Naturalist Quotes

• Jeff Corwin / Conservationist

I'm a biologist. At my core, I'm a naturalist.

• William Beebe / Ornithologist

To be a Naturalist is better than to be a King.

• Alvin Plantinga / Philosopher

Things don't look hopeful for Darwinian naturalists.

• Jane Goodall / Primatologist

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

• Paul Sears / Writer

The rise of the ecologist almost exactly parallels the decline of the naturalist.

• Tim Crane / Philosopher

I like to think of myself as a naturalist - insofar as that term is at all clear.

• E. O. Wilson / Biologist

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.

• Richard Conniff / Fiction Writer

Large swaths of what we now regard as basic medical knowledge came originally from naturalists.

• Richard Owen

No naturalist has devoted more painstaking attention to the structure of the barnacles than Mr. Darwin.

• Greg Graffin / Musician

A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil... not the cross.

• Gore Vidal / Writer

It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author's experience worked out literally.

• Phillip E. Johnson / Law Professor

According to the scientific naturalist version of cosmic history, nature is a permanently closed system of material effects that can never be influenced by something from outside - like God, for example.

• Tom Bodett / Author

John Muir, the famous naturalist, wrote in his journal that you should never go to Alaska as a young man because you'll never be satisfied with any other place as long as you live. And there's a lot of truth to that.

• Elizabeth Blackburn

Studying organisms at a molecular level was totally compelling because it was moving from being a naturalist, which was the 19th-century kind of science, to being very focused and really getting to the heart of these molecules.

• Asa Gray / Botanist

The former conviction that these two kingdoms were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind of life, was not seriously disturbed by the difficulties which the naturalist encountered when he undertook to define them.

• John Berger / Art Critic

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

• Henry Paulson / Former United States Secretary Of The Treasury

My dad was somewhat of a naturalist and used to teach us about different birds and trees. So did a fifth grade teacher who made a lasting impact on me; to this day, I remember his lessons about counting the needles on pine trees, seeing if they are twisted or straight, and about checking the tips of oak leaves to see if they are pointed or lobed.

• Jane Goodall / Primatologist

I wasn't trying to be a scientist. I only ever wanted to be a naturalist, like a David Attenborough.

• Tim Crane / Philosopher

Naturalism is a methodological rather than a metaphysical view. It's because I am a naturalist, actually, that I am sceptical about physicalism.

• Greg Graffin / Musician

I'm trying to champion the naturalist's worldview and show it's not as heathen as most religious people would make it out to be.

• Phillip E. Johnson / Law Professor

In short, it is not that evolutionary naturalists have been less brazen than the scientific creationists in holding science hostage, but rather that they have been infinitely more effective in getting away with it.

• Greg Graffin / Musician

I don't mind if other people call me an atheist, but I call myself a naturalist. Atheism doesn't tell you much about what I do believe in; the term naturalist opens up the discussion better.

• Greg Graffin / Musician

The naturalist worldview is a good way to feel grounded and feel part of something that isn't based on fairy tales. It's based on observable facts in the human and in the biological history of the planet. I think that can be a source for comfort.

• Greg Graffin / Musician

I bill myself as a naturalist because if you say you're a naturalist, it gives people a conversation point to talk about what you actually do believe in, instead of when you say you're an atheist, and it's really just a statement of what you don't believe in.

• Greg Graffin / Musician

I call myself a naturalist as opposed to an atheist, but there are different styles. Some people just like to be close to nature. And some people actually worship nature, which is too wishy-washy because - like a lot of religious believers - they don't depend on facts.