Lynn Margulis quotes - page 2

Lynn Margulis was an American evolutionary biologist and professor, renowned for her pioneering work on the theory of symbiogenesis. Her research fundamentally changed our understanding of the origin of complex cells and the role of cooperation in evolution. She inspired generations of scientists to explore the interconnectedness of life. Here are 43 of her quotes:

Life learned early on to recognize itself. (Lynn Margulis)
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. View quote
Lynn Margulis
Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit? View quote
Lynn Margulis
People say I am against Darwin. That is ridiculous. View quote
Lynn Margulis
The fewer species there are and the fewer species we know about, the fewer questions we even know to ask. View quote
Lynn Margulis
All of us from fertile egg to embryo to corpse, are exactly that: warm, wet, furry animals compelled by the sexuality of our forefathers and foremothers to be, either directly or indirectly, our own exciting and excitable, provocative and provocable selves. View quote
Lynn Margulis
The urgency to mate persists in all people as in all other mammals because of the evolutionary drive to continue the species, the inborn imperative for genes to reproduce and hormonal differences that evolved over millions of years. View quote
Lynn Margulis
Life on earth is such a good story you cannot afford to miss the beginning... Beneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings. View quote
Lynn Margulis
Life did not take over the world by combat, but by networking. View quote
Lynn Margulis
Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves. View quote
Lynn Margulis
Possibly here in the Holocene, or just before ten or twenty thousand years ago, life hit a peek of diversity. Then we appeared. We are the great meteorite. (Lynn Margulis)
What kind of grad student do you take? "I never take a straight A student. A real scientist tends to be critical, and somewhere along the line, they had to rebel against their teachers. View quote
Lynn Margulis
New mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired. View quote
Lynn Margulis
Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create. View quote
Lynn Margulis
All scientists agree that evolution has occurred - that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution? View quote
Lynn Margulis
People think the earth is going to die and they have to save it. That's ridiculous. If you rid the earth of flowering plants, people would die, period. But the earth was without flowering plants for almost all of its history. View quote
Lynn Margulis
Although the detail of our sexual energies and their objects and objectives vastly vary, the existence of our sexuality itself is an undeniable truth. View quote
Lynn Margulis
To romp along the connected rooftops and fire escapes of Chicagos second city of garages was my young lifes passion. View quote
Lynn Margulis

Lynn Margulis

Lynn Margulis - Image
Photo: Jpedreira, CC BY-SA 2.5
Occupation: American Scientist
Born: March 5, 1938
Died: November 22, 2011
Quotes count: 43
Wikipedia: Lynn Margulis

Related authors

Carl Sagan  433 
American Astrophysicist
James Lovelock - thumbnail
James Lovelock  60 
English Scientist
Ann Druyan - thumbnail
Ann Druyan  50 
American Author
Rudolf Virchow - thumbnail
Rudolf Virchow  9 
German Doctor
Ernst Mayr - thumbnail
Ernst Mayr  36 
German-American Scientist
Stephen Jay Gould  319 
American Biologist
Charles Darwin - thumbnail
Charles Darwin  193 
English Naturalist
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck  3 
 
Humberto Maturana - thumbnail
Humberto Maturana  14 
Chilean Biologist
Richard Dawkins - thumbnail
Richard Dawkins  475 
English Scientist