Ants Quote by Elizabeth Kolbert

“Only in a place where the rules of the game remain fixed is there time for butterflies to evolve to feed on the shit of birds that evolved to follow ants.” quote by Elizabeth Kolbert — Download Open image

““Only in a place where the rules of the game remain fixed is there time for butterflies to evolve to feed on the shit of birds that evolved to follow ants.””

Elizabeth Kolbert

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More by Elizabeth Kolbert

“The size of the greenhouse forcing is estimated, at this point, to be 2.5 w/m2. A miniature Christmas light gives off about four tenths of a watt of energy, mostly in the form of heat, so that, in effect (as Sophie supposedly explained to Connor), we have covered the earth with tiny bulbs, six for every square meter. These bulbs…

Elizabeth Kolbert

You've got to do everything, everything's got to be pointing in the same direction and you've got to really turn this whole economic engine…

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Well in the scientific there is virtually no debate over certain things. For example, that we are changing the world. Humans are changing the…

Elizabeth Kolbert

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Humans will eventually become extinct. People treat that as a radical thing to say. But the fossil record shows us that everything eventually becomes extinct. It depends what "eventually" means. But the idea that were going to be around for the rest of global history...I don't think there's any scientist who would suggest that is true. It could be millions…

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“A sign in the Hall of Biodiversity offers a quote from the Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich: IN PUSHING OTHER SPECIES TO EXTINCTION, HUMANITY IS…

Elizabeth Kolbert

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We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive -…

Elizabeth Kolbert

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“Crutzen wrote up his idea in a short essay, “Geology of Mankind,” that ran in Nature. “It seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch,” he observed. Among the many geologic-scale changes people have effected, Crutzen cited the following: • Human activity has transformed between a third and a half of the…

Elizabeth Kolbert

“Modern humans arrived in Europe around forty thousand years ago, and again and again, the archaeological record shows, as soon as they made their…

Elizabeth Kolbert

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It seems that the Neanderthal DNA that modern Europeans and Asians (and also Native Americans and basically all non-African people) are carrying around is random. This means there are different bits and pieces in different populations, but it doesn't seem to amount to much that's significant.

Elizabeth Kolbert

What are the Chinese doing, what are we doing, what are - so we need, both the developed world and the developing world, really…

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“As the effects of global warming become more and more difficult to ignore, will we react by finally fashioning a global response? Or will we retreat into ever narrower and more destructive forms of self-interest? It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now…

Elizabeth Kolbert

As best as can be determined, the world is now warmer than it has been at any point in the last two millennia, and,…

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Explore all 90 Elizabeth Kolbert quotes

More Ants quotes

Some people are like ants. Give them a warm day and a piece of ground and they start digging. There the similarity ends. Ants keepon digging. Most people don't. They establish contact with the soil, absorb so much vernal vigor that they can't stay in one place, and desert the fork or spade to see how the rhubarb is coming…

Hal Borland

Great God of the Ants, thou hast granted victory to thy servants. I appoint thee honorary Colonel.

Karel Capek

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Pray look upon the plants and birds, the ants, spiders, and bees, and you will see them all exerting their nature, and busy in…

Marcus Aurelius

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People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.

Lauren Oliver

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There's a good case to be made that having fun is a key evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance.…

Raph Koster

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We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play.

Bert Holldobler

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Oh, ants, my sisters, good old honeydew-seekers! From close up you are sticky and shiny and gristly; and your nymphs have parasitic red mites stuck to them. You are too intent upon your chewing and gathering to listen to me, but I tell you that despite my warm feelings I really do not like you, and I cannot feel sorry…

William T. Vollmann

Albert and I would spend hours and hours looking at them. Cleo had this big magnifying glass on his desk, and we'd find centipedes and grasshoppers and beetles and potato bugs, ants . . . and put them in a jar and look at them. They have the sweetest little faces and the cutest expressions. After we'd looked at them…

Fannie Flagg

When someone criticizes or disagrees with you, a small ant of hatred and antagonism is born in your heart. If you do not squash that ant at once, it might grow into a snake, or even a dragon.

Rumi

There's a scientific hypothesis that every person's name is a primary suggestive command that contains the entire script of their life in highly concentrated form. . . . According to this point of view, there is only a limited number of names, because society only needs a limited number of human types. Just a few models of worker and warrior…

Victor Pelevin