Richard Leakey Quotes

43 quotes in 744 categories

• My father used to say that, through culture, humans effectively domesticated themselves.
• Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of…
• It's the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause
• In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the…
• Climate change: We have never faced a more critical time on our planet
• It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three quarters of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million,…
• It occurred to me that if I did not handle the crash correctly, there would be no survivors.
• For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to…
• Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a…
• The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.
• Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane…
• Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or…
• We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and…
• When out fossil hunting, it is very easy to forget that rather than telling you how the creatures lived, the remains you find indicate only…
• The language of art is powerful to those who understand it, and puzzling to those who do not. What we do know is that here…
• Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self.
• Humans become human through intense learning not just of survival skills but of customs and social mores, kinship and social laws-that is, culture.
• Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans,…
• As every parent knows, children go through an adolescent growth spurt, during which they put on inches at an alarming rate. Humans are unique in…
• It seems inconceivable that a species of human could possess fully modern language and not be fully modern in all other ways, too. For this…

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