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“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 Osborne Wilson

“Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.�� Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance.”
― William A. Dembski

“There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA," though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk," given our level of ignorance.”
― Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

“The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact.”
― E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life

“Individual humans are not super, but the organism of which we are all tiny cellular parts is most certainly that. The life-form that's so big we forget it's there, that turns minerals on its planet into tools to touch the infinite black gap between stars or probe the obliterating pressures at the bottom of the oceans. We are already part of a superbeing, a monster, a god, a living process that is so all encompassing that it is to an individual life what water is to a fish. We are cells in the body of a three-billion-year-old life-form whose roots are in the Precambrian oceans and whose genetic wiring extends through the living structures of everything on the planet, connecting everything that has ever lived in one immense nervous system.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

“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, The Origin of Species

“I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life �� past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.”
― Rachel Carson

“Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence.”
― Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

“The life sciences contain spiritual values which can never be explained by the materialistic attitude of present day science”
― Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Live

“Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.”
― Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life

“[...] the success of Egyptian surgery in setting broken bones is very fully demonstrated in the large number of well-joined fractures found in the ancient skeletons.”
― James Henry Breasted, The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, 2 Vols

“Healing is a biological process, not an art. It is as much a function of the living organism as respiration, digestion, circulation, excretion, cell proliferation, or nerve activity. It is a ceaseless process, as constant as the turning of the earth on its axis. Man can neither duplicate nor imitate nor provide a substitute for the process. All schools of healing are frauds.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Fasting for Renewal of Life

“Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed:

It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe.”
― Jonas Salk

“Hierarchical organization in biological systems thus is characterized by an exquisite array of delicately and intricately interlocked order, steadily increasing in level and complexity and thereby giving rise neogenetically to emergent properties.”
― Clifford Grobstein

“Некоторые критики ошибочно считают, что «Эгоистичный ген» проповедует эгоизм как нравственный принцип, которого мы должны придерживаться в жизни! Другие (возможно, потому, что они прочитали только заглавие книги или не пошли дальше первых двух страниц) полагают, что по моему мнению эгоизм и другие скверные черты характера составляют неотъемлемую часть человеческой природы, нравится нам это или нет. В эту ошибку легко впасть, если вы считаете, как, по-видимому, полагают непостижимым образом многие другие люди, что генетическая «детерминированность» дана нам навсегда, что она абсолютна и необратима. На самом же деле гены «детерминируют» поведение лишь в статистическом смысле (см. также с. 44��47). Хорошей аналогией этому служит широко распространенное мнение, что красный закат обещает ясную погоду на следующий день. Возможно, что по статистике красный закат действительно предвещает великолепную погоду назавтра, но никто не станет заключать об этом пари на крупную сумму. Мы прекрасно знаем, что на погоду действует множество факторов и притом очень сложными путями. Любое предсказание погоды подвержено ошибкам. Это всего лишь предсказание, опирающееся на статистику. Мы не считаем, что красные закаты бесспорно определяют хорошую погоду назавтра и точно так же мы не должны считать гены окончательными детерминантами чего бы то ни было. Нет никаких причин, чтобы влияние генов нельзя было повернуть в противоположную сторону с помощью других воздействий.”
― Richard Dawkins, Эгоистичный ген

“Осьминог ничем не похож на мышь, а оба они сильно отличаются от дуба. Между тем по основному химическому составу они довольно сходны; в частности, имеющиеся у них репликаторы, т. е. гены, представлены молекулами, которые в своей основе одинаковы у всех живых существ �� от бактерий до слонов. Все мы служим машинами выживания для репликаторов одного и того же типа �� молекул вещества, называемого ДНК, но существует много различных способов жить в этом мире, и репликаторы создали целый спектр машин выживания, позволяющих воспользоваться этими способами. Обезьяна служит машиной для сохранения генов на деревьях, рыба �� для сохранения их в воде; существует даже маленький червячок, сохраняющий гены в кружочках, подставляемых в Германии под кружки с пивом. Пути ДНК неисповедимы.”
― Richard Dawkins, Эгоистичный ген

