Quotes About Biology

The alarm signals have echoed without being heard, as in a forgotten cave. Already in 1994, the eminent dialectical biologist Richard Levins and his colleagues warned that 'creating new habitats - for example, by bulldozing forests - permit rare or remote microorganisms to become abundant and gain access to people.

Evolutionary biology is imperialistic, overtaking entire fields of endeavor simply by attaching the prefix bio – or neuro -- to their names: bioethics, no comics, even, God help us, neurotheology. Its logic is deployed against helpless laymen as a bully's truncheon or an argument stopper.

We are inhabited by as many as ten thousand bacterial species; these cells outnumber those which we consider our own by ten to one, and weigh, all told, about three pounds - the same as our brain.

Checking your telomere length is a bit like weighing yourself: you get this single number which depends on a lot of factors. Telomere length gives a sense of your underlying health.

We are over 60 percent water by weight. We're just a big ball of... blob of water, with enough organic thickener added so we don't dribble away on the floor.

Tell people that biology and the environment cause obesity and they are offered the one thing we have to avoid: an excuse. As it is, people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight.

During the summer months of my high-school years, I befriended Dr. Robert Kough, a physician who cared for members of my family. Although he was practicing general medicine in a rural community when I met him, he was well equipped to arouse in me an interest not only in the life of a physician but in the fundaments of human biology.

Most of us pass our lives never once laying eyes on our own organs, the most precious and amazing things we own. Until something goes wrong, we barely give them thought. This seems strange to me. How is it that we find Christina Aguilera more interesting than the inside of our own bodies?

I think it's true to say that everybody has a fascination with predators. It's something that's hardwired into us.

After 40, your chances of getting pregnant are between two and eight percent, and in my particular case, they were less than five percent.

'The Creation' presents an argument for saving biological diversity on Earth. Most of the book is for as broad an audience as possible.

I was a bio major, and I was going to take over my aunt's dental practice and be a dentist.

The brain was designed by evolution, so each part of it is optimized for what it does, and it's incredibly, incredibly complex.

Anatomy is destiny.

A lot of the differences between people have biologic underpinnings. Now, we have a dogma of egalitarianism. Everyone's the same.

DNA, like a tape recording, carries a message in which there are specific instructions for a job to be done.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!

The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless.

I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change - led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.

Sex is a natural function. You can't make it happen, but you can teach people to let it happen.

Even when Darwin's teaching first made its appearance, it became clear at once that its scientific, materialist core, its teaching concerning the evolution of living nature, was antagonistic to the idealism that reigned in biology.

Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at thirty-five. Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical joke?

Self awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?