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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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James Lovelock
Age: 105
Beekeeper
Biochemist
Biologist
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Science Fiction Writer
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James Ephraim Lovelock
James E. Lovelock
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J E Lovelock
Jim Lovelock
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J.E. Lovelock
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Anything
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Never
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Time
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Bits
Hope
Truth
Iterate
Certain
Nearer

More quotes by 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 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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Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.
James Lovelock
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I wouldn't be against them (large wind turbines) if they actually worked.
James Lovelock
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So-called 'sustainable development' is meaningless drivel.
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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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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Science always uses metaphor.
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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All the modelling we do shows that the climate is poised on the jump up to a new hot state. It is accelerating so fast that you could say that we are already in it.
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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The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.
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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Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.
James Lovelock
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I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
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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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 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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There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.
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