Taxonomy quotes

The study of taxonomy in its broadest sense is probably the oldest branch of biology or natural history as well as the basis for all the other branches, since the first step in obtaining any knowledge of things about us is to discriminate between them and to learn to recognize them.
-- Richard E. Blackwelder

#Taxonomy #Branches #Firsts
[About a conference on Systematic Biology] Many interesting statements were made that apply directly to the work of taxonomists. In some cases the interest lay in the value of the suggestion and sometimes in the obvious need for rebuttal.
-- Richard E. Blackwelder

#Interesting #Needs #Taxonomy
I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.
-- Rick Moody

#Taxonomy #Way #Breaking Down
It feltâ€”nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinosâ€”that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.
-- Siddhartha Mukherjee

#Cancer #Years #Taxonomy
But the poetry side is what appeals more to me today. Metaphor, just absurd linkages and coming up with categories, labeling, taxonomy, and I'd say that I do have some tools left. There are days I can't make a sentence out of anything, and anything I make looks clunky to me. But I still have a general grasp of the cliché, of the generic sentence. And if I didn't have that, I'd be a blob of putty on the floor.
-- Richard Meltzer

#Tools #Looks #Taxonomy

I can't paint. I can't write. I can't sing. But I can decorate and run a house, and light it, and heat it, and have it like a living thing.
The most magical moments for me come from the little ones in elementary school. They ask adorable and meaningful questions.
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth.
Mazomanie doesn't even have a stoplight, so it doesn't do a lot. But the cheese curds there are unbelievable. I've never had them anywhere else, even at places in California that claim to have the real thing. There's a cheese factory in Arena, Mazomanie's neighboring town, and they'll give you fresh curds that are so amazing.
A person's character is what it is. It's a little like a marriage - only without the option of divorce. You can work on it and try to make it better, but basically you have to take the bitter with the sweet.
Simply put, I believe we should not seek the lowest common denominator when it comes to wilderness and saddle a wilderness designation with exceptions, exclusions, and exemptions.
Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.
Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.
The most irritating experience for an artist is to have his work criticized before it is finished.