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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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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
Water
Patterns
Enters
Living
Star
Remote
Atmospheres
Past
Ancient
Galaxy
Moulded
Things
Sea
Waters
Outgrowth
Dying
Composition
Ions
Late
Pattern
Metabolism
Blood
Carbon
Cooked
Stars
Atmosphere
Seas

More quotes by 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.
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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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Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.
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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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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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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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Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.
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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 trouble with most of the things that people want is that they get them.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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We are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.
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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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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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A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.
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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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I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.
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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