Michel de Montaigne Quotes

An argument often given for why Earth couldn't host another form of life is that once the life we know became established, it would have eliminated any competition through natural selection. But if another form of life were confined to its own niche, there would be little direct competition with regular life.

We are all part of the ecosystem.

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

We cannot learn freedom and responsibility within the confines of our own species. We cannot understand life and death and what they are for in exclusively human terms. Without that which is wild, the world becomes a cell block.

Nature, in her blind thirst for life has filled every possible cranny of the rotting earth with some sort of fantastic creature.

Buzzards got to eat, same as the worms.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

To many people, 'biodiversity' is almost synonymous with the word 'nature,' and 'nature' brings to mind steamy forests and the big creatures that dwell there. Fair enough. But biodiversity is much more than that, for it encompasses not only the diversity of species, but also the diversity within species.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.

Without rain, there is no life.

In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

To describe the overwhelming life of a tropical forest just in terms of inert biochemistry and DNA didn't seem to give a very full picture of the world.

Nature is an incredible cooperative. When things operate outside of that cooperative, they die off. It's a very simple rule that nature operates under.

Nature is perfect.

You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.

Self-defence is Nature's eldest law.

If you really want to study evolution, you've got go outside sometime, because you'll see symbiosis everywhere!

Even if one tree falls down it wouldn't affect the entire forest.

Nature conserves, prefers novelty.

Nature knows best.

I do believe very strongly that all of us and all of the other things in the context of our planet with Mother Nature, all of these things absolutely have a profound effect.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

Nature does nothing in vain.