# Quote — Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

> Despite declining catches, New England fishermen continue to receive state and federal tax incentives that encourage them — in some cases all but compel them — to acquire bigger boats and to harvest the seas more intensively. Today the fishermen of Massachusetts are reduced to fishing the hideous hagfish, for which there is a slight market in the Far East, but even their numbers are now falling.

- Author: [Bill Bryson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson.md)
- Book: [A Short History of Nearly Everything](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything.md)
- Page: 285
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Bryson#A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/despite-declining-catches

## More from this book

> In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.

p. 53 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/in-france-a-chemist.md)

> It is natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity — in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes — an interesting side branch.

p. 311 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/it-is-natural.md)

> Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.

p. 380 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/disassemble-the-cells.md)