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Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

George Wald

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George Wald
Age: 90 †
Born: 1906
Born: November 18
Died: 1997
Died: April 12
Biochemist
Biologist
Chemist
Neuroscientist
Physician
Physiologist
Scientist
New York City
New York
Products
Priori
Works
Authorship
Design
Advances
Choices
Selection
Whatever
Editing
Rather
Offer
Science
Evolution
Best
Offers

More quotes by George Wald

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The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.
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Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.
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When you have no experience of pain, it is rather hard to experience joy.
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So-called defense now absorbs sixty per cent of the national budget, and about twelve per cent of the Gross National Product.
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We are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.
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All War Departments are now Defense Departments. This is all part of the doubletalk of our time. The aggressor is always on the other side.
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I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.
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I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.
George Wald
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Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.
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Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.
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Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.
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Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.
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The trouble with most of the things that people want is that they get them.
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Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
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I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.
George Wald
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About two million years ago, man appeared. He has become the dominant species on the earth. All other living things, animal and plant, live by his sufferance. He is the custodian of life on earth, and in the solar system. It's a big responsibility.
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We have to get rid of those nuclear weapons.
George Wald
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The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.
George Wald
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Not all living creatures die. An amoeba, for example, need never die it need not even, like certain generals, fade away. It just divides and becomes two new amoebas.
George Wald
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We living things are a late outgrowth of the metabolism of our galaxy. The carbon that enters into our composition was cooked in a remote past in a dying star. The waters of ancient seas set the pattern of ions in our blood. The ancient atmospheres moulded our metabolism.
George Wald