6,981 quotes found
“Some of [Lovelace's] comments sound remarkably modern. One is very appropriate to a discussion there was in England which arose from a tendency, even in the more responsible press, to use the term ...”
“Neither Lynn Margulis nor I have ever proposed a teleological hypothesis. Nowhere in our writing do we express the idea that planetary self-regulation is purposeful, or involves planetary foresight...”
“If there were a billion people living on the planet, we could do whatever we please. But there are nearly seven billion. At this scale, life as we know it today is not sustainable.”
“Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This global dimming is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smok...”
“Challenging the conventional wisdom is the way to make waves in science.”
“The climate and the chemical properties of the Earth now and throughout its history seem always to have been optimal for life. For this to have happened by chance is as unlikely as to survive unsca...”
“In the current fashionable denigration of technology, it is easy to forget that nuclear fission is a natural process. If something as intricate as life can assemble by accident, we need not marvel ...”
“Our planet... consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb...Within our bodies, no less than three million atoms rendered unstable in that event still erupt every minute, r...”
“We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physic...”
“Life has to be a planetary phenomenon. You could no more have a partially occupied planet than you could half a cat or half a dog.”
“Life has to take charge of its environment and evolve with it.”
“If you were an artist or novelist, or a poet or somebody like that, nobody would think it odd if you worked in your own home. In science there's none of this at all. I'm almost the only independent...”
“Bacteria … have been here for three and a half billion years, and without them we have no chance whatsoever of survival. Humans are something very recent, like the froth on top of a glass of beer.”
“In Gaia, there's no such thing as pollution. The rules of the game are that any species that produces something noxious that affects the environment is doomed. Imagine there's some green bug … that...”
“I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. … The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meanin...”
“Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may b...”
“One thing being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope you get a bit nearer to it each time. You iter...”
“The scientific backgrounds and areas of expertise of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis turned out to be a perfect match. Margulis had no problem answering Lovelock's many questions about the biologi...”
“Lovelock spent months in underground bomb shelters studying how viruses are transmitted and ended up inventing the first aerosol disinfectant. A few years later, he became interested in … cryogenic...”
“The thing I fear worst is that we won't do anything at all. We won't explore geoengineering; we won't cut greenhouse gas pollution in any significant way; we won't change our lives. We will argue a...”
