Harvard University Alumni

""Something in the sense of morning Lifts the heart up to the sun." In our youth we may be pagan, God is many, and the One Great Supreme will wait till evening When our little day is done."

"Lighter than dandelion down, Or feathers from the white moth’s wing, Out of the gates of bramble-town The silkweed goes a-gypsying."

"'Tis grace to sing to nature, and to pray The God of nature, out of His large heart, To grant us knowledge of His human way; This is the whole of nature and of art."

"Thou hoarse Aristophanic mime, Grotesque Silenus of the slime, That dar'st to lift a comic voice Where thrushes worship and rejoice."

"Undoubtedly the priests of the Roman Catholic Church did many unjust things during the period of Spanish domination in the New World, but the number of good and noble deeds done by them (deeds the bulk of which is unrecorded) completely dwarfs the evil."

"India has a rule of law and this decision should have been taken when Supreme Court had first upheld the death sentence. It is unfortunate that such decisions become subject to electoral politics."

"The noted sanskritist Aklujkar (Professor at British Columbia, Canada) does not consider the mainstream chronology incontestable and writes “only relative chronology has been well argued for”(1996: 66)."

"Among these pioneer zoologists the name of Verrill stands out prominently because of the amount and accuracy of his contributions to our knowledge of s. More than a thousand species, including , were discovered and described by him, and their relationships to previously known forms were diagnosed with almost unerring accuracy and with a facility that amounted almost to genius. He was much more than systematic zoologist, however; he was a real naturalist in that he was always interested in the of the animals which he studied as well as the morphological characters which distinguished the species new to science. His work on the natural history of he marine invertebrates of southern New England was the first extensive ecological study of its kind in America, and his Vineyard Sound report (published in 1871) was the standard reference book for all students of the seashore life of the region for more than thirty years."

"...And it was so ridiculous. And this was this thing about this teaching of a class and I've been told that I couldn't teach undergraduates because MIT students didn't believe scientific information spoken by a woman. And so I'd said, well, of course, everyone knows that. I had accepted it as normal because as soon as somebody said it, I realized, of course, it's true. I was able to see that women were so under-respected that students couldn't respect them enough. And so they were afraid to put an important course into the hands of a woman for fear the students would not be able to respect them."

"The early literature of has, from very remote times, contained allusions to huge species of s, often accompanied by more or less fabulous and usually exaggerated descriptions of the creatures ... In a few instances figures were attempted which were largely indebted to the imagination of their authors for their more striking peculiarities. In recent times, many more accurate observers have confirmed the existence of such monsters, and several fragments have found their way into European museums. To and to , however, belongs the credit of first describing and figuring, in a scientific manner, a number of fragments sufficient to give some idea of the real character and affinities of these colossal species."

"...I still remember those girls and who didn't love math, uh, the way I did. And I mean, oh my gosh, think what they were missing. I know I always felt, you know, solving math problems was a little bit like eating candy. There was something about it. It was so rewarding. It was just such a pleasure to do it. And I thought, oh, once they see this, they're going to enjoy it too."

"The following catalogue is intended to include all the now known to inhabit the that are not included in 's edition of 's Invertebrata of Massachusetts, published in 1870. In the "New England Region" I include, on the north, the coasts of Nova Scotia and , and their outlying banks; while on the south, I include the entire region, about 100 to 120 miles wide, between the shore and the , off the southern coast of New England, and embracing all depths down to 600 s. ... I have also included the free-swimming and floating forms, ordinarily inhabiting the same region, which may be considered as meeting and including the innermost edge of the Gulf Stream in summer, but most of these surface forms are usually to be found, in summer, far inside the actual limits of the Gulf Stream. The and the northern parts of the I have considered as extra-limital, for my present purposes. Those localities are inhabited by an extremely , including many species of mollusca that have not yet been found farther south. Among these are several species of ' and allied genera."

"On the first trip of the from , which was made July 16 to 19, four successful hauls were made with a large trawl, in 1,346 to 1,735 s, on the 17th and 18th of July, two each day, besides the soundings and temperature determinations, including series of temperatures at various distances from the surface. On this trip about one hundred and five species of s were obtained, not including the and other minute forms. There were among them fourteen species of ; two of s; twenty-two of s; thirty-eight of ; fifteen of ; one of ; ten of ; one of ; two of s."

"Once a sign of economic power, reading is now the province of those whose time lacks market value."

"I‘ve been doing it longer than I would have guessed. I didn’t think when I started Galaxie 500 I’d still be making music in twenty years. Longer than I’d dared to hope, I suppose. Being in an indie band back then, you weren’t allowed to have dreams of being huge. None of the major labels have touched anything that’s remotely left of field since the punk movement. It was all Huey Lewis. That changed with Sonic Youth and then Nirvana signing to Geffen. Alternative became this huge business, and now Arcade Fire or Vampire Weekend can be No. 1."

"If you haven’t played the songs for ten or fifteen years it’s very tingly, it’s exciting. I enjoy playing them. This promoter in Spain — he asked us to do the show in Spain in January and it was really fun and then the records were all coming out. It just seemed like a good time. I thought I should do more of these."

"You want there to be moments [in a song] where something unexpected hits you. They’ve done studies on this. What is it in a song that makes people cry? What is it that moves you? It’s something unexpected."

"The terrain in which cancer grows is shaped by everyday behavior."

"Growing evidence indicates that once diseases like cancer or cardiovascular disease are diagnosed, these same exposures may be associated with improved survival outcomes."

"What we crave, and how often we give in to those cravings, leaves a trace. A molecular record."

"What begins as effort eventually becomes identity."

"Cancer is not an invader. It is a mirror."

"The social environment has a major influence on health behaviors that in turn are associated with risk for cancer."

"The uneven affordability of essential cancer medications across regions illustrates the persistent challenge of ensuring equitable global health access."

"Understanding life’s inherent propensity to preserve itself is quintessential to our understanding of even the most modern aspects of healthcare."

"Care and concern for youth is more so an investment rather than a direct expense."

"Disparities in health outcomes underscore the need for equitable public health interventions that account for sociocultural dynamics and structural inequities."

"The burden of disease stands squarely at the intersection of prevailing community behaviors and public health readiness."

"Addiction does not always kill in dramatic fashion. Sometimes, it kills slowly and invisibly."

"The Pope would be ready to sign an agreement with China tomorrow, if China so wished. The political problems could be resolved. Indeed, there already are technical solutions. There is no issue to separate us."

"is good for a woman's heart. While generally accepted when the estrogen is produced naturally, this theory has been a matter of great controversy when the estrogen is administered "artificially" in (HRT) for women during and after . After a half century of conflicting data, we can affirm with growing confidence that, at the very least, estrogen reduces key cardiovascular risk factors in women at a time when they become especially vulnerable to heart disease, namely, after 50 years of age."

"Dr. Bernadine Healy is perhaps best known for leading some of the largest, most respected medical institutions in the country. But on Valentine's Day 1999, she was dealt a blow that shattered her world. That was the night when Healy found out that she had brain cancer. Doctors gave her three months live without treatment. With , her chances increased to 18 months to two years. But eight years later, Healy is still thriving. Her book, "Living Time," is written from two perspectives — that of the physician and that of the patient -- about her fight against brain cancer. She hopes it will help people diagnosed with the disease to realize that cancer isn't "dying time" — it's "living time.""

"Any kind of can be a very scary and daunting experience. But knowing how to navigate the and what to expect, at each step, may be the best antidote."

"While leafing through a pile of the press clippings that regularly cross my desk at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), I was struck particularly by two headlines in the ' (May 31, 1991;sect A:1) that said, "Menopause Becoming 'Au Courant' as It Hits Women of Baby Boom" and, as the article continued on another page, "Menopause Comes of Age as Medical and Social Issue." Indeed, , in general—in terms of research, services, and access to care—has come of age and become a priority medically, socially, and politically."

"Yentl, the 19th-century heroine of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story, ... had to disguise herself as a man to attend school and study the . Being "just like a man" has historically been a price women have had to pay for equality. Being different from men has meant being second-class and less than equal for most of recorded time and throughout most of the world. It may therefore be sad, but not surprising, that women have all too often been treated less than equally in social relations, political endeavors, business, education, research, and health care."

"... You can easily find charts of ideal weight ranges: the tables of and the are the most reliable. But those charts can be confusing by giving wide ranges and often lumping men and women together. So I suggest that if you've picked up more than fifteen extra pounds or weigh more than 15% of your ideal body weight according to those charts, talk to your doctor. Is the weight a new gain, or have you maintained it for years? Are you currently ?"

"... Phoebe married a few days after she graduated, became a housewife in the Minneapolis suburbs, and had four children in quick succession ... She tried being a teacher and a leader, but didn't take to either. Then, one sunny spring morning when she was thirty-four, when only one of her kids had started school and the youngest two were still in diapers, an neighbor took her out birdwatching. As she beheld the blazing orange throat of a that was perched in the top of a tree, she had an epiphany akin to a religious awakening."

"The banning of DDT and other toxic pesticides also has led to the recovery of the and the in recent decades, according to the report. Over the same period, s, which give hunters and bird watchers a year’s access to National Wildlife Refuges for $15, have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, nearly all of which has gone to expanding wetland refuges. As a result, wetland bird populations have increased by nearly 60% since 1968, the report found. Species that have made particularly impressive recoveries include the , and ."

"... Phoebe crisscrossed the globe with ever-deepening abandon, staking out rare and spectacular birds in the wildest places on earth. She still took tours, but she took increasingly fringe ones, and as time went on she took more trips on her own, hiring local guides to show her around. She slept in s, at truck stops, and by the side of the road; she traveled in tiny planes, in canoes, and on horseback. Once, she was chased by tribesmen with ten-foot-long spears; another time, she was boat wrecked in the middle of the ocean. On the island of , she was carjacked, kidnapped, and brutally assaulted by five thugs. Ten years after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Phoebe had become obsessed with the notion of seeing eight thousand species, more than any other birder in history. She had also lost the capacity to take into account her family, her health, and her safety."

"... once you've identified a bird, you can appreciate it on a deeper level. If you know you're looking at a Blackburnian Warbler, for instance, you also know that it spends most of the year somewhere between Peru and Panama, usually at about two thousand meters above sea level; that it subsists, for the most part, on s and beetles; that every April, it flies north across the and settles for the summer somewhere between Georgia and Saskatchewan, where it looks for a mate and builds a nest, often in a high branch in a ; and that the female lays three to five white eggs with little reddish blotches that hatch around early June."

"Last month, the , in conjunction with several conservation organizations, released a State of the Birds report, an assessment of the health of the country’s 800 bird species. The findings were mixed. On the one hand, nearly one-third of our birds face the possibility of extinction, have suffered a serious population decline or are in danger of such a decline. On the other hand, many of the species that were in trouble several decades ago, such as the and dozens of wetland birds, are now thriving precisely because our conservation efforts have paid off."

", in some ways, is like a religion. Some people get hooked on birds gradually, but many other have an experience like Phoebe's, an awakening triggered by a "spark bird." Many religious people seek to transcend the everyday by praying or meditating; birders seek transcendence by spending time in nature. Bird clubs give them a sort of church, a community of like-minded people who offer companionship and support."

"A little over a decade ago, the major players in the environmental movement tried to take on . The industry's fertilizers were polluting the , and the environmentalists asked Florida voters to approve a penny-per-pound tax on sugar companies that would yield $35 million a year for cleanup work. But "Big Sugar" responded with a multimillion-dollar campaign to portray the environmentalists as white elitists attempting to weaken an industry that employed blacks and Latinos. Jesse Jackson joined forces with the industry, telling Floridians, "We should never have a showdown between alligators and people." With the help of minority group blocs, voters soundly rejected the tax. The defeat was a wake-up call for the , and other large environmental groups, which at the time were staffed and supported mostly by white people. In recent years, these organizations have begun to devote a great deal of money and effort to engage minority groups—not just to foster a sense of inclusiveness, but to survive in a demographically changing society. Nonwhite people make up 33 percent of the U.S. population, and the expects that figure to increase to 50 percent by 2042. Meanwhile, a survey of 60 environmental groups conducted in 2002 found that minorities made up less than 13 percent of their staffs."

"… It used to be that if you liked birds, you shot them. In any case, that's what gentlemen in England did after the country start to industrialize, in the early nineteenth century. Cities were getting big and polluted, and people were longing to reconnect with nature. The rich, who had lots of free time, began going to the woods to collect plants, bugs, and rocks. If you were a man, you might also collect birds—bloodily, with your shotgun. Once you'd shot a bird, you’d figure out what it was, then skin, stuff, mount, and display it. The idea was to amass as big and varied a collection of bird skins as possible. A few decades later, when the United States started industrializing, took hold among the upper class here."

"American labor was strongest when the threat of communism was greatest. The apogee of America's welfare state, with all its limitations, was coterminous with the height of the Cold War. The dismantling of the welfare state and the labor movement, meanwhile, marched in tandem with communism's collapse."

"In none of his ways has he the magnetism of a great speaker. He has a clear, sharp, ringing voice, though it is not powerful or musical. His action is sparing, but effective. In making his points he is lucid, precise and cogent, seldom rhetorical or ornamental. He has an easy colloquial way; he is never in haste and never hesitates. His style is classic in its correctness. His sentences are long and faultless, and freighted with words which show that profound thought is selecting felicitous vocabulary as it goes along. He has a fine humor, but it is the humor of cultivation, not the coarse fun of the vulgar. His appeal to the intelligence of juries are the highest in their tone, the broadest in their scope and the deepest in their power of any in modern times."

"The pious ones of Plymouth who, reaching the Rock, first fell upon their knees and then upon the aborigines."

"If a visitor from outer space were to come to know human beings on this earth .... at work and play, and without knowledge of human history or international affairs, what would he conclude? No doubt that virtually everyone values friendship, peace and happiness; ...If having observed all this the visitor were then told that a scheme had been proposed ... which for the present would require that people pour their wealth into the production of weapons of destruction, ... train their sons and daughters to kill and periodically send them off to slaughter..[and] that humans could improve their lot provided only that they do all of these things, he would ridicule the scheme as having not the slightest chance of success, and even less of being accepted by rational beings. Yet this is precisely what humankind has been led to accept in the case of war. It has proven willing to abandon virtually everything worth living for, to do things all agree are abhorrent, for reasons few understand, and for ends (such as peace) that history shows cannot be secured by these means."

"If one thinks of nonviolence as a way of life, then it works to the extent that one lives nonviolently and infuses everyday conduct with a nonviolent spirit...whether we act nonviolently, considerately, and respectfully of others in all that we do is within our control. Nonviolence in that sense cannot fail to work if we resolve to see that it works."

"What I mean by saying that war is wrong is not only that it is bad but that it ought not to be waged, that governments ought not to declare and fight wars, societies ought not to provide them with the means by which to do so, and individuals ought not to sanction, support and participate in wars."