Museums have no political power, but they do have the possibility of influencing the political process. This is a complete change from their role in the early days of collecting and hoarding the world to one of using the collections… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
“Every new discovery about the genome is consistent with evolution having happened. Whether we find it appealing or not is another question, but personally… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
“Without death there is little innovation. Extinction - death of a species - is part and parcel of evolutionary change. In the absence of this kind of extinction new developments would not prosper. In our own history, periods when ideas have been perpetuated by dogma, preventing the replacement of old by new ideas, have also been times of stultifying stagnation.… — Richard Fortey Copy Share
“But, for now, I retreated back down the little hidden staircase into the familiar world of the basement of the Natural History Museum, and… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
The great proliferation of museums in the nineteenth century was a product of the marriage of the exhibition as a way of awakening intelligent… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
“Whether we find it appealing or not is another question, but personally I like being fourth cousin to a mushroom and having a bonobo… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
“There is no final truth in palaeontology. Every new observer brings something of his or her own: a new technique, a new intelligence, even… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
I believe profoundly in the importance of museums; I would go as far as to say that you can judge a society by the… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
“Mankind is nothing more than a parasitic tick gorging himself on temporary plenty while the seas are low and the climate is clement. But… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
“I attempted in vain to calculate the size of the holdings on the shelves, floor on floor, only to boggle hopelessly, baffled by bibliographic… — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
I wonder if we are seeing a return to the object in the science-based museum. Since any visitor can go to a film like Jurassic Park and see dinosaurs reawakened more graphically than any museum could emulate, maybe a museum should be the place to have an encounter with the bony truth. Maybe some children have overdosed on simulations on… — Richard Fortey Copy Share
A life accumulates a collection: of people, work and perplexities. We are all our own curators. — Richard Fortey Copy Share Image
“When I meet some of my commuting acquaintances on the 6.21 home to Henley-on-Thames they occasionally enquire what I have done that day. I have been known to reply: ‘I moved Africa 600 kilometres to the south.’ They usually turn quickly to the soccer page. One” — Richard Fortey Copy Share
