses."

"Only a little while ago the oceans seemed unassailable—too big and stable to be hurt by man, too teeming with life to let him ever go hungry. But now we know better. Suddenly, even the myriad creatures of the sea are suffering from human intemperance. The offal of cities circles the world in global currents; beaches are strewn with the cast-off artifacts of men two thousand miles away."

"Sea turtles of all kinds are peculiarly prone to eat plastic scraps and other buoyant debris and to tangle themselved in lines and netting discarded by fishermen, and records of such mishaps have increased markedly in recent years."

"During his lifetime, Carr, the "Turtle Man," was recognized as the foremost authority on turtles. He helped dispel the myths and folklore about turtles. His extensive studies of the migrations and habits of turtles enabled him to locate the optimal areas for turtles to live and breed. His consistent efforts for the conservation of turtles have helped to increase their population throughout the world."

"Populations of some North American insectivorous bats are known to have declined markedly in many areas over the past 20 years or more ... The causes and rates or extent of decline rarely are well documented."

"It's very simple: We fear most what we understand the least."

"More than 1,100 kinds of bats amount to approximately a quarter of all species, and they are found everywhere except in the most extreme desert and polar regions. Some 47 species live in the United States and Canada, but the majority inhabit s where, in total number of species, they sometimes outnumber all other mammals combined. Bats come in an amazing variety of sizes and appearances. The world's smallest mammal, the of Thailand, weighs less than a , but some es of the Old World tropics have wingspans of up to 6 feet. The big-eyed, winsome expressions of flying foxes often surprise people who never have thought that a bat could be attractive."

"In s, cold winters force bats to migrate or . Most travel less than 300 s to find a suitable cave or abandoned mine, where they remain for up to six months or more, surviving solely on stored fat reserves. However, several species are long-distance migrators, traveling from as far north as Canada to the or Mexico for the winter. A few species can survive short-term exposures to subfreezing temperatures, enabling them to overwinter in cliff faces or in the outer walls of buildings."

"Bats are among the few true hibernators. The breathing of a hibernating bat is imperceptible. Its heartbeat drops from roughly 400 beats per minute when awake to about 25 in hibernation. The body temperature often falls to within a tenth of a degree of surrounding cave walls."

"My trap consisted of two six-by-five aluminum frames with hundreds of vertical fishing lines strung between them. It looked like a harp, but with adjustable legs to support it a few feet off the ground and a canvas bag hanging below to hold captured bats. This device, which I had recently invented, was capable of catching thousands of bats per night, enabling me to sample and release large numbers without harming them."

"With the Renaissance came a period of new life for collectors. The churches of southern Europe became art galleries, and monarchs and noblemen and ecclesiastical dignitaries collected books, manuscripts, sculptures, pottery, and gems, forming the beginning of collections which have since grown into public museums. Some of these collections doubtless had their first beginnings in the midst of the dark ages, within the walls of feudal castles, or the larger monasteries, but their number was small, and they must have consisted chiefly of those objects so nearly akin to literature as especially to command the attention of bookish men."

"The exposition or exhibition and fair are primarily for the promotion of industry and commerce; the museum for the development of learning."

"It was my greatest good fortune to serve under Doctor George Brown Goode whose influence on the museums of America may be compared to that of Flower on the museums of England. Like Flower, he early recognized the educational possibilities of museums and the importance of making them interesting and attractive to the general public. One of his favorite maxims was to keep ever in mind the human interest in any exhibit, to show just where and how it touched man directly. And under his direction, the U. S. National Museum, and the various exhibitions in which it took part, exerted a great influence on the museums of the country and particularly on those that came into existence after 1880."

"The Shark Attack File offers us an opportunity to not only, I suppose, help humanity at some level by trying to reduce the opportunities for shark and humans to get together and therefore saving some grief among humans, but equally importantly, it allows us to put it into perspective: shark attacks as a phenomenon are a fairly uncommon event. By contrast, our decimation of sharks and ray populations is going on largely unabated. It gives us a bully pulpit to talk about the real concern of the shark in the scientific world, which is the fate of the sharks."

"We tend to forget that when we enter the sea, we’re entering a foreign environment. It’s not ours. We can’t breathe underwater. When we enter the sea, it’s a wilderness experience. In any wilderness experience, there are potential dangers to be involved in that environment. Luckily for us, the sea is a pretty benevolent place. Each year, millions of people enter the sea and come out unscratched and unscathed and oblivious to the notion that they’ve had a wilderness experience. But we all need to remember that, especially if we go in areas where large predators such as white shark live."

