Whenever man forgets that man is an animal, the result is always to make him less humane.

Life is very persistent and very ingenious in seizing every opportunity.

There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

An abundance of some good things is perfectly compatible with the scarcity of others; that life is everywhere precarious, man everywhere small.

We must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of the past.

The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated.