Quotes by Lynn Margulis - Page 1

Life learned early on to recognize itself.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Recognize
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People say I am against Darwin. That is ridiculous.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
People
Ridiculous
Darwin
People Say
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Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Natural
Natural Selection
Selection
Create
Maybe
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All I ask is that we compare human consciousness with spirochete ecology.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Compare
Consciousness
Ecology
Human Consciousness
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Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn't look anything like a butterfly.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Butterfly
Caterpillars
Looks
Everybody
Caterpillar
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Life on earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Earth
Verbs
Life Earth More
Itself
Verb
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The fewer species there are and the fewer species we know about, the fewer questions we even know to ask.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Fewer
Knows
Species
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If you really want to study evolution, you've got go outside sometime, because you'll see symbiosis everywhere!
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Study
Everywhere
Outside
Sometime
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To romp along the connected rooftops and fire escapes of Chicagos second city of garages was my young lifes passion.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Cities
Fire
Passion
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To romp along the connected rooftops and fire escapes of Chicago's second city of garages was my young life's passion.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Chicago
Connected
Passion
Rooftops
Second City
Escapes
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We are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Community
Landscape
World
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Why does everybody agree that atmospheric oxygen comes from life, but no one speaks about the other gases coming from life?
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Doe
Oxygen
Speak
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Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Earth
Evolution
Tree
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Although the detail of our sexual energies and their objects and objectives vastly vary, the existence of our sexuality itself is an undeniable truth.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Details
Energy
Objectives
Sexuality
Vary
Although
Detail
Energies
Sexual
Undeniable
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I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change - led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Accumulation
Evidence
Mutation
Species
Taught
Accumulate
Again
Believed
Evolutionary
Over
Led
Looked
Mutations
Random
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My work more than didn't fit in. It crossed willy-nilly the boundaries that people had spent their lives building up. It hits some 30 subfields of biology, even geology.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Biology
Boundaries
Fit
Geology
Work People More
Crossed
Hits
Spent
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All living beings, not just animals, but plants and microorganisms, perceive. To survive, an organic being must perceive - it must seek, or at least recognize, food and avoid environmental danger.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Environmental
Animal
Danger
Perceive
Plant
Animals
Avoid
Beings
Least
Seek
Organic
Plants
Recognize
Survive
To Survive
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There is no scientific reason to think that we, even with space travel, are going to survive as a species for ever, certainly not by biting off the hand that feeds us, which is exactly what we are doing.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Travel
Biting
Space Travel
Certainly
Exactly
Exactly What
Feeds
Hand
Scientific
Survive
To Survive
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People think the earth is going to die and they have to save it. Thats ridiculous. If you rid the earth of flowering plants, people would die, period. But the earth was without flowering plants for almost all of its history.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Earth
People
Thinking
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People think the earth is going to die and they have to save it. That's ridiculous. If you rid the earth of flowering plants, people would die, period. But the earth was without flowering plants for almost all of its history.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Flowering
Almost All
Plants
Rid
Save
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The accumulation of genetic mutations were touted to be enough to change one species to another….No. It wasn’t dishonesty. I think it was wish fulfillment and social momentum. Assumptions, made but not verified, were taught as fact.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Mutation
Thinking
Wish
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The urgency to mate persists in all people as in all other mammals because of the evolutionary drive to continue the species, the inborn imperative for genes to reproduce and hormonal differences that evolved over millions of years.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Differences
Genes
Mammals
Millions
People
Species
Urgency
Years
All People
Drive
Evolutionary
Imperative
Mate
Millions Of Years
Persists
Reproduce
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Life on earth is such a good story you cannot afford to miss the beginning... Beneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Bacteria
Differences
Earth
Good Story
Landscape
Made
Superficial
Tiny
Walking
Life Good World
Living
Afford
Miss
Beginning
Beings
Beneath
Cannot
Communities
Story
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All of us from fertile egg to embryo to corpse, are exactly that: warm, wet, furry animals compelled by the sexuality of our forefathers and foremothers to be, either directly or indirectly, our own exciting and excitable, provocative and provocable selves.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Animal
Compelled
Eggs
Fertile
Forefathers
Furry
Provocative
Self
Sexuality
Warm
Wet
Animals
Corpse
Directly
Egg
Either
Embryo
Exactly
Indirectly
Selves
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All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Ancestry
Extinction
Groups
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Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit?
