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

More quotes by George Wald

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When you have no experience of pain, it is rather hard to experience joy.
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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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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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Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.
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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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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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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.
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Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.
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We have to get rid of those nuclear weapons.
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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I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.
George Wald
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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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So-called defense now absorbs sixty per cent of the national budget, and about twelve per cent of the Gross National Product.
George Wald
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The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple people everywhere. It casts a light of peace and reason upon us all and for that I am especially grateful.
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The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.
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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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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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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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