The more we know, the better we realize that our knowledge is a little island in the midst of an ocean of ignorance.

Nature's stern discipline enjoins mutual help at least as often as warfare. The fittest may also be the gentlest.

Pat answers to complex problems are the hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can only be doubted by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or plain bigotry.

The foundations of population genetics were laid chiefly by mathematical deduction from basic premises contained in the works of Mendel and Morgan and their followers. Haldane, Wright, and Fisher are the pioneers of population genetics whose main research equipment was paper and ink rather than microscopes, experimental fields, Drosophila bottles, or mouse cages. Theirs is theoretical biology at its best, and it has provided a guiding light for rigorous quantitative experimentation and observation.

An accident, a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. Poking a stick into the machinery of one's watch or one's radio set will seldom make it work better.

Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness.