LUTHER BURBANK

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection.

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.

Science is knowledge arranged and classified according to truth, facts, and the general laws of nature.

In the span of my own lifetime I observed such wondrous progress in plant evolution that I look forward optimistically to a healthy, happy world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational living.

Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

Less than fifteen per cent of the people do any original thinking on any subject. The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think.

If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weed.

For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

If you violate Nature's laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.

The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.

We must return to nature and nature's god.

As a scientist I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired. As for their prophets, there are as many today as ever before, only now science refuses to let them overstep the bounds of common sense.

I have seen myself lose intolerance, narrowness, bigotry, complacence, pride and a whole bushel-basket of other intellectual vices through my contact with Nature and with men. And when you take weeds out of a garden it gives you room to grow flowers. So, every time I lost a little self-satisfaction, or arrogance, I could plant some broadness or love of my own in its place, and after a while the garden of my mind began to bloom and be fragrant and I found myself better equipped for my work and more useful to others as a consequence.

It appears to me as a great joke, but one which will educate the public and thus reduce the number of bigots.

Men should stop fighting among themselves and start fighting insects.

Several of my young acquaintances are in their graves who gave promise of making happy and useful citizens and there is no question whatever that cigarettes alone were the cause of their destruction.

Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our own judgment and reason, listening to the voice within, not to the noisy babel without. Most of us possess discriminating reasoning powers. Can we use them or must we be fed by others like babes?

As a scientist, I can not help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired.The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God.

Prayer may be elevating if combined with work, and they who labor with head, hands or feet have faith and are generally quite sure of an immediate and favorable reply.

As a scientist, I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation . . . I am an infidel today. I do not believe what had been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no.

The lure of happiness and the fear of pain . . . are the two forces which have through untold millenniums kept what we usually call life from destruction by the ever encroaching outside forces of destruction.

Children are the greatest sufferers from outgrown theologies.

I have learned from Nature that dependence on unnatural beliefs weakens us in the struggle and shortens our breath for the race.