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Mammals Quotes

Browse 147 quotes about Mammals.

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Mammals Quotes

“Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated”

ReligionFaithAnimalVirtueAtheismMammals
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Bats look and behave a whole lot differently than mice or foxes or elephants, but nobody would argue that they're not mammals. No, bats are just a weird type of mammal that evolved wings and developed the ability to fly. Birds are just a weird group of dinosaurs that did the same thing.”

ScienceEvolutionArgumentBatsBirdsDinosaursMammals
Book:The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
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“The vegetation grew so dense the road looked like a square slice of cake taken out clean with a knife. Although the wet tropics covers less than one percent of Australia, it contains almost half of our bird species, a third of our mammal species, more than half of our butterfly species, and over seven hundred plant species endemic to the area. The rain forest seemed to inhale and exhale in a sweaty tangle of heaving bio matter.”

AustraliaBirdsMammalsQueenslandRainforestTropicsNative SpeciesDaintree
Book:Stranger Country
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“Attacks by orcas and dolphins are on the rise. Why? Not enough food? Ocean temperatures rising too quickly? I have another idea. With the amount of plastic in the world's oceans the plastic will degenerate down into microplastics. Already these microplastics have entered all food chains and are to be found in soils, plants, animals and people. What are these microplastics doing? Well, we have no idea because not enough informed research has been carried out. For me, I believe that the toxins contained within the plastics are causing neurological disorders in animals & people alike. It's causing more irrational behavior and aggression. The orcas & dolphins are Apex predators, just as we are. Coincidence? Because man at present is doing some really irrational things. Only time and more research will find out some truthful answers.”

Anthony T HincksPollutionHincksMammalsMicroplasticsMicroplasticosisPlasticsNeurological DisordersSealife
Author:Anthony T. Hincks
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“That’s when he finds them. Birds. Mammals. Reptiles. That one was George—a Cheetah with the most flaming fur. That one was Gogy—a gorilla with the clearest pair of eyes. That one was Ms. Mimbo—a hybrid of Macao and African Grey Parrot. And the one near the stone was … well, the Monk goes through around three dozen names. It took fifty years of careful watch to make sure they don’t go extinct. If you live long enough, you might, as well, end up befriending every life your neighboring forest holds. And if you are a war hero, you might even get professionals from the Wildlife Conservation Board to help you during their crossbreeding process. But they’re all dead.”

BirdsMammalsReptilesThe Monk
Book:The High Auction
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“These Cro-Magnon people were identical to us: they had the same physique, the same brain, the same looks. And, unlike all previous hominids who roamed the earth, they could choke on food. That may seem a trifling point, but the slight evolutionary change that pushed man's larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well articulated speech. Other mammals have no contact between their air passages and oesophagi. They can breathe and swallow at the same time, and there is no possibility of food going down the wrong way. But with Homo sapiens food and drink must pass over the larynx on the way to the gullet and thus there is a constant risk that some will be inadvertently inhaled. In modern humans, the lowered larynx isn't in position from birth. It descends sometime between the ages of three and five months - curiously, the precise period when babies are likely to suffer from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. At all events, the descended larynx explains why you can speak and your dog cannot.”

LanguageAnimalsMammalsMother TongueBill BrysonCro Magnon
Book:The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way
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“All Nature bristles with the marks of interrogation-among the grass and the petals of flowers, amidst the feathers of birds and the hairs of mammals, on mountain and moorland, in sea and sky-everywhere. It is one of the joys of life to discover those marks of interrogation, these unsolved and half-solved problems and try to answer their questions.”

LifeTryingProblemScienceJoyNatureAnswersHalfSeaSkyFlowerHairMountainBirdMarkGrassFeathersJoy Of LifePetalsMammalsInterrogationSolved ProblemsSea And Sky
Author:J. Arthur Thomson
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“Livestock adopted in Africa were Eurasian species that came in from the north. Africa's long axis, like that of the Americas, is north/south rather than east/west. Those Eurasian domestic mammals spread southward very slowly in Africa, because they had to adapt to different climate zones and different animal diseases.”

LongDifferentAnimalDiseaseWestSouthClimateSpeciesSpreadEastZoneAdoptedMammalsAxesLivestockNorth AfricaDifferent Animals
Author:Jared Diamond
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“The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art or sat slothfully by while they destroyed. We have passed this stage.... Here in the U.S. we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy our forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at best it looks as if our people were awakening.”

PeopleIfsLooksArtTodayTurnsSpeakEnvironmentAirStageHorrorBirdRiversFishesAwakeningForestsDestroyedLandscapeSatStreamsCivilizedWorks Of ArtAncestorCharmingGreat WorkMedievalHideousAdvertisementsMammalsSewers
Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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“Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless archaic traits.”

MenHumansStillsShowsBodyAgeHuman BeingsLevelsStageProductsDevelopmentEvolutionConsciousDeeperCivilizedDisplayTraitsHuman BodyMemories Dreams ReflectionsRelicsMammalsHuman Psyche
Author:Carl Jung
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“South America had been an island continent, far bigger and far more diverse than Australia, for tens of millions of years before the Isthmus of Panama rose just a couple of million years ago. The resulting flood of North American mammals across the new land bridge corresponds in time with the decimation of the native South American fauna. In fact, most large mammals generally considered distinctly South American... are all recent migrants from North America.”

