82 Quotes by Luther Burbank

The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love. While I was conducting experiments to make spineless cacti, I often talked to the plants. . . . "You have nothing to fear," I would tell them. "You don't need your defensive thorns. I will protect you." Gradually the useful plant of the desert emerged in a thornless variety.

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best to at least rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

Less than fifteen per cent of the people do any original thinking on any subject. The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think.

Nature's law affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws, you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.

Men should stop fighting among themselves and start fighting insects.

It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.

If the creatures with fur/feathers/fins are our brothers in a lower stage of development then their very weakness and inability to protest, demands that man should refrain from torturing them for the mere possibility of obtaining some knowledge which he believes may be to his own interest.

Plants are as responsive to thought as children.

Do not feed children on a maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature. Let their souls drink in all that is pure and sweet. Rear them, if possible, amid pleasant surroundings ... Let nature teach them the lessons of good and proper living, combined with an abundance of well-balanced nourishment. Those children will grow to be the best men and women. Put the best in them by contact with the best outside. They will absorb it as a plant absorbs the sunshine and the dew.