Biology is the scientific study of the natural processes of living things. Most brilliant biology quotes will fire up your brain and inspire you to look at life differently.
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Famous Biology Quotes
Biology is the most powerful technology ever created. DNA is software, protein are hardware, cells are factories. Arvind Gupta
What was up with class today? It was watered down porn. He practically had you and Patch on top of your lab table, horizontal, minus your clothes, doing the Big Deed. Becca Fitzpatrick
Humans have an amazing capacity to believe in contradictory things. For example, to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent God but somehow excuse Him from all the suffering in the world. Or our ability to believe from the standpoint of law that humans are equal and have free will and from biology that humans are just organic machines. Yuval Noah Harari
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Charles Darwin
Where there’s water on Earth, you find life as we know it. So if you find water somewhere else, it becomes a remarkable draw to look closer to see if life of any kind is there, even if it’s bacterial, which would be extraordinary for the field of biology. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity. Sigmund Freud
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Theodosius Dobzhansky
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins
Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique. Jared Diamond
We all know interspecies romance is weird. Tim Burton
Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy? Auguste Comte
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself. Rachel Carson
The potential for synthetic biology and biotechnology is vast; we all have an opportunity to create the future together. Ryan Bethencourt
If we wish to know about a man, we ask what is his story his real, inmost story? for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives we are each of us unique. Oliver Sacks
I went to college. I had a double major in biology and physical education, but my major was wrestling. Dan Gable
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here and by we I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp. Bill Bryson
Biology sometimes reveals its fundamental principles through what may seem at first to be arcane and bizarre. Elizabeth Blackburn
In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels. Daniel Goleman
Excellent teachers showered on to us like meteors Biology teachers holding up human brains, English teachers inspiring us with a personal ideological fierceness about Tolstoy and Plato, Art teachers leading us through the slums of Boston, then back to the easel to hurl public school gouache with social awareness and fury. Sylvia Plath
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die. Charles Darwin
One of the major lessons in all of biochemistry, cell biology and molecular medicine is that when proteins operate at the sub cellular level, they behave in a certain way as if they’re mechanical machinery. James Rothman
But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Charles Darwin
Biology is a software process. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by this process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era. Ray Kurzweil
Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song? James Frey
Biology DNA is technology. It is coding. It is physical coding, but still code. Ryan Bethencourt
Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there’s not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago. Steven Hall
Biology has progressed tremendously due to the model that Darwin put forth. But the black boxes Darwin accepted are now being opened, and our view of the world is again being shaken. Michael Behe
We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget. Mary Roach
Biology is now accelerating at a pace faster than Moore’s Law. Arvind Gupta
Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it. Nick Bostrom
I studied what the Germans call the Naturwissenschaften, the natural sciences. Everything from biology to geology. How the clouds are formed, how the animals live, and what makes the rocks. So I know about nature. Period. Vaclav Smil
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men’s hands, since the publication of Newton’s Principia, is Darwin’s Origin of Species. Thomas Henry Huxley
Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one’s own genes in the generations to follow. Lewis Thomas
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case. Charles Darwin
To address questions of scientific responsibility does not necessarily imply that one needs technical competence in a particular field e.g. biology to evaluate certain technical matters. Serge Lang
The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle. Michael Denton
Our world is built on biology and once we begin to understand it, it then becomes a technology. Ryan Bethencourt
Oh I believe in loving cats and dogs and children and parents sometimes but I don’t believe in romantic love. Of course, there’s the momentary rush of hormones and chemicals that encourages us to mate, but it’s biology it’s no more inherently mystical than the nicotine in that cigarette you’re smoking. Amy Jenkins
There’s biology in everything, even when you’re feeling spiritual. Helen Fisher
It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which the generality of mankind most hate the necessity of revising their convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them as speedily perform a strategic right about face, and follow the truth wherever it leads. Thomas Henry Huxley
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science in all of biology. Bill Nye
Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day Mother Nature’s best effort yet at contra death. Matthew Walker
If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons. James Baldwin
But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. Richard P. Feynman
Biology always beats will power. Mehmet Oz
These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve. Jerry A. Coyne
Biology, meaning the science of all life, is a late notion. Leon Kass
See how a body will change, to give you the best chance it can. Rory Power
I want to know where joy lives. I’d interview scientists, religious leaders and heads of state. I’d want to find out exactly what makes people happy. I’d want to look into the biology, the chemistry of the human brain. Goldie Hawn
In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple. Richard Preston
A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence suggests, exotic micro organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life, studying them could revolutionise biology, medicine and biotechnology. Paul Davies
A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth! Richard Dawkins,
Politics is applied biology. Ernst Haeckel
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Theodosius Dobzhansky
I’m fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information technology. Richard Dawkins
In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted. Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes. Michael J. Behe
Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being. Walter Gilbert
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree. The difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection , though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered subversive of the theory. Charles Darwin
Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day. Michael J. Behe
Darwin’s theory of evolution is a framework by which we understand the diversity of life on Earth. But there is no equation sitting there in Darwin’s Origin of Species that you apply and say, What is this species going to look like in 100 years or 1,000 years? Biology isn’t there yet with that kind of predictive precision. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours. James D. Watson
I read On The Road in college. I was 18 or 19, and I had a particular quarter where I was taking biology, calculus, and physics. Those were my three classes. It wasn’t a well rounded schedule at all. It was hard, hard work, all the time hours and hours and hours of homework. Ben Gibbard
Addiction is when natural biological imperatives, like the need for food, sex, relaxation or status, become prioritised to the point of destructiveness. It is exacerbated by a culture that understandably exploits this mechanic as it’s a damn good way to sell Mars bars and Toyotas. Russell Brand
I’ve always been interested in medicine and was pleased when my brother became a doctor. But after thinking seriously about that field, I realized that what intrigued me was not the science, not the chemistry or biology of medicine, but the narrative the story of each patient, each illness. Lois Lowry
The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence. William A. Dembski
We used to rehearse in unused lecture halls at Imperial and recorded our first album, Queen, in 1971 while I was studying for my biology finals it is amazing I passed. Roger Taylor
To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write. Daniel C. Dennett
I cannot imagine a more enjoyable place to work than in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology where I work. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
We live our comfortable lives in the shadow of a disaster of our own making. That disaster is being brought about by the very things that allow us to live our comfortable lives. David Attenborough
We have plenty of young women coming into biology and medicine, but we don’t have enough coming into physics and engineering. It’s a really weird thing because, of course, all these subjects are completely neutral. Alice Roberts
A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree. E. O. Wilson
For the vast majority of world history, human life both culture and biology was shaped by scarcity. Food, clothing, shelter, tools, and pretty much everything else had to be farmed or fabricated, at a very high cost in time and energy. Martha Beck
Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up wearing top hat and tails, of course. Natalie Angier
Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose. Richard Dawkins
I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre programmed well being that are orders of magnitude richer than today’s peak experiences. David Pearce
The biology of mind bridges the sciences concerned with the natural world and the humanities concerned with the meaning of human experience. Eric Kandel
But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record. Charles Darwin
Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics. Stephen Hawking
Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die. Stephen Jay Gould
The kitchen’s a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It’s biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there’s history. Yes, there’s artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science. Alton Brown
Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment. Paul Watson
Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. Oprah Winfrey
I thought the fart was a human thing. It’s something to do with like, arse cheeks, or whatever. Karl Pilkington
Biology has at least 50 more interesting years. James D. Watson
Life is stranger than biology textbooks. David Rains Wallace
As a young boy, I was obsessed with endangered species and the extinct species that men killed off. Biology was the subject in school that I was incredibly passionate about. Leonardo DiCaprio
No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way. To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific. Henry Gee
The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. E. O. Wilson
The offspring cannot rely on its parents for disinterested guidance. One expects the offspring to be preprogrammed to resist some parental manipulation while being open to other forms. When the parent imposes an arbitrary system of reinforcement punishment and reward in order to manipulate the offspring to act against its own best interests, selection will favor offspring that resist such schedules of reinforcement. Robert Trivers
Instead of studying what biology has already made, we have to imagine what biology could make. You can say, Oh, I want a cure for cancer, but that doesn’t tell you what evolutionary pathway will take you from here to there. What are the intermediate steps? Frances Arnold
If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there’s nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more? Carl Sagan
Until we recognize the essential role of biology, our attempts to truly unify the universe will remain a train to nowhere. Robert Lanza
The controversy between Darwinism and intelligent design has the characteristics of major scientific revolutions in the past. Darwinists are losing power because they treat with contempt the very people on whom they depend the most: American taxpayers. The outcome of this scientific revolution will be decided by young people who have the courage to question dogmatism and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Jonathan Wells
I attended Florida State University on an academic and leadership scholarship, changed my major from biology to broadcasting, and transferred to the University of South Carolina for my last two years. Ainsley Earhardt
Everything can’t be explained by some general biological phrase. Nella Larsen
Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs ‘good tricks. Daniel Dennett
Whenever explaining an event, we must choose from three competing modes of explanation. These are regularity, chance, and design. To attribute an event to design is to say that it cannot reasonably be referred to either regularity or chance. William A. Dembski
The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences. Jordan Peterson
Teaching students the evidence for and against Darwinism is not the same as teaching intelligent design. The U.S. Congress has officially endorsed teaching students the full range of scientific views about Darwinian evolution. Jonathan Wells
Through some combination of culture and biology, our minds are intuitively receptive to religion. Daniel Kahneman
We’re going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Richard Dawkins
I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will. Richard Dawkins
Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. The origin of species Darwin’s problem remains unsolved. Scott F. Gilbert
No, I majored in biology, in a pre med program. Neil Diamond
For those scientists who take it seriously, Darwinian evolution has functioned more as a philosophical belief system than as a testable scientific hypothesis. This quasi religious function of the theory is, I think, what lies behind many of the extreme statements that you have doubtless encountered from some scientists opposing any critical analysis of neo Darwinism in the classroom. It is also why many scientists make public statements about the theory that they would not defend privately to other scientists like me. James A. Shapiro
Nature is full of drama. I know nothing about biology, about birds, about insects, about the details of politics. I just make movies about human interest stories. Jacques Perrin
I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred. John B. Haldane
We’re seeing a move toward making things that either chemistry cannot make or can’t make efficiently but biology does. Frances Arnold
The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion. Gareth J. Nelson
There’s so much I’m interested in that I didn’t discover in high school. For The Amazing Spider Man, because Gwen is a scientist, we went to a lab in San Diego, and we were learning about biology. And I’m fascinated! Because I never went to biology class in high school. Emma Stone
Through the discovery of Buchner, Biology was relieved of another fragment of mysticism. The splitting up of sugar into CO2 and alcohol is no more the effect of a vital principle than the splitting up of cane sugar by invertase. The history of this problem is instructive, as it warns us against considering problems as beyond our reach because they have not yet found their solution. Jacques Loeb
Early AI was mainly based on logic. You’re trying to make computers that reason like people. The second route is from biology You’re trying to make computers that can perceive and act and adapt like animals. Geoffrey Hinton
The ideology and philosophy of neo Darwinism which is sold by its adepts as a scientific theoretical foundation of biology seriously hampers the development of science and hides from students the field’s real problems. Vladimir L. Voeikov
One of the great issues in biology is the origin of altruism of why you would do something for someone else that could hurt you and Darwin posited that it might be rooted in maternal instinct, in sacrificing yourself for your children. Isabella Rossellini
The phrase the fossil record sounds impressive and authoritative. As used by some persons it becomes, as intended, intimidating, taking on the aura of esoteric truth as expounded by an elite class of specialists. But what is it, really, this fossil record? Only data in search of interpretation. All claims to the contrary that I know, and I know of several, are so much superstition. Gareth J. Nelson
I would say that molecular gastronomy is a field of science. I would I would say that it’s probably lumped under chemistry, maybe. Because cooking, while it has certainly biology and some physics, it’s mostly chemistry. Wylie Dufresne
The same few dozen organic molecules are used over and over again in biology for the widest variety of functions. Carl Sagan
I would say that molecular gastronomy is a field of science. I would I would say that it’s probably lumped under chemistry, maybe. Because cooking, while it has certainly biology and some physics, it’s mostly chemistry. Wylie Dufresne
