Biology Quotes

Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on the earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world.

Michael Denton

Some people with Tourette's have flinging tics- sudden, seemingly motiveless urges or compulsions to throw objects..... (I see somewhat similar flinging behaviors- though not tics- in my two year old godson, now in a stage of primal antinomianism and anarchy)

Oliver Sacks

Il nous faut partir d'une conception d'ensemble de l'organisme en tant qu'une entité fondamentale de la biologie, puis comprendre comment celui-ci se divise en parties qui respectent son ordre intrinsèque - pour donner un organisme harmonieusement intégré en dépit de sa complexité.

Brian Goodwin

Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend.

Edward O. Wilson

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

Carl Sagan

A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.

Charles Darwin

Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane who's visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. She's fascinated by cholesterol. Says it's very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.I check this out for myself. 'What does Jane do?' I ask.'Science,' he says vaguely.

Emma Thompson

Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.

William A. Dembski

That enormously complex biological interactions are so flawlessly coordinated as to result in such obvious manifestations as human thought or the electrical activity that dries the heartbeat is as exciting to me -- actually more exciting -- than such phenomena were when I was a small boy and thought them divinely (in the supernatural sense) driven.

Sherwin B. Nuland

We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.

Mary Roach

We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.

Charles Darwin

The life sciences contain spiritual values which can never be explained by the materialistic attitude of present day science

Sherwin B. Nuland

Whenever explaining an event, we must choose from three competing modes of explanation. These are regularity, chance, and design... To attribute an event to design is to say that it cannot reasonably be referred to either regularity or chance.

William A. Dembski

All disciplines of science are built on the causality of the relationships governing related events. Yet the theory of evolution is built upon the idea of accidental changes that resulted in complex living systems. I was unable to comprehend how the notion that an infinite number of random accidents systematically happened to produce living species, and kept improving these beings, is justified.

T.H. Janabi

Dire .. que l'homme est constitué de certains éléments chimiques est une description ne convenant qu'? ceux dont l'intention est de l'utiliser comme engrais.

Edmund W. Sinnott

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.

Bill Bryson

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system... We find such systems within living organisms.

Scott A. Minnich

Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let you sleep.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course.

Natalie Angier

The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.

Michael Denton