"I had jars in my bedroom, much to the chagrin of my mother, you couldn't throw away a mayonnaise jar in my house. That was a specimen jar."

"Coral reefs are farmers. They provide food, income and food security for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Coral reefs are security guards. The structures that they build protect our shorelines from storm surge and waves, and the biological systems that they house filter the water and make it safer for us to work and play. Coral reefs are chemists. The molecules that we're discovering on coral reefs are increasingly important in the search for new antibiotics and new cancer drugs. And coral reefs are artists. The structures that they build are some of the most beautiful things on planet Earth. And this beauty is the foundation of the tourism industry in many countries with few or little other natural resources."

"What's happening in the world and in the ocean has changed our time horizon. We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted. But we can still be optimistic on the long term, and we can still be ambitious about what we fight for and what we expect from our governments, from our planet. Corals have been living on planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're badasses. An individual coral can go through tremendous trauma and fully recover if it's given a chance and it's given protection. Corals have always been playing the long game, and now so are we."

"What we need to think about perhaps for Mission Blue is increasing the biologging capacity. How is it that we can actually take this type of activity elsewhere? And then finally -- to basically get the message home -- maybe use live links from animals such as blue whales and white sharks. Make killer apps, if you will. A lot of people are excited when sharks actually went under the Golden Gate Bridge. Let's connect the public to this activity right on their iPhone. That way we do away with a few internet myths. So we can save the bluefin tuna. We can save the white shark. We have the science and technology. Hope is here. Yes we can. We need just to apply this capacity further in the oceans."

"Ichthyology, the study of fishes. It looks like a big, boring word, but it's actually quite exciting, because ichthyology is the only "ology" with "YOLO" in it. Now, to the cool kids in the audience, you already know, YOLO stands for "you only live once," and because I only have one life, I'm going to spend it doing what I always dreamt of doing: seeing the hidden wonders of the world and discovering new species. And that's what I get to do."

"Think of life as being this book, an unfinished book for sure. We're just seeing the last few pages of each chapter. If you look out on the eight million species that we share this planet with, think of them all being four billion years of evolution. They're all the product of that. Think of us all as young leaves on this ancient and gigantic tree of life, all of us connected by invisible branches not just to each other, but to our extinct relatives and our evolutionary ancestors. As a biologist, I'm still trying to learn, with others, how everyone's related to each other, who is related to whom. Perhaps it's better still to think of us as a little fish out of water. Yes, one that learned to walk and talk, but one that still has a lot of learning to do about who we are and where we came from."

"what we're really trying to do here is protect this ocean pyramid, and that ocean pyramid connects to our own pyramid of life. It's an ocean planet, and we think of ourselves as a terrestrial species, but the pyramid of life in the ocean and our own lives on land are intricately connected. And it's only through having the ocean being healthy that we can remain healthy ourselves."

"Every animal has a particular purpose on the planet. We may not like some of those purposes, but they're all necessary for us to exist."

"I've been blessed by the good Lord to be able to go to all these places and that fine, that’s real fine and dandy. But what about the other billions of people? Unless you love something, you can't save something and that’s my logo. You know, that's why I take animals with me so that people that live in an intercity."

"I'm just trying to explain to people: these are zoological parks, and whether you're a believer or not, these are the arks of the world, everybody."

"Wild cheetahs in Africa need help. Suitable prey is becoming scarce and is disappearing. They are suffering from the consequences of human encroachment, from competition with other large predators in game reserves, and not least, from the complication of a limited genetic make-up. The wild population continues to sustain the captive population … The similar experiences of the world's zoos have reaffirmed the traditional difficulties of breeding cheetahs in captivity. Despite the capturing, rearing and public display of cheetahs for thousands of years, one litter was reported in the 16th century by the son of , an Indian mogul. The next documented captive reproduction did not occur until 1956 … … From 1955 to 1994, the number of world zoos holding cheetahs increased from 29 to 211, and the number of animals during this 40-year period increased from 33 to 1218. Since 1955, 1440 cheetahs have been imported from the wild and there have been 2517 births and 3436 deaths …"

"CCF's base of operations is 44 km outside , , as Namibia is home to the largest number of free-ranging cheetah with ±20% (±3,000) of the world’s estimated wild population of ~10,000. The cheetah's survival depends on a total integrated approach: an ecological system of farmland management, prey species management and habitat stability using practices such as alternative , non-lethal predator control, and relocation of problem cheetahs. CCF’s Namibian focus is to work with livestock farming communities in order to develop ways to reduce conflict. This is achieved by devising a conservation plan that secures habitat for the species, while still accommodating farmers’ land use needs."

