Evolution Quotes - Page 17

All geologic history is full of the beginning and the ends of species-of their first and last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of development.

Hugh Miller

Science, History, Development

Hugh Miller (1857). “The Testimony of the Rocks”, p.220

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All Modern Men are descended from a Wormlike creature but it shows more on some people.

Will Cuppy

Science, Men, People

Will Cuppy, P. G. Wodehouse (2005). “How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes”, p.18, David R. Godine Publisher

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An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

John B. S. Haldane

Stars, Science, Would Be

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And no one has the right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps will ever do. But surely ... they would have put it into spirits, or into the Illustrated News, or perhaps cut it into two halves, poor dear little thing, and sent one to Professor Owen, and one to Professor Huxley, to see what they would each say about it.

Charles Kingsley

Baby, Science, Cutting

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Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; ... 'So careful of the type', but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go' ... Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law- Tho' Nature red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Dream, Nature, Prayer

Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Obiit MDCCCXXXIIi (Entire)”

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As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at our thumbs, still learning to use the brand-new gift of language. Being so young, we can be excused all sorts of folly and can permit ourselves the hope that someday, as a species, we will begin to grow up.

Lewis Thomas

Growing Up, Learning, Science

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As for the presence of large NGF [nerve growth factor] sources in snake venom and male genital organs, they may be conceived as instances of bizarre evolutionary gene expression.

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Science, Expression, Snakes

"The Saga of the Nerve Growth Factor: Preliminary Studies, Discovery, Further Development".

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As you kind of get over the anxiety about [science and evolution], it actually adds to your sense of awe about this amazing universe that we live in, it doesn't subtract from it at all.

Francis Collins

Science, Anxiety, Add

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Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.

Francis Crick

Science, Origin Of Life, Mind

Francis Crick (2008). “What Mad Pursuit”, p.104, Hachette UK

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Biology is a science of three dimensions. The first is the study of each species across all levels of biological organization, molecule to cell to organism to population to ecosystem. The second dimension is the diversity of all species in the biosphere. The third dimension is the history of each species in turn, comprising both its genetic evolution and the environmental change that drove the evolution. Biology, by growing in all three dimensions, is progressing toward unification and will continue to do so.

E. O. Wilson

Science, Ecosystems, Organization

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But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. Not the man who finds a grain of new and precious quality but to him who sows it, reaps it, grinds it and feeds the world on it.

Francis Darwin

Science, Men, Ideas

Eugenics Review, Apr. 1914

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But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this;-we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular ease, but by the establishment of general laws.

William Whewell

Science, Law, Events

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Consider a cow. A cow doesn't have the problem-solving skill of a chimpanzee, which has discovered how to get termites out of the ground by putting a stick into a hole. Evolution has developed the brain's ability to solve puzzles, and at the same time