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"We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order."
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Explore more quotes by Asa Gray
"It was always understood that plants and animals, though completely contrasted in their higher representatives, approached each other very closely in their lower and simpler forms. But they were believed not to blend."
"The best opinion now is, that there are multitudinous forms which are not sufficiently differentiated to be distinctively either plant or animal, while, as respects ordinary plants and animals, the difficulty of laying down a definition has become far greater than ever before."
"Many years ago it was taught that plants and animals were composed of different materials: plants, of a chemical substance of three elements,- carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; animals of one of four elements, nitrogen being added to the other three."
"It was implicitly supposed that every living thing was distinctively plant or animal; that there were real and profound differences between the two, if only they could be seized."
"But it was soon ascertained that this quaternary matter of the animal body was chemically the same in the plant, was elaborated there, and only appropriated by the animal."
"Why is it not just as likely that there were as many small general nearly at first as now, and as great a disproportion in the number of their species?"
"I take it for granted that you do not wish to hear an echo from the pulpit nor from the theological class-room."
"This substance, which is manifold in its forms and protean in its transformations, has, in its state of living matter, one physiological name which has become familiar, that of protoplasm."
"Next it was found that it was physiologically and structurally the same in the plant, that it was the living part of the plant, that which manifested the life and did the work in vegetable as well as in animal organisms."
"There is a class, moreover, by whom all these scientific theories, and more are held as ascertained facts, and as the basis of philosophical inferences which strike at the root of theistic beliefs."
Exlpore more Idea quotes
"From the port of ideas, not only the most clever ones put out to sea and conquer the world but also the most stupid ones do this!"
"Give people films, they will forget after a few weeks, but give people ideas, they will assimilate them into their consciousness."
"Through your ideas, you open the window of your mind and say a hello to the world."
"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."
"An idea can change your fate in a wonderful way but you must first let the idea to touch your mind and your heart! No closed book can ever be your hero!"
"Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads."
"Unless you close your door to other ideas, you will never remain idealess!"
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