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If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

James Lovelock

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James Lovelock
Age: 105
Beekeeper
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James Ephraim Lovelock
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More quotes by James Lovelock

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One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it.
James Lovelock
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By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.
James Lovelock
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The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.
James Lovelock
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Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.
James Lovelock
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This programme to stop nuclear by 2020 is just crazy. If there were a nuclear war, and humanity were wiped out, the Earth would breathe a sigh of relief.
James Lovelock
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I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in your data, you wouldn't mind someone looking at it. You should be able to respond that if you don't believe me go out and do the measurements yourself.
James Lovelock
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I have heard that the Saudi Arabians are paying Greenpeace to campaign against Nuclear Power. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
James Lovelock
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I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead.
James Lovelock
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Science always uses metaphor.
James Lovelock
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We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.
James Lovelock
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I've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.
James Lovelock
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We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science
James Lovelock
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No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire.
James Lovelock
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NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station.
James Lovelock
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Geological change usually takes thousands of years to happen but we are seeing the climate changing not just in our lifetimes but also year by year.
James Lovelock
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An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.
James Lovelock
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The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.
James Lovelock
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We need a more authoritative world...What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
James Lovelock
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I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.
James Lovelock
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The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.
James Lovelock