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Appearance
Arrogance
Delusion
Despite
Discipline
Humanity
Toughness
Guard
Increasing
Limit
Material
Numerous
Planet
Recent
Tendency
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All scientists agree that evolution has occurred - that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Agree
Ancestry
Common
Evolution
Extinction
Groups
Natural
Natural Selection
Selection
Arisen
Biological
Driver
Explain
Occurred
Question
Scientists
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Of course, the plea for respect for nonhuman life goes far beyond the scientific delight of familiarity with our planet mates. The nonhuman forms of life with which we 6,000 million talking, upright apes share this finite planet are directly or indirectly connected to our well-being.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Connected
Delight
Familiarity
Finite
Mates
Our Planet
Share
Well Being
Ape
Beyond
Forms
Directly
Indirectly
Million
Planet
Plea
Scientific
Upright
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Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are chosen, the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Powerful
Understanding
Unique
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Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are 'chosen', the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Arrogance
Chosen
Ecology
Evidence
Species
Unique
Better Understanding
Politicians
Exists
Freed
Numerous
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We are unconscious of most of our body's processes, thank goodness, because we'd screw it up if we weren't. The human body is so complex, with so many parts...a system which is far more complex than we can fully imagine. The idea that we are consciously care-taking such a large and mysterious system is ludicrous.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Environmental
Body
Ideas
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Body concentrates order. It continuously self-repairs. Every five days you get a new stomach lining. You get a new liver every two months. Your skin replaces itself every six weeks. Every year, 98 percent of the atoms of your body are replaced. This non-stop chemical replacement, metabolism, is a sure sign of life.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Atoms
Body
Five
Metabolism
Months
Non Stop
Order
Percent
Replaced
Self
Six
Stomach
Two
Years
Your Body
Life Your Body
Life Your New
Sure
Skin
Year
Days
Weeks
Chemical
Itself
Continuously
Lining
Sign
Sure Sign
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The notion of saving the planet has nothing to do with intellectual honesty or science. The fact is that the planet was here long before us and will be here long after us. The planet is running fine. What people are talking about is saving themselves and saving their middle-class lifestyles and saving their cash flow.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Running
Cash Flow
Honesty
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To me, the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self-inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth, or heal our sick planet, is evidence of our immense capacity for self delusion. Rather, we need to protect ourselves from ourselves.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Moving
Responsibility
Self
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The idea that we are "stewards of the earth" is another symptom of human arrogance. Imagine yourself with the task of overseeing your body's physical processes. Do you understand the way it works well enough to keep all its systems in operation? Can you make your kidneys function? Can you control the removal of waste? Are you conscious of the blood flow through your arteries, or the fact that you are losing a hundred thousand skin cells a minute?
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Blood
Cells
Ideas
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Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Loss
Population
Wings
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Neo-Darwinian language and conceptual structure itself ensures scientific failure: Major questions posed by zoologists cannot be answered from inside the neo-Darwinian straitjacket. Such questions include, for example, 'How do new structures arise in evolution?' 'Why, given so much environmental change, is stasis so prevalent in evolution as seen in the fossil record?' 'How did one group of organisms or set of macromolecules evolve from another?' The importance of these questions is not at issue; it is just that neo-Darwinians, restricted by their resuppositions, cannot answer them.
Lynn Margulis / Biologist
Environmental
Groups
Issues
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Lynn Margulis Quotes - Page 1

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