"For all species, including our own, the true figure of life is a perching bird, a passerine, alert and nervous in every part, ready to dart off in an instant. Life is always poised for flight. From a distance it looks still, silhouetted against the bright sky or the dark ground; but up close it is flitting this way and that, as if displaying to the world at every moment its perpetual readiness to take off in any of a thousand directions."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersAcademics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesJews from the United StatesScience authors
Original Language: English
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Chapter 7, Twenty-five Thousand Darwins (p. 112)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner
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Jonathan Weiner
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