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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.

— 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.

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)

The climate and the chemical properties of the Earth now and throughout its history seem always to have been optimal for life. For this to have happened by chance is as unlikely as to survive unscathed a drive blindfold through rush hour traffic.

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)

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All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

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.