Philosophy Quotes

Questions about meaning, existence, and truth from thinkers who spent their lives searching for answers.

43879 quotes

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"Life repeats itself through the mechanism of heredity."
Wilhelm Johannsen
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"Life's patterns emerge from hereditary constancy."
Wilhelm Johannsen
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"Pure lines teach us that life has structure and order."
Wilhelm Johannsen
W
"Variation without heredity would mean no life as we know it."
Wilhelm Johannsen
W
"Life's inheritance is both gift and responsibility."
Wilhelm Johannsen
W
"Variation is evolution's pencil; heredity is its paper."
Wilhelm Johannsen
W
"Every organism is a letter written by its ancestry."
Wilhelm Johannsen
W
"In hereditary laws lies the grammar of life."
Wilhelm Johannsen
S
"To study one creature is to illuminate all creation."
Sydney Brenner
S
"Philosophy without science is empty; science without philosophy is blind."
Sydney Brenner
"In science, as in life, the questions we ask determine the answers we receive."
Rita Levi-Montalcini
"Every scientist is also a philosopher, asking not just 'how' but 'why' and 'what does it mean'."
Rita Levi-Montalcini
"I have always maintained that the purpose of science is not dominion over nature, but dialogue with it."
Rita Levi-Montalcini
"The laboratory is a place where ego must be checked at the door; the work itself becomes the only authority."
Rita Levi-Montalcini
"The laboratory is a temple of truth, where the only religion is the honest pursuit of understanding."
Rita Levi-Montalcini
O
"In science, as in life, the questions we refuse to ask are our greatest blind spots."
Oswald Avery
O
"In seeking to understand life, we are really seeking to understand ourselves."
Oswald Avery
O
"Doubt is not the enemy of science; certainty without evidence is."
Oswald Avery
O
"In the quest for knowledge, we become more human, not less."
Oswald Avery
H
"Humanity must recognize that progress depends upon understanding our place in the natural world."
Hermann Muller
H
"We are not observers of nature but participants in its grand experiment."
Hermann Muller
H
"Evolution is both the answer to questions about our past and our future."
Hermann Muller
H
"Nature creates and destroys with equal indifference."
Hermann Muller
H
"The struggle for existence is the fundamental reality from which all ethics must begin."
Hermann Muller
H
"The natural world operates with a logic that is harsh, beautiful, and true."
Hermann Muller
W
"Darwinism and Mendelism are not in conflict but in harmony"
Wilhelm Johannsen
W
"The organism expresses but does not fully reveal its heredity"
Wilhelm Johannsen
W
"Each trait is a compromise between heredity and circumstance"
Wilhelm Johannsen
M
"In the laboratory of life, we are both experimenters and experiments."
Max Delbrück
M
"In the pursuit of truth, detachment is both our strength and our weakness."
Max Delbrück