Species Quotes

We imagine that hardness, violence, slavery, peril in the street and in the heart, concealment, Stoicism, temptation, and deviltry of every sort, everything evil, frightful, tyrannical, raptor- and snake-like in man, serves as well for the advancement of the species "man" as their opposite.

Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again-the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (- that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.

Both classically and romantically-minded spirits - in as much as these two species always exist - occupy themselves with a vision of the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the latter out of its weakness.

The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything - and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the productive man a yet higher species.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost for ever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.

Greed is merely a species of nearsightedness.

Whatever misanthropists may say, ingrates and the perverse are exceptions in the human species.

There's whistling coming out of a forest somehow; there's an entire dead species of tree right there in front of you, and not just a few trees, it goes for miles and miles. So, with that background, and then knowing what's going on in the world . . . I don't like to dwell on it much, but I think everybody's terrified.

Not the stars, not the farthest solar systems, not the millions of different species of animal life, but the child is the greatest of God's creations.

That climate acts in main part indirectly by favouring other species, we clearly see in the prodigious number of plants which in our gardens can perfectly well endure our climate, but which never become naturalised, for they cannot compete with our native plants nor resist destruction by our native animals.

When the labourer co-operates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.

Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with that given to the plants in countries anciently civilised.

Species that struggle to adapt to survive will become extinct.

Species of the same genus would occasionally exhibit reversions to lost ancestral characters.

When we descend to details we can prove that no one species has changed; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory.

Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.