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There is not a single desirable attribute which, lacking in a plant, may not be bred into it. Choose what improvement you wish in a flower, a fruit, or a tree, and by crossing, selection, cultivation, and persistence you can fix this desirable trait irrevocably.

— Luther Burbank The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

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More quotes by Luther Burbank

Those who are making history seldom have time to record it.

In child rearing environment is equally essential with heredity.

The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

The essential basis of life itself, namely, protoplasm, is a substance composed largely of water and having the physical constitution of a viscid liquid.

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921)

[I]t would, if possible, be best absolutely to prohibit in every State in the Union the marriage of the physically, mentally and morally unfit.

Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in... any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education.

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