Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Quammen, David

Quote by Quammen, David

“The dodo itself stands as the best emblem of this general truth - that insular evolution often involves transforming an adventurous, high-flying ancestor species into a grounded descendant, no longer capable of going anywhere but extinct. It's our reminder that insular evolution, for all its wondrousness, tends to be a one-way tunnel toward doom.”

Quote by Quammen, David

Create image

Author

Quammen, David

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Quammen, David. more

You May Also Like

“The relevance of these special properties of the hippocampus and their role in map learning comes from a consideration of the massive upsurge in our use of technology for wayfinding. By focusing on the blue dot of a phone map, rather than looking about at our surroundings and making the effort to form a genuine map, we are short-circuiting the processes that we've learned to use over previous millennia. As far as finding our way is concerned, we have become striatal stimulus-response machines, racing through time and space like feverish maze mice hunting for cheese.”

NeuroscienceGpsUrbanism
Book:Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life
Create image

“A CITY IS AS much a state of mind as a place—a set of perceptions of place. On the last train home to Mullaghbrack or Gortyfarnham or half a hundred other BallyBogMans, two farmers fall to reviewing their experiences of the big city. One has walked the streets and avenues and come away with memories of glistening steeples and dreaming spires, monuments to men of bearing and import, Palladian porticos and grand civic cupolas, pillars, piers, and palisades, and the air full of singing birds. The other has walked the same streets, yet his memories are of grey brick tenements shouldering against each other like nervous thugs; cracked fanlights, windows boarded over with card, baby carriages full of coal or potatoes, tramps in doorways, cabbage leaves underfoot, the perfume of urine and porter, pressing people with voices like flatirons. They might have visited cities continents apart, but it is the same city.”

CitiesTravelUrbanism
Book:King of Morning, Queen of Day
Create image

“Czymś niebywale przypadkowym i bezplanowym jest takie zbiorowisko domów, podwórz, placów, skwerów, ogrodów i ogródków. Właściwie z miasta zna się tylko niewielki procent odkrytych dla oka przechodnia powierzchni "komunalnych", perspektyw ulic obramionych schodkowatą linią fasad domów i jest się zaskoczonym, kiedy jakieś sprawy zaprowadzą w środku znanego kręgu budowli na jakieś podwórze lub piętro, gdzie pojawia się przed zdumionymi oczami egzotyka niewidzianego nigdy z ulicy miejsca. To tak jak ze znanymi twarzami, które kryją za sobą czeluście dziwaczne i frapujące, kiedy przez kaprys przypadku znajdziemy się poza ich zwykłym dniem.”

CommunityCitiesDiscoveryPhilosophicalPhilosophy Of LifePhilosphyUrbanismMiastaOdkryciaPodwórza
Author:Zygmunt Haupt
Create image

“Electronic virtual communities represent flexible, lively, and practical adaptations to the real circumstances that confront persons seeking community ... They are part of a range of innovative solutions to the drive for sociality--a drive that can be frequently thwarted by the geographical and cultural realities of cities increasingly structured according to the needs of powerful economic interests rather than in ways that encourage and facilitate habitation and social interaction in the urban context. In this context, electronic virtual communities are complex and ingenious strategies for survival.”

CommunityCitiesUrban LifeUrbanismCities Spaces PlacesVirtual Community
Author:Allucquère Rosanne Stone
Create image