13 quotes
Protoplasm is protean; any simple protoplasm can become any complex form of life under mutation and selection.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
“The Great Egg must love human beings, he made a lot of them.”
“Same argument applies to oysters, only more so.”
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
Theobald ignored him. He could be deaf when he chose; he seemed to find it particularly difficult to hear the word “No.”
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That’s a personal evaluation, of course.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
So-called instincts are instructive, Felix. They point to survival values.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
Natural selection—the dying out of the poorly equipped—goes on day in and day out, inexorable and automatic. It is as tireless, as inescapable, as entropy.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
“Can I trust you, my friend?”
“If you can’t, then what is my assurance worth?”
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
Oh, we get along. She lets me have my own way, and later I find out I’ve done just what she wanted me to do.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
Since when did a mathematician need any tools but his own head? Pythagoras had done well enough with a stick and a stretch of sand.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
Babies are fun. And they’re not much trouble. Feed ‘em occasionally, help them when they need it, and love them a lot. That’s all there is to it.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
I venture to predict that, when we get around to reviewing their records, we will find that the rebels were almost all—all, perhaps—men who had never been outstandingly successful at anything. Their only prominence was among themselves.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
At fourteen months he began speaking in sentences, short and of his own structure, but sentences. The subjects of his conversation, or, rather, his statements, were consistently egocentric. Normal again—no one expects an infant to write essays on the beauties of altruism.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)
There is no subject inappropriate for scientific research. Johann, we’ve let you fellows have a monopoly of such matters for too long. The most serious questions in the world have been left to faith or speculation. It is time for scientists to cope with them, or admit that science is no more than pebble counting.
Beyond This Horizon (1948)