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"But what really excited me was the idea that humans had a tremendous pre-history that went back millions of years. I wanted to go to Africa to find some of these creatures."
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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!"
"Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don't take yourself so seriously."
Explore more quotes by Donald Johanson
"One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it."
"I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I'll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution."
"Most achievers I know are people who have made a strong and deep dedication to pursuing a particular goal. That dedication took a tremendous amount of effort."
"This was the most important discovery I had ever made in my life. It was a discovery which has irrevocably changed my whole life's direction. It immediately elevated me to the status of one of the world's leading anthropologists."
"And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask."
"There have been some friendships lost over this. That's the most difficult for me. I find it very uncomfortable to know that I was at one time close friends with someone, and because of jealousies and misunderstandings and so on, these friendships have dissolved."
"But it really wasn't until three to four years later, when we had an opportunity in the lab to make very detailed observations, and comparisons with other fossil discoveries, that we realized she was a new species of human ancestor."
"Normally, we are happy to find a fragment of jaw, a few isolated teeth, a bit of an arm, a bit of a skull. But to find associated body parts is extremely rare."
"When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit."
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