Quote

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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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
Result
Contemplate
Evolution
Magnitude
Generations
Organisms
Results
Contemplating
Impossible
Spontaneous
Living
Task
Believe
Tasks
Concede
Generation
Organism

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I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.
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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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A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.
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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.
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A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.
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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...
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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.
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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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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.
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The trouble with most of the things that people want is that they get them.
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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.
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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.
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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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Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.
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Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.
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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.
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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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The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.
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When you have no experience of pain, it is rather hard to experience joy.
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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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