Ecology Quotes

Il faut regarder la configuration ensemble pour déterminer le comportement des parties et non l'inverse.

Paul Weiss

Durante centenares de miles de años, el hombre luchó para abrirse un lugar en la naturaleza. Por primera vez en la historia de nuestra especie, la situación se ha invertido y hoy es indispensable hacerle un lugar a la naturaleza en el mundo del hombre.

Santiago Kovadloff

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

Mark Kurlansky

The paradox of life lies exactly in this: its resources are finite, but it itself is endless. Such a contradictory state of affairs is feasible only because the resources accessible to life can be used over and over again.

I.I. Gitelson

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

Death is nature's way of making things continually interesting. Death is the possibility of change. Every individual gets its allotted lifespan, its chance to try something new on the world. But time is called and the molecules which make up leaf and limb, heart and eye are disassembled and redistributed to other tenants.

Peter Steinhart

Si l'organisme vivant est un system hiérarchisé dont le niveau d'organisation est au-dessus du niveau chimique, il est alors évident qu'il doit être étudié ? tous les niveaux et qu'une recherche limitée ? l'un d'entre eux (niveaux chimique par exemple) ne peut remplacer celle effectuée aux niveau supérieurs.

J.H. Woodger

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

Stephen Jay Gould

The Earth was singing her revolution. She was calling her brave men and women to her defense.

Rivera Sun

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.

James E. Lovelock

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.

Albert Einstein

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

Henry David Thoreau

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men say they know many things;But lo! they have taken wings, The arts and sciences,And a thousand appliances;The wind that blowsIs all that any body knows

Henry David Thoreau

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.

Henry David Thoreau