Carl Linnaeus Quotes

Botany is based on fixed genera.

Nature’s economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none.

We admit as many genera as there are different groups of natural species of which the fructification has the same structure.

Fragments of the natural method must be sought with the greatest care. This is the first and last desideratum among botanists. Nature makes no jumps. All taxa show relationships on all sides like the countries on a map of the world.

Linnea- A plant of Lapland, lowly, insignificant, disregarded, flowering but for a brief space – from Linnaeus who resembles it.

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

A herbarium is better than any illustration; every botanist should make one.

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discovers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.

If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too.