It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner.
Jonas SalkRead
If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Insects are crucial to the survival of ecosystems, while humans have a more detrimental impact on the environment.
This quote by Jonas Salk highlights the vital role insects play in maintaining ecological balance; their disappearance would lead to catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth. Conversely, the quote suggests that the absence of humans would allow nature to thrive and rejuvenate, underscoring the impact human activity has on the planet.
Themes
InsectsNatureEcologyLifeEnvironmentHumans
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about environmental conservation, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of protecting insect populations.
More from Jonas Salk
All quotes →Life is an error-making and an error-correctin g process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive.
Jonas SalkRead
In my view, art and the approach to life through art, using it as a vehicle for education and even for doing science is so vital that it is part of a great new revolution that is taking place. I believe we are entering a whole new epoch.
Jonas SalkRead
There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.
Jonas SalkRead
Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed: It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe.
Jonas SalkRead
I'm saying that we should trust our intuition. I believe that the principles of universal evolution are revealed to us through intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition and our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems.
Jonas SalkRead
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What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
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There is continual spring, and harvest there Continual, both meeting at one time: For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear, And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime, And eke attonce the heavy trees they climb, Which seem to labour under their fruits load: The whiles the joyous birds make their pastime Amongst the shady leaves, their sweet above, And their true loves without suspicion tell abroad.
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Nothing in all nature is so lovely and so vigorous, so perfectly at home in its environment, as a fish in the sea. Its surroundings give to it a beauty, quality, and power which are not its own. We take it out, and at once a poor, limp dull thing, fit for nothing, is gasping away its life. So the soul, sunk in God, living the life of prayer, is supported, filled, transformed in beauty, by a vitality and a power which are not its own.
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But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.
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Hear and attend and listen; for this is what befell and be-happened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild -as wild as wild could be - and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself and all places were alike to him
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Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.
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