Bill Bryson Quotes

You know how we'd get along better? If everybody'd just remember how we're all related. White, black, Asian, skin. No difference. All the bloodlines go back to that one old mama in Africa.

All animals are minor variations on a very particular theme.

Everyone's pedigree merges into everyone else's pedigree. So if you go back far enough, everyone is related.

My sister and I are opposites in many ways. She is six feet tall, while I'm five feet four.

If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion, but it means that you share DNA. I think it's fascinating.

Everyone is related to Africa; everyone comes from Africa. We are all distant relatives.

Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch.

If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion, but it means that you share DNA.

All advances by degrees in Nature, and nothing by leaps …. Although there may exist in some other world species intermediate between Man and the Apes, Nature has thought it is to remove them from us, in order to establish our superiority beyond question. I speak of intermediate species, and by no means limit myself to those leading to Man.

If I perceive in another person mainly the surface, I perceive mainly the differences,that which separates us. If I penetrate to the core, i perceive our identity, the fact of our brotherhood. This relatedness from center to center - instead of that from periphery to periphery - is 'central relatedness'.

All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life

All men are brothers, we like to say, half-wishing sometimes in secret it were not true. But perhaps it is true. And is the evolutionary line from protozoan to Spinoza any less certain? That also may be true. We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.

I suddenly realized that through no act of my own I had become biologically related to a new human being.

As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they debase religion even more than they misconstrue science. They are a motley collection to be sure, but their core of practical support lies with the evangelical right, and creationism is a mere stalking horse or subsidiary issue in a political program...The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the 'liberal' rhetoric of 'equal time'.

The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is like a man on horse back, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces.

But then, after all, we are all alike, for we are all derived from the monkey.

Some determined advocates of the vegetable system maintain, that the teeth and stomach of the monkey correspond, in structure, very closely with that of man, yet it lives on fruits - therefore if man followed nature, he would live on fruits and vegetables. But though the anatomical likeness between man and monkeys is striking, yet it is not complete; the difference may be and doubtless is precisely that which makes a difference of diet necessary to nourish and develope their dissimilar natures. Those who should live as the monkeys do would most closely resemble them.

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another - but which one? Differences are crucial.

We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.

Haemoglobin is a very large molecule by ordinary standards, containing about ten thousand atoms, but the chances are that your haemoglobin and mine are identical, and significantly different from that of a pig or horse. You may be impressed by how much human beings differ from one another, but if you were to look into the fine details of the molecules of which they are constructed, you would be astonished by their similarity.

As we learn to see each other through our spiritual eyes, the physical differences will cease to matter.

A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.

Regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of Man and the foot of the Gorilla are far more striking and important than the differences... be the differences between the hand and foot of Man and those of the Gorilla what they may the differences between those of the Gorilla and those of the lower Apes are much greater.

Every species, human and subhuman, has some distinguishing mark, so that you can tell a man from a beast, or a dog from a cow.

To be a leader means, especially, having the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those who permit leaders to lead.