YearsFactsAmericaMillionsLandCoupleYears AgoBiggerRoseSouthBridgesIslandsNativeAustraliaDiverseContinentsFloodNorth AmericaMigrantsMammalsSouth AmericaPanama
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about this responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.”

HumansReasonLyingSocialBehaviorElementsEthicsCapacityRootsResponsePatternsAcceptedAncestorMammals
Book:The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
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“Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals.”

YearsWellsMayAgeYoungUsedAnimalTreeParticularEvolutionProtectBirdFruitForestsFallenRelatedApplesPlusMatureFarmsAncestorSequenceIndigenousDeerCattleHardyMammalsOrchardFigsPlumsBlackberriesFruit TreesBrowsingCitrusQuince
Author:Bill Mollison
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“Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to apes to monkeys to lemurs] - leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had forseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.”

IfsMenShouldHumansSeemsOrderAnimalStepsCreationEvolutionCreaturesIntelligentSlaveSeriesExtraordinaryIntellectDustTriumphArroganceCrownsSmallestMonkeysLowestSummitApesConquerorMammalsSeverityProminenceLemurs
Author:Thomas Huxley
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“For more than a century, people have often thought that the conclusion to draw from Darwin's vision is that Homo sapiens, our species - and we're just animals too, we're just mammals - that there is nothing morally special about us. I myself don't think this follows at all from Darwin's vision, but it is certainly the received view in many quarters.”

PeopleThinkingAnimalViewsVisionSpecialCenturyDrawsSpeciesConclusionQuartersHomo SapiensMammals
Author:Daniel Dennett
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“If we mammals don't get something to eat every day or two, our temperature drops, all our signs fall off, and we begin to starve. Living at biological red alert, it's not surprising how obsessed we are with food; I'm just amazed we don't pace and fret about it all the time.”

IfsTwoFallRedHungerObsessedPaceSurprisingAmazedTemperatureMammalsRed Alert
Book:Moon By Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales
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“We are like dogs, cats, cows, rats ... What separates us from them and from the remaining matches against mammals is negligible. To have the same diseases. Rats spread plague like us, but we are just as contagious as them. And the dogs get diabetes, like we do, and get cancer, like us. And age, like us. And die, like us. Why then the biblical claim that man is the king of creation? Perhaps because only man has developed spoken language, the words, wherein lies its prodigious ability to lie.”

MenAgeLyingDiesLanguageAbilityDogCreationKingsDiseaseCatClaimsCancerSpreadCowsBiblicalRatsPlagueContagiousDiabetesMammalsProdigiousSpoken Language
Author:Fernando Vallejo
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“Anyhow, there simply isnt enough room in the museums Fishes Hall, so weve decided to pretend to the public that a whale is actually a mammal without any legs. Its pathetically ridiculous-I mean to say, just look at the thing, its a gigantic fish if I ever saw one-but mums the word! In my experience the public will believe just about anything, so long as you write it down on a little piece of card.”

IfsWritingBelieveLooksMeanLittlesLongEnoughRoomsSawsPiecesDecidedFishesLegsRidiculousCardsHallsMuseumsMumWhalesMammals
Author:Gideon Defoe
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“We belong to that order of mammals, the primates, distinguished by its propensity for repeated single litters, intense parental care, long life-spans, late sexual maturity, and a complex and extensive social existence... Our protracted biological and psychological helplessness, which extends well into the third year of life, intensifies the bond between infant and parents, making possible a sense of generational continuity. In contrast to other primates these bonds are not obliterated after sexual maturity.”

YearsWellsLongCareOrderSocialParentExistenceLateThirdsComplexesIntensePsychologicalMaturityContrastInfantLong LifeDistinguishedContinuityHelplessnessParentalBondingPropensityMammalsPrimatesLife SpanYears Of Life
Book:Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood
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“The reptiles had taken over the city. Once again they were the dominant form of life. Looking up at the ancient impassive faces, Kerans could understand the curious fear they roused, rekindling archaic memories of the terrifying jungles of the Paleocene, when the reptiles had gone down before the emergent mammals, and sense the implacable hatred one zoological class feels towards another that usurps it.”

FeelsFacesFormMemoriesAnimalCitiesClassGoneTakenHatredAncientCuriousDominantJungleMammalsReptiles
Book:The Drowned World and the Wind From Nowhere
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“One of the best gifts you can give a poet is to present them with field guides - to rocks, to stars, to birds, to wildflowers, to trees and bushes, to butterflies, to reptiles and amphibians. Because when you look at anything long enough to be able to identify it, you see far more clearly and you make a tiny beginning at understanding the life, the place, the history of that bird or rock or mammal.”

GivingLooksLongEnoughAbleStarsUnderstandingTreeRocksFieldsPoetBirdGuidesTinyButterflyMammalsBest GiftWildflowersReptilesAmphibians
Author:Marge Piercy
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