Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Alice Roberts - Page 2

As an anthropologist, I believe strongly in our common humanity. We can rise above the tribal divisions that have caused so much anguish and real damage in the past.

When I started doing television, I was very aware my clothes would be obvious and it was a great opportunity to promote brands which are made with respect to people and the environment.

While planting woodlands along rivers has been shown to work in small areas, it has been unclear whether it would be effective on a larger scale. But computer modelling indicates that restoring forests on floodplains could slow floodwaters and reduce the height of the flood downstream.

Stonehenge is famously aligned with midsummer sunrise, and possibly also intentionally with midwinter sunset.

Our ape legs make us great generalists - we can walk, run and climb. But when you try to do too many things at once, you can end up with problems.

If a group of humans began to run regularly, perhaps allowing them to hunt or scavenge more effectively, anatomical changes would follow, especially among the still-developing youngsters.

I know a bit about vertebrate anatomy and I'd like to think that I'd spot if a skeleton was entirely fabricated or cobbled together from existing bits and pieces.

And when you take something like the changing colour of autumn leaves and start to ask why, you're starting off on an intellectual journey which will take you beyond that moment of visual satisfaction, while robbing nothing from that experience.

Science plays a huge role in our lives. We're surrounded by technology, we depend on it.

Of course 'Horizon' had made an impact on me from a young age, but it was also humbling to meet and interview eminent scientists, and hear their high opinion of the series and of the science presented on the BBC more generally.

The human knee is complex and prone to failure in a variety of ways; there's a lot of muscle mass low down in the legs which makes moving them fairly inefficient.

I was a goth in my student days. I dyed my hair black, but it came out grey, with a blue scalp. Then I dyed it red and it came out fuschia pink.

Our long, flexible lumbar spines are great in many ways - they help us to run efficiently, for instance. But they have their drawbacks. The lumbar vertebrae are under great strain, and as we age, the ligaments that hold the pulpy centres of the intervertebral discs in place dry out.

Look what consumer power has done with organic food; we can do the same with clothes.

When I was in my 20s, and even though I was studying medicine, I didn't ever really think that my body would fail. Now I'm in my 40s, I have to face a different reality - I, like everyone else, am slowly falling apart.

The real hallmarks of humanity are: curiosity and an amazing ability to cooperate.

I consider myself to be a relatively sceptical person. I like to see evidence for myself, and try to avoid speculating beyond available evidence. But I also have to accept some things on trust.

Always attempting to tame and subjugate nature is not the solution. But the latest science is helping us to map out a path across this shifting landscape in uncertain times, showing us how to work with natural forces, not against them.

From a very young age, parents are pushing their boys to achieve in a way they don't always do for girls.

I've always loved the seaside and I used to be a fairly keen surfer, but it's a solitary activity so when my husband and I had children, we bought sit-on-top kayaks. Whenever possible, we escape to the coast or explore rivers with them.

The important thing is when you look at areas like physics and you realise that only one in five A-level students is a girl. We know it isn't about aptitude.

One way I try to manage it is by not having a princess party for my daughter and trying to do things that are not so stereotyped. But if she's invited to a princess party, of course I'm not going to stop her going.

I was a fairly strict vegetarian - I ate eggs and dairy products but nothing that would involve killing an animal to furnish the food on my plate.

My mum was an art teacher, so we used to have fantastic dressing-up costumes when we were little.

The history of palaeontology is littered with examples of famous frauds and fakes, often with eminent researchers in the field being thoroughly hoodwinked by some fairly shoddy fabrications.

Pagan Romans started their midwinter celebrations with the feast of Saturnalia on 17 December, ending them with a new year festival, the Kalendae Januariae, at the start of January - both were celebrated with parties and the exchange of gifts.

As well as tasting fantastic, blackberries are good for you. Anthocyanin isn't just a pigment, it's a flavonoid, a heroic antioxidant! The stuff of superfoods!

Science offers us the possibility of understanding natural rhythms and events that must have seemed like the work of angry and unpredictable gods to our ancestors.

The colour of a British wood in autumn is predominantly yellow. There are relatively few European trees which have red leaves in the autumn. But there are splashes of crimson or rust-red colours from a few indigenous trees, like the rowan, as well as from introduced species, like the North American red oak.

We're not the only mammals who are partial to blackberries, far from it. Foxes and badgers will also gobble them up, helping to distribute the seeds, which survive the transit through the gut.

In our evolutionary narratives, the organism itself often seems to play a passive role: a powerless victim, almost, of changes to its environment or mutations in its genes.

Later, I found it too hard to give up, and so I've continued eating fish and other seafood, while trying to ensure it's sustainably sourced. This means I'm now one of those vegetarians I used to frown at - one who occasionally eats fish.

I'm a firm believer in teaching children to manage risk.

I don't think anyone is saying that we should be treating boys and girls exactly the same and that we should try to eliminate all differences. What the psychologists who do this work are saying is we should be aware of it and careful about it, especially if we think it could be limiting choices.

Around 4000BC, the Mesolithic, hunter-gatherer way of life here gave way to a more settled, farming existence. Those Neolithic people built wooden trackways across the salt marshes and reed beds.

Eighteen years later, pregnant with my first child, I started eating fish. Oily fish in particular contains plenty of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, essential for neural development.

I love Christmas. At this very special time of year, when the sun appears only fleetingly to those of us living in the northern hemisphere, I feel a deep connection with ancient ancestors.

It seems that humans have been enjoying the taste and health benefits of blackberries for thousands of years. Gathered blackberries have been found at Neolithic sites, while a preserved iron age bog body, known as Haraldskaer Woman, provides definite evidence of blackberry ingestion.

Evolutionary biologists have long pondered the phenomenon of the changing colours of autumn leaves. It's possible that the red pigments are manufactured in the leaf as a side-effect of something else that's happening at this time.

I gave up meat when I was 18, and it was an ethical decision. I loved the taste, and went on holiday to Greece, fairly gorging myself on lamb souvlaki before taking the plunge into a meatless existence.