"Large s are currently facing severe threats and are experiencing substantial declines in their populations and geographical ranges around the world (Ripple et al., 2014). Human-wildlife conflict is a risk to 31% of the global carnivore species (, 2016). The vast majority of Namibia's cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) (over 90%) and other large carnivores reside outside of s. Namibia is made up of a mosaic of land uses which includes both privately owned mixed livestock and wildlife unfenced farms, fenced game farms, and open communal and commercial conservancies. Fences are meant to protect however; fences have an ecological impact by blocking migration movements especially in arid ecosystems. The fences confine individuals in turn carnivore abundance may exceed their available resources leading to a potential rapid decline of the population or local extinction. Commercial farmers have utilised game fences to keep and protected their game which equates to their livelihood. However, game fenced farmers catch more cheetahs than that of livestock farmers (Marker et al. 2010). As more game fences are erected, the rate of human-wildlife conflict has increased, which is an issue not only for the cheetah but all large carnivores across Namibia."

"Predators are exceptionally aware of tourists and their vehicles and sometimes use them to their advantage. If a cheetah has made a kill, it will almost certainly lose it if vehicles are present, since other predators, particularly the hyena, lion or jackal are alerted by the tourists. If the cheetah has cubs, that is a very dangerous situation for them, as they are made more vulnerable by the interference of the vehicles. Research conducted in the recorded that nearly 30% of cheetah sightings had more thant 20 vehicles surrounding it, and of these, more than 50% were less than 30 yards from the animal ..."

"Cheetahs hunt in the early morning and early evening. They capture their prey by stalking to within 10 to 30 meters of their prey or as far as 80 meters before beginning the chase. A chase lasts about 20 seconds and rarely longer than one minute. Only 10 percent of their chases are successful. Antelope and gazelles, hare and the young of larger antelope like s, , or and small often fall prey to the lightning fast cheetahs. Coalition males will often take larger prey like zebra or ostrich. They can accelerate from 0 to 70 kilometres per hour in two seconds. A cheetah will abort a hunt if the prey dodges and darts from it more than three or four times."

"'s work, 'Fowles of Heaven' is primarily a treatise on European birds, but it lists seventeen American species which in various ways had become known to the author, although he never visited America. The subject of the present paper, in contrast to Topsell's account, represents work, done in America, by a painter, one , also called John With, ... who, as artist and draughtsman, accompanied Sir in 1585 on that ill-starred expedition sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh to found an Enlgish colony in America. He was chosen by Queen Elizabeth for the express purpose of studying and painting the aborigines and "natural products" of this far country. John White thus becomes the first man, so far as is known, to observe American birds in their native haunts, and to leave a pictorial record in colours of his observations."

"… all the men for whom collected, except perhaps Sir , were primarily botanists, and Catesby's main task in America was the collecting of botanical specimens. Botany was the great science of the day and zoology in all its branches had to take second place. But the fact remains that Catesby somehow managed to do a great work on birds, covering about one hundred species, first depicted in the field with each one's particular plant or tree associate, and later etched or colored by himself or under his direction in England."

"… … was chosen by , as the latter said, "to make an accurate description and map of the country and drawings of all curious objects." … Le Moyne is known also to have written an account of his stay in America. This narrative, 'Brevis Narratorio,' forms the second part of 's collection of 'Great Voyages' and was published in 1591. It is illustrated by drawings done by Le Moyne, most of which represent the Indians, their customs and ceremonies, and many depict the barbarous treatment of the Huguenots by the neighboring Catholic settlers of or Florida. But it is of particular interest to us that one of the large illustrations of the 'Brevis Narratorio' includes several figures of Wild Turkeys …, one of which is represented in full display with spread tail, dropped wings and drooping wattle. Alligators, manatees, stags and shells also are pictured in the same scene, as well as the natives' method of stalking wild animals by disguising themselves under deer hides."

"The massed flocks of wild s appealed as a ready food supply and were easily seen by incoming vessels in the harbors. Land birds, on the other hand, were shy and silent, and at the approach of man slipped without sound deeper into the forest."

"Practically nothing was known of the s of the North Pacific coast before Johnson's valuable reports of 1897 and 1901 — the first entitled 'A Preliminary Account of the Marine Annelids of the Pacific Coast,' the other 'The Polychæta of the Puget Sound Region.' This is especially true of Alaska, a few species only having been recorded north of , British Columbia; therefore the collections made by , of the , and Dr. Wesley R. Coe, of Yale University, as members of the of 1899, are of great interest."

"P, Bush, 1905. Nine tubes of moderate size were found in 1898 and 1901, dredged in 30-40 feet in and other localities at Bermuda. They were taken usually from dead but occasionally attached to s, forming an irregularly twisted mass. The surface is sometimes ornamented with five conspicuous, longitudinal carinæ, the two outer ones usually the largest."

"... ... The structure of the female appendages is beautifully adapted to a remarkable habit in the manner of depositing the eggs, which seems not to have been noticed before among . The eggs are deposited in old logs, in the undersides of boards, or in any soft wood lying among the grass which these s inhabit. By the means of the anal appendages the female excavates in the wood a smooth round hole about an eighth of an in diameter. This hole is almost perpendicular at first but is turned rapidly off in the direction of the , and runs nearly parallel with and about three-eighths of an inch from the surface; the whole length of the hole being an inch or an inch and a fourth. A single hole noticed in the end of a log was straight. The eggs, which are about a fourth of an inch in length, quite slender and light brownish yellow, are placed in two rows, one on each side, and inclined so that, beginning at the end of the hole, each egg overlies the next in the same row by about half an inch. The aperture is closed by a little disk of a hard gummy substance."

"P Smith ... ... the dredgings have very greatly extended the bathymetrical range of this species. It had previously been taken in 250 to 640 s. This increased range in depth is apparently accompanied by a change in the kind of carcinœcia inhabited. All the earlier specimens, over four hundred in number, were found in carcinœcia of Epizoanthus paguriphilus Verrill, while the deep-water specimens were either in a very different species of ', in naked shells, or in an n closely resembling, if not identical with, Urticina consors Verrill, which often serves for the carcinœcium of the next species. S Smith."

"Although Professor Smith's systematic work on the freshwater and marine entitles him to a position in the front rank of American systematic zoologists, his studies on the life histories of the crustaceae proved of more general interest. He was the first to interpret correctly the successive stages in the larval life of the (1872, 1873); and his descriptions of the early life of other crustaceans, particulary of (1873), (1877), Pinnixa (1880), and (1883), have found a wide application in interpretation of the relationships of the various groups. For several years prior to 1874 he assisted Professor Verrill in the preparation of the classic "Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound"; an ecological study that had no parallel in America for more than forty years. Professor Smith prepared all the material relating to the crustaceae and revised other parts of this widely used book."

"The Fish Commission explorations began 1891, in connection with the between California and the , when ten hauls of the trawl and tangles were made, mostly between 300 and 375 s. The results were meager compared with those realized by the three months' systematic exploration by a land party in 1901 under the leadership of Dr. and Dr. and the in 1902. ... This vessel occupied 397 stations in the vicinity of the islands, while field parties, led by Dr. , explored the shores and reefs as well as the fresh-water streams. Mr. , of , has given added value to the specimens by notes on their habits, color, etc. Mr. , for many years a resident of , has from time to time sent to the National Museum, and has added several species to this list. Other contributors are the late , a wealthy planter of the island of who was much interested in natural history, and Mr. R. C. McGregor, of the ."

"... Through the activities of its various vessels and laboratories the has been able to transfer to the vast accumulations from nearly all the coasts of America. The amount of work accomplished by the steamers ' and ' and the schooner ', as well as by other vessels of the commission in earlier years, is indicated in the detailed lists of specimens. Other Government explorations that have yielded considerable results are those constantly carried on by the of the Department of Agriculture and those occasional expeditions under the auspices of the National Museum itself and the . Of the obtained by the and by the very little remains, owing to the inadequate housing of the former collection before the existence of a National Museum building, and to the destruction of the latter collection in the while it was in the custody of Dr. ."

"Her own special field of interest was the , particularly the s, both recent and fossil. Her bibliography on the animals embraces 158 titles. Perhaps her most important and best-known works are her four large monographs on the , , and of America, published as bulletins of the between 1918 and 1937. In 1917 the conferred upon her the degree of doctor of philosophy in recognition of her work on the grapsoid crabs."

"I ruined Christmas for everyone because I couldn’t figure out how a reindeer could fly. I mean, they just aren’t built for flying, anyone could see that. So I had to reject either the truthfulness of adults or the conclusions of my own mind."

"Because of my family and our community, my childhood was unique. I never learned what I couldn’t do — as a child, as a woman, or as a black person."

"I had to do what I thought was the most important thing."

"A lot of people opposed our civil rights efforts. I had to do what I thought was the most important thing. That’s all there was to it."