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

— James Lovelock

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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)

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)

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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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

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.