Naturalist Quotes

• But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.

  

  Alfred Russel Wallace
  • Life
  • Beginning
  • Animal

• I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time.

  

  Gregory Walter Graffin Bad Religion
  • People
  • Natural
  • Given

• A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil... not the cross.

  

  Gregory Walter Graffin Bad Religion
  • Moving
  • Powerful
  • Ancestor

• To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain: but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a former world, the mossy covering which obstructs his view, and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone, is no less than a serious subject of regret.

  

  James Hutton
  • Humble
  • Indifferent
  • Moss

• Many able Gardeners and Husbandmen are yet Ignorant of the Reason of their Calling; as most Artificers are of the Reason of their own Rules that govern their excellent Workmanship. But a Naturalist and Mechanick of this sort is Master of the Reason of both, and might be of the Practice too, if his Industry kept pace with his Speculation; which were every commendable; and without which he cannot be said to be a complete Naturalist or Mechanick.

  

  William Penn
  • Reason
  • Ignorant
  • Excellent

• To be a Naturalist is better than to be a King.

  

  William Beebe
  • Science
  • Kings
  • Naturalist

• No naturalist has devoted more painstaking attention to the structure of the barnacles than Mr. Darwin.

  

  Richard Owen
  • Attention
  • Structure
  • Barnacles

• Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.

  

  Carl Linnaeus
  • Different
  • Science
  • Animal

• What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can't help feeling that's because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life.

  

  Will Self
  • Feelings
  • Helping
  • Historian

• As the great naturalist Charles Darwin saw clearly, individual and collective interests often coincide, as in the invisible hand narrative. But he also saw that in many other cases, interests at the two levels are squarely in conflict, and that in those cases, individual interests generally trump. That simple observation suggests that market failure is often the result not of insufficient competition (the traditional charge from social critics on the Left), but of the very logic of competition itself.

  

  Bob Frank
  • Failure
  • Conflict
  • Interests