Michael Novacek Quotes (6 Quotes)

We know that you can only get avian flu from getting in contact with a chicken or a bird species with it. That's bad enough. We don't transfer it from one human to another, which is really bad But from the infective agent's point of view, the virus' point of view, its going to say 'to be more adaptive, maybe I'll switch hosts, and I'll adapt to a system where humans are transferring to each other.' We wouldn't even have a concept of that or a worry of that without Darwin's theory of evolution.

We respect people's beliefs, and conversion is not necessarily our goal. We hope that every visitor will have a clearer idea of what Darwin did and, for that matter, what science means.

our hope is to make it emphatically clear just how important Darwin's work is to modern science and to what we and other scientists do in everyday life.

The doubts about Darwin's theory are very much like the doubts heard 150 years ago. The show is not about the controversy but about Darwin's life and adventures.

Dinosaurs have been incredibly popular for decades. So many kids and adults -- who sometimes don't admit they love them -- love dinosaurs, there's no question about it. There's also no question that really dazzling movies like 'Jurassic Park' and 'Lost World' raise a lot of interest.

When curators at the American Museum of Natural History began planning an exhibition on Darwin three years ago, they didn't anticipate a roiling national debate about evolution and intelligent design. We didn't think the issue would be as white-hot as it is right now, ... It kind of raised the ante for us. My sense was, let's make this show good, because people really want to see it. They need it.