Quotes About Species

Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.

With our evolved busy hands and our evolved busy brains, in an extraordinarily short period of time we've managed to alter the earth with such geologic-forcing effects that we ourselves are forces of nature. Climate change, ocean acidification, the sixth mass extinction of species.

All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.

'Humankind' is an attempt to think the human species without Nature and without humanity.

What we are doing to the future of our children, and the other species on the planet, is a clear moral issue.

We will never bring peace at the hands of war. As a species we have to rise above it.

It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.

We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant.

Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad.

I think when you work on fossils, and you realize that a species is there, and it's abundant for quite a long period of time, and then at some point it's no longer there - and so, when you look at that bigger picture, yes, you realize that either you change and adapt, or, as a species, you go extinct.

First I shall name the eagle, of which there are three species: the great grey eagle is the largest, of great strength and high flight; he chiefly preys on fawns and other young quadrupeds.

As a species, we've always been discoverers and adventurers, and space and the deep ocean are some of the last frontiers.

Agriculture changes the landscape more than anything else we do. It alters the composition of species. We don't realize it when we sit down to eat, but that is our most profound engagement with the rest of nature.

The notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.

The story of our species is one of overcoming existential risk through new forms of cooperation and innovation.

Take the crocodile, for example, my favorite animal. There are 23 species. Seventeen of those species are rare or endangered. They're on the way out, no matter what anyone does or says, you know.

Other species help children develop empathy.

Freedom is a human concept. We have these very romanticized, sentimentalized notions of freedom. And for species - monkeys and other creatures - freedom is a pretty risky, complex proposition that's not always for their benefit.

If we continue to address the issue of the environment where we live as though we're the only species that lives here, we'll create a disaster for ourselves.

The Awa are a distinctive-looking, diminutive forest people, smaller than any of the dozen other Amazon tribespeople I have met. Reduced size is adaptive in a rain forest. You can move around more easily and unobtrusively. Not only humans but other species are smaller in rain forests.

We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult.

Every species becomes extinct; at some point, we will go extinct. The question is, as Homo sapiens, are we going to be able to adapt to the change that we're actually part of? We're causing such dramatic changes to the planet, so yes, you do stop and think, 'I wonder where we're headed.'

The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.

So much of the habitat destruction and pollution is based on the simple principle that we somehow have been given free license over other species to degrade the planet.