Evolution Quotes - Page 11

• Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can only be doubted by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or plain bigotry.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Block, Emotional, Ignorant

  "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". The American Biology Teacher, volume 35, p.125-9, March, 1973.

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• Evolution... is the most powerful and the most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on Earth.

  Julian Huxley

  Powerful, Science, Ideas

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• Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.

  Julian Huxley

  Synthesis, Modern

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• I have watched all the work going on there, and the more I see of it the more I am convinced that Mendelism has nothing to do with evolution.

  Ernest MacBride

  Science, Convinced

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• It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part of general education. Indeed, our so-called "educated classes" are to this day in total ignorance of the most important circumstances and the most remarkable phenomena which Anthropogeny has brought to light.

  Ernst Haeckel

  Ignorance, Science, Men

  Ernst Haeckel (1883). “The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny”

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• Of these three essential factors, space might be said to be one with which biogeography is primarily concerned. However space necessarily interplays with time and form, therefore the three factors are as one of biogeographic concern.

  Leon Croizat

  Science, Space, Essentials

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• All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Sex, Loss, Science

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• Looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker... the social instincts, - the prime principle of man's moral constitution - with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you; do ye to them likewise"; and this lies at the foundation of morality.

  Charles Darwin

  Lying, Men, Intellectual

  "The Descent of Man". Book by Charles Darwin, part I, chap. IV, 1871.

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• God made all the animals in a single day; he could have swept them all away in the flood and re-created them in one day when they were again needed. Therefore it was an odd idea to save specimens of them for eleven months in the ark, whilst aware that eight persons could not feed or water them by any human possibility. If they were to be preserved by miracle, the ark was not necessary - to let them swim would have answered the purpose and been more indubitably miraculous.

  Mark Twain

  Animal, Eight, Ideas

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• On a global picture, if you look at the evolution of the shopping business model, many consumers tend to ask for faster shopping, which explains why e-commerce is so successful. I think the fashion clients will be more and more demanding of uniqueness and mix, match, and create-your-own-look silhouettes, as opposed to head-to-toe designers looks. Limited collections are very important, in my opinion. They put ready-to-wear at a different level, and they create pleasure and individuality.

  Laure Heriard-Dubreuil

  Fashion, Successful, Thinking

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• The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Essence, Raw Materials

  Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.44, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of idealogy [sic], that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art etc.

  Friedrich Engels

  Art, Simple, Law

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• All I ever aim to do is to put the Development hypothesis in the same coach as the creation one. It will only be a question of who is to ride outside & who in after all.

  Joseph Dalton Hooker

  Science, Development, Creation

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• Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere.

  Jacques Monod

  Science, Views, Expression

  Jacques Monod (1971). “Chance and necessity: an essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology”

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• Evolution on the large scale unfolds, like much of human history, as a succession of dynasties.

  Edmund Beecher Wilson

  Science, History, Dynasty

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• For in disease the most voluntary or most special movements, faculties, etc., suffer first and most, that is in an order the exact opposite of evolution. Therefore I call this the principle of Dissolution.

  John Hughlings Jackson

  Science, Opposites, Order

  John Hughlings Jackson, James Taylor, Sir Gordon Holmes (1931). “Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson: On Epilepsy and epileptiform convulsions”

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• However, if we consider that all the characteristics which have been cited are only differences in degree of structure, may we not suppose that this special condition of organization of man has been gradually acquired at the close of a long period of time, with the aid of circumstances which have proved favorable? What a subject for reflection for those who have the courage to enter into it!

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Reflection, Men

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• I expect to think that I would rather be author of your book than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science.

  Joseph Dalton Hooker

  Book, Thinking

  Joseph Dalton Hooker, Leonard Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker O.M., G.C.S.I.”, p.511, Cambridge University Press

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• It has become accepted doctrine that we must attempt to study the whole man. Actually we cannot study even a whole tree or a whole guinea pig. But it is a whole tree and a whole guinea pig that have survived and evolved, and we must make the attempt.

  Gardner Murphy

  Science, Men, Pigs

  Gardner Murphy (1947). “Personality”

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• Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Mean, Responsibility, Science

  George Gaylord Simpson (1967). “The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man”, p.311, Yale University Press

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• Man is a megalomaniac among animals-if he sees mountains he will try to imitate them by pyramids, and if he sees some grand process like evolution, and thinks it would be at all possible for him to be in on that game, he would irreverently have to have his whack at that too. That daring megalomania of his-has it not brought him to his present place?

  Jacques Loeb

  Science, Animal, Men

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• Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.

  Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

  Nature, Blessed, Science

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• Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming!" That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world.

  Ernst Haeckel

  Life, Change, Science

  Ernst Haeckel (1904). “Wonders of life”

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• On consideration, it is not surprising that Darwin's finches should recognize their own kind primarily by beak characters. The beak is the only prominent specific distinction, and it features conspicuously both in attacking behaviour, when the birds face each other and grip beaks, and also in courtship, when food is passed from the beak of the male to the beak of the female. Hence though the beak differences are primarily correlated with differences in food, secondarily they serve as specific recognition marks, and the birds have evolved behaviour patterns to this end.

  David Lack

  Character, Science, Differences

  David Lack (1947). “Darwin's Finches”, p.54, CUP Archive

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• On the whole, at least in the author's experience, the preparation of species-specific antiserum fractions and the differentiation of closely related species with precipitin sera for serum proteins does not succeed so regularly as with agglutinins and lysins for blood cells. This may be due to the fact that in the evolutional scale the proteins undergo continuous variations whereas cell antigens are subject to sudden changes not linked by intermediary stages.

  Karl Landsteiner

  Science, Cells, Blood

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