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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

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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
Firsts
Line
Primitive
First
Lines
Billion
Every
Alive
Creature
Years
Science
Billions
Stretches
Life
Three
Appear
Unbroken
Earth
Planet
Organism
Today
Planets
Organisms
Back
Creatures
Represents

More quotes by George Wald

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A scientist should be the happiest of men. Not that science isn't serious but as everyone knows, being serious is one way of being happy, just as being gay is one way of being unhappy.
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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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The trouble with most of the things that people want is that they get them.
George Wald
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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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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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I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.
George Wald
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Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.
George Wald
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The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.
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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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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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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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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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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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.
George Wald
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The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one. It can give us no protection - only the doubtful satisfaction of retaliation...
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 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.
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When you have no experience of pain, it is rather hard to experience joy.
George Wald