Search the Archive

"The wild life of nature, regarded simply as woodland glades, murmuring brooks, fragrant flowers and songful birds, or the tranquil emptiness of a seascape in calm weather, is restful and refreshing af…"

"Earth has no more distressing spectacle than that of a predator suddenly striking down some defenseless creature innocently singing or attending its young, no sight more pitifully repulsive than the h…"

"Animals more obviously violate the concept of goodness, for none can live without tearing and devouring other organized beings, whether vegetables or other animals, or else sapping their strength as n…"

"Dr. Alexander Skutch - Bibliographic notes from Tropical Science Center"

"That evolution has accomplished much that is splendid and admirable, it would be ungrateful to deny. That the means it has employed have often been ruthlessly harsh is a proposition to which every com…"

"After long pondering, I believe that I can define good and evil in terms to which even a biologist of the mechanical school can hardly take exception. At least, I fancy that I can do so for evil. The …"

"New York Times: Alexander Skutch, 99, Expert On Central American Birds"

"a great evil that a wise or benevolent creator would have avoided."

"I have come to view vegetarianism as a standing protest against predation, which is life's greatest evil. If there were no other argument in its favor, that would be sufficient."

"Sometimes, especially in inclement weather, incubating birds continue to cover their eggs while hungry, and even when they would appear to be suffering acutely from a long-continued fast. Many marine …"

"Beyond the limits of the most comprehensive actual society are living creatures whom our moral impulse bids us to include within our system of organized, reciprocal relations, although up to the prese…"

"The evolutionary impulsion to increase fecundity, technically known as fitness, at whatever cost is responsible for most of the ugliness, strife, and suffering that afflict the living community on the…"

"the abode of a vast diversity of creatures dwelling in concord a place of mixed character, where beauty and ugliness, peace and fear, happiness and horror, mingle together in the most perplexing contr…"

"Alexander Skutch, a Naturalist in Costa Rica"