“Silicon-based life may be impossible for one other reason: silicon bonds readily dissolve in water.”
― Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

“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, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“The Everglades was the only place on earth where alligators (broad snout, fresh water, darker skin) and crocodiles (pointy snout, salt water, toothy grin) lived side by side. It was the only home of the Everglades mink, Okeechobee gourd, and Big Cypress fox squirrel. It had carnivorous plants, amphibious birds, oysters that grew on trees, cacti that grew in water, lizards that changed colors, and fish that changed genders. It had 1,100 species of trees and plants, 350 birds, and 52 varieties of porcelain-smooth, candy-striped tree snails. It had bottlenose dolphins, marsh rabbits, ghost orchids, moray eels, bald eagles, and countless other species that didn't seem to belong on the same continent, much less in the same ecosystem.”
― Michael Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise

“One way of emphasizing the singularity of the recent past is [..] to observe that the total number of humans ever to have lived is estimated at around (a bit less than) 100 billion. One of Walt Whitman's poems has a memorable image—thinking of all past people lined up in orderly columns behind those living—‘row upon row rise the phantoms behind us��. Actually, looking over our shoulder, we would see only around 15 rows.”
― Robert M. May

“Какова судьба древних репликаторов теперь, спустя 4x10^9 лет? Они не вымерли, ибо они �� непревзойденные мастера в искусстве выживания. Но не надо искать их в океане, они давно перестали свободно и непринужденно парить в его водах. Теперь они собраны в огромные колонии и находятся в полной безопасности в гигантских неуклюжих роботах, отгороженные от внешнего мира, общаясь с ним извилистыми непрямыми путями и воздействуя на него с помощью дистанционного управления. Они присутствуют в вас и во мне; они создали нас, наши души и тела; и единственный смысл нашего существования �� их сохранение. Они прошли длинный путь, эти репликаторы. Теперь они существуют под названием генов, а мы служим для них машинами выживания.”
― Richard Dawkins, Эгоистичный ген

“The attention given to the side of the head which has received the injury, in connection with a specific reference to the side of the body nervously affected, is in itself evidence that in this case the ancient surgeon was already beginning observations on the localization of functions in the brain.”
― James Henry Breasted, The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, Vol 1: Hieroglyphic Transliteration, Translation and Commentary

“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, How We Live

“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

“Dire .. que l'homme est constitué de certains éléments chimiques est une description ne convenant qu'à ceux dont l'intention est de l'utiliser comme engrais.”
― Edmund W. Sinnott

“Teachers seeking to 'teach the controversy' over Darwinian evolution in today's climate will likely be met with false warnings that it is unconstitutional to say anything negative about Darwinian evolution. Students who attempt to raise questions about Darwinism, or who try to elicit from the teacher an honest answer about the status of intelligent design theory will trigger administrators' concerns about whether they stand in Constitutional jeopardy. A chilling effect on open inquiry is being felt in several states already, including Ohio. South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. [District Court] Judge Jones's message is clear: give Darwin only praise, or else face the wrath of the judiciary.”
― David K. DeWolf, Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller v. Dover Decision

“From year to year, and from age to age, we see [biologists] at work, adding no doubt much to the unknown, and advancing many important interests, but, at the same time, doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature. Experiments in however narrow a walk, facts of whatever minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies; all beyond is regarded with suspicion and distrust.”
― Robert Chambers

“Biology is destiny only for girls.”
― Elizabeth Hardwick

“If you allow a creek to go back to being a creek, if you let the trees and the bramble get overgrown, and you let the stream overrun its banks whenever it wants to, the wetland will take care of itself. The water that trickles into the ocean will be clean and pristine if everything is just left alone to work the way it was designed to work. Earthworms have shown that they can take care of the soil in the same way that a wetland takes care of the water. Nature regenerates. It Cleans. It hides a multitude of sins.”
― Amy Stewart, The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms

“Our differences are fascinating, but our similarities make us human.”
― Heather E. Heying, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life