Quotes by Zoologists

Needless fear and panic over disease or misfortune that seldom materialize are simply bad habits. By proper ventilation and illumination of the mind it is possible to cultivate tolerance poise and real courage.

Elie Metchnikoff

In my business you measure your respect by the enemies you make.

Theo E. Colborn

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.

Marston Bates

There are 193 living species of monkeys and apes. 192 of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo Sapiens.

Desmond Morris

I believe I've found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.

Konrad Lorenz

Elie Metchnikoff

I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.

Desmond Morris

The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects.

Warder C. Allee

There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog

Konrad Lorenz

Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.

Konrad Lorenz

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.

Georges Cuvier

Have pity on them all, for it is we who are the real monsters.

Bernard Heuvelmans

We have come to look at our planet as a resource for our species, which is funny when you think that the planet has been around for about five billion years, and Homo sapiens for perhaps one hundred thousand. We have acquired an arrogance about ourselves that I find frightening. We have come to feel that we are so far apart from the rest of nature that we have but to command.

Marston Bates

We humans may be brilliant and we may be special, but we are still connected to the rest of life. No one reminds us of this better than our dogs. Perhaps the human condition will always include attempts to remind ourselves that we are separate from the rest of the natural world. We are different from other animals; it's undeniably true. But while acknowledging that, we must acknowledge another truth, the truth that we are also the same. That is what dogs and their emotions give us-- a connection. A connection to life on earth, to all that binds and cradles us, lest we begin to feel too alone. Dogs are our bridge-- our connection wo who we really are, and most tellingly, who we want to be. When we call them home to us, it'as as if we are calling for home itself. And that'll do, dogs. That'll do.

Patricia B. McConnell

Vampyre refers to a corpse that has returned from the dead to drink the blood of the living. Similar creatures were said to haunt the rural villages of nearly every Slavic nation. Not surprisingly, each culture gave their monster its own name (e.g., vukodlak in Serbia, strigoii in Romania, eretika in Russia, insurance salesman in…well, never mind).

Bill Schutt

I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.

Steve Irwin

We do not know how life began.

Tracy Irwin Storer

Evolution on the large scale unfolds, like much of human history, as a succession of dynasties.

Edmund Beecher Wilson

As long as museums and universities send out expeditions to bring to light new forms of living and extinct animals and new data illustrating the interrelations of organisms and their environments, as long as anatomists desire a broad comparative basis human for anatomy, as long as even a few students feel a strong curiosity to learn about the course of evolution and relationships of animals, the old problems of taxonomy, phylogeny and evolution will gradually reassert themselves even in competition with brilliant and highly fruitful laboratory studies in cytology, genetics and physiological chemistry.

William King Gregory

Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by a few observations, to ascertain the history of this world, and the series of events which preceded the birth of the human race?

Georges Cuvier

More than any other product of human scientific culture scientific knowledge is the collective property of all mankind.

Konrad Lorenz

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.

Konrad Lorenz

Every danger loses some of its terror once its causes are understood.

Konrad Lorenz

Too often the mentally ill are marginalized as people who just can’t pull up their socks. If only it were that simple.

Suzanne F. Kingsmill

I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge in innumerable spheres and enjoyed it as an always ready instrument for exercising the mind and penetrating further and further. Best of all, mine has been a life of loving and being loved. What a tragedy that all this will disappear with the used-up body!

Richard Goldschmidt

The wild things of this earth are not ours to do with as we please. They have been given to us in trust, and we must account for them to the generation which will come after us and audit our accounts.

William T. Hornaday

All children are curious and I wonder by what process this trait becomes developed in some and suppressed in others. I suspect again that schools and colleges help in the suppression insofar as they meet curiosity by giving the answers, rather than by some method that leads from narrower questions to broader questions. It is hard to satisfy the curiosity of a child, and even harder to satisfy the curiosity of a scientist, and methods that meet curiosity with satisfaction are thus not apt to foster the development of the child into the scientist. I don't advocate turning all children into professional scientists, although I think there would be advantages if all adults retained something of the questioning attitude, if their curiosity were less easily satisfied by dogma, of whatever variety.

Marston Bates

Reality does not yield to wishful thinking and truth cannot be established by a political party (or any other organization for that matter).

Bill Schutt

Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.

Steve Irwin

There is no definitive answer as to why cannibalism provides us with such stimulation, although what is clear, and what remains extremely disturbing for me, is our increasing desensitization to violence and gore - a trait that does not bode well for the future.

Bill Schutt

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.

Marston Bates

When people visit my farm they often envision their dog, finally off-leash in acres of safely fenced countryside, running like Lassie in a television show, leaping over fallen tree trunks, shiny-eyed with joy at the change to run free in the country. While they're imagining that heartwarming scene, their dog is most likely gobbling up sheep poop as fast as he can. Dog aren't people, and if they have their own image of heaven, it most likely involves poop.

Patricia B. McConnell

Bill Schutt

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.

Marston Bates

Patricia B. McConnell

In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction.But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks?Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most.Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving.There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.

Mark Carwardine

The truth about an animal is far more exciting and altogether more beautiful than all the myths woven about it.

Konrad Lorenz

Третье великое препятствие человеческого самопознания — по крайней мере в нашей западной культуре — это наследие идеалистической философии. Она делит мир на две части: мир вещей, который идеалистическое мышление считает в принципе индифферентным в отношении ценностей, и мир человеческого внутреннего закона, который один лишь заслуживает признания ценности. Такое деление замечательно оправдывает эгоцентризм человека, оно идёт навстречу его антипатии к собственной зависимости от законов природы — и потому нет ничего удивительного в том, что оно так глубоко вросло в общественное сознание. Насколько глубоко — об этом можно судить по тому, как изменилось в нашем немецком языке значение слов «идеалист» и «материалист»; первоначально они означали лишь философскую установку, а сегодня содержат и моральную оценку. Необходимо уяснить себе, насколько привычно стало, в нашем западном мышлении, уравнивать понятия «доступное научному исследованию» и «в принципе оценочно-индифферентное». Меня легко обвинить, будто я выступаю против этих трех препятствий человеческого самопознания лишь потому, что они противоречат моим собственным научным и философским воззрениям, — я должен здесь предостеречь от подобных обвинений. Я выступаю не как закоренелый дарвинист против неприятия эволюционного учения, и не как профессиональный исследователь причин — против беспричинного чувства ценности, и не как убеждённый материалист — против идеализма. У меня есть другие основания. Сейчас естествоиспытателей часто упрекают в том, будто они накликают на человечество ужасные напасти и приписывают ему слишком большую власть над природой. Этот упрёк был бы оправдан, если бы учёным можно было поставить в вину, что они не сделали предметом своего изучения и самого человека. Потому что опасность для современного человечества происходит не столько из его способности властвовать над физическими процессами, сколько из его неспособности разумно направлять процессы социальные. Однако в основе этой неспособности лежит именно непонимание причин, которое является — как я хотел бы показать — непосредственным следствием тех самых помех к самопознанию.

Konrad Lorenz

Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.

Konrad Lorenz