Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon Quotes

Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.

I realized that nature had invented reproduction as a mechanism for life to move forward, as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life. Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.

From the sexual, or amatorial, generation of plants new varieties, or improvements, are frequently obtained; as many of the young plants from seeds are dissimilar to the parent, and some of them superior to the parent in the qualities we wish to possess... Sexual reproduction is the chef d'oeuvre, the master-piece of nature.

Biology

I don’t think we’re an animal that was built to be happy; we are an animal that was built to reproduce.

I think you can say that life is a system in which proteins and nucleic acids interact in ways that allow the structure to grow and reproduce. It's that growth and reproduction, the ability to make more of yourself, that's important.

Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science - in all of biology.

Cartoons are like fruit flies. Biologists use fruit flies because their large chromosomes and short life cycle make them ideal for studying hereditary changes.

Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow.

If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation.

I loved the idea that biology was logical.

First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence.

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

Nature favors those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive.

We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation.

Biology, meaning the science of all life, is a late notion.

Every seed is awakened, and all animal life.

Mr. Darwin refers to the multitude of the individual of every species, which, from one cause or another, perish either before, or soon after attaining maturity.

This all comes down to what we know about life on Earth.

You can't have life without the genetic code.

You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution.

I think that my main criticism in that book was directed at the general assumption that adaptation characterizes populations and species, rather than simply the individuals in the populations and species.

Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.