“Life did not take over the world by combat,
but by networking.”
― Lynn Margulis, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution
“Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.”
― Lynn Margulis, What Is Life?
“Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create... Neo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change [which] led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.”
― Lynn Margulis
“New mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.”
― Lynn Margulis
“Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.”
― Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution
“What kind of grad student do you take? “I never take a straight A student. A real scientist tends to be critical, and somewhere along the line, they had to rebel against their teachers.”
― Lynn Margulis
“Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.”
― Lynn Margulis, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory Of The Origin Of Species
“Possibly here in the Holocene, or just before ten or twenty thousand years ago, life hit a peek of diversity. Then we appeared. We are the great meteorite.”
― Lynn Margulis, Mind, Life and Universe: Conversations with Great Scientists of Our Time
“For all the accomplishments of molecular biology, we still can't tell a live cat from a dead cat.”
― Lynn Margulis
“Life on earth is such a good story you cannot afford to miss the beginning... Beneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.”
― Lynn Margulis
“Los cuerpos grandes son una ventaja para los luchadores; los genitales grandes lo son para los amantes.”
― Lynn Margulis
“We people are just like our planetmates. We cannot put an end to nature; we can only pose a threat to ourselves. The notion that we can destroy all life, includng bacteria thriving in the water tanks of nuclear power plants or boiling hot vents, is ludicrous. I hear our nonhuman brethren snickering: "Got along without you before before I met you, gonna get along without you now", they sing about us in harmony. Most of them, the microbes, the whales, the insects, the seed plants, and the birds, are still singing. The tropical forest trees are humming to themselves, waiting for us to finish our arrogant logging so they can get back to their business of growth as usual. And they will continue their cacophonies and harmonies long after we are gone.”
― Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution
“There will be a layer in the fossil record where you'll know people were here because of the squashed remains of automobiles. It will be a very thin layer.”
― Lynn Margulis
“Sergestid shrimp, he suggests, acquired, integrated, and put to work at least four intact genomes. To Williamson the inheritance of these acquired genomes, not random mutations, determines the evolutionary success of these shrimp today.”
― Lynn Margulis, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory Of The Origin Of Species