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Bacteria … have been here for three and a half billion years, and without them we have no chance whatsoever of survival. Humans are something very recent, like the froth on top of a glass of beer.

— James Lovelock The Man Who Named the World (1990)

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More quotes by James Lovelock

Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.

Life has to take charge of its environment and evolve with it.

The Man Who Named the World (1990)

Challenging the conventional wisdom is the way to make waves in science.

Life has to be a planetary phenomenon. You could no more have a partially occupied planet than you could half a cat or half a dog.

The Man Who Named the World (1990)

If there were a billion people living on the planet, we could do whatever we please. But there are nearly seven billion. At this scale, life as we know it today is not sustainable.

How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate (2010)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Lovelock (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.