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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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I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.
George Wald
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I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.
George Wald
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One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.
George Wald
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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.
George Wald
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I can conceive of no nightmare so terrifying as establishing communication with a so-called superior (or, if you wish, advanced) technology in outer space.
George Wald
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Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.
George Wald
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We have fallen in love with the body. That's that thing that looks back at us from the mirror. That's the repository of that lovely identity that you keep chasing all your life.
George Wald
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The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You can kill us, but you'll have to kill a lot of us you may have to kill all of us. And, thank heaven, we are not yet ready to do that.
George Wald
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Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.
George Wald
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There's life all over this universe, but the only life in the solar system is on earth, and in the whole universe we are the only men.
George Wald
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Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.
George Wald
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A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.
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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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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We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
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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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.
George Wald
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A scientist is in a sense a learned small boy. There is something of the scientist in every small boy. Others must outgrow it. Scientists can stay that way all their lives.
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
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Every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet and that is about three billion years.
George Wald