Asa Gray Quotes

28 quotes in 557 categories

• Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of Origin of Species. He says it is POOR-VERY POOR!!. The fact is, he…
• Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes…
• In short, the animal and vegetable lines, diverging widely above, join below in a loop.
• It was always understood that plants and animals, though completely contrasted in their higher representatives, approached each other very closely in their lower and simpler…
• The former conviction that these two kingdoms were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind of life, was not seriously disturbed by the…
• This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.
• Faith in order, which is the basis of science, cannot reasonably be separated from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.
• I am sufficiently convinced already that the members of a profession know their own calling better than anyone else can know it.
• I accept extinction as best explaining disjoined species. I see that the same cause must have reduced many species of great range to small, and…
• Indeed upon much that may have to say, I expect rather the charitable judgment than the full assent of those whose approbation I could most…
• It was implicitly supposed that every living thing was distinctively plant or animal; that there were real and profound differences between the two, if only…
• Many years ago it was taught that plants and animals were composed of different materials: plants, of a chemical substance of three elements,- carbon, hydrogen,…
• Next it was found that it was physiologically and structurally the same in the plant, that it was the living part of the plant, that…
• The best opinion now is, that there are multitudinous forms which are not sufficiently differentiated to be distinctively either plant or animal, while, as respects…
• This substance, which is manifold in its forms and protean in its transformations, has, in its state of living matter, one physiological name which has…
• We have spoken of beings so low in the scale that the individuals throughout their whole existence are not sufficiently specialized to be distinctively plant…
• We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge,…
• Your candor is worth everything to your cause. It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds…
• Yes, it is true that there are times when you do wonder if things are worth it but usually those moments pass as soon as…
• It remains to consider what attitude thoughtful men and Christian believers should take respecting them, and how they stand related to beliefs of another order.

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