Quotes from Carl Linnaeus

It is not God, but people themselves who shorten their lives by not keeping physically fit.

If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too.

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

Stones grow, plants grow, and live, animals grow live and feel.

Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

Natural bodies are divided into three kingdomes of nature: viz. the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Minerals grow, Plants grow and live, Animals grow, live, and have feeling.

We admit as many genera as there are different groups of natural species of which the fructification has the same structure.

The names of the plants ought to be stable [certa], consequently they should be given to stable genera.

Nature does not proceed by leaps.

I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none.

To live by medicine is to live horribly.

I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none.

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discovers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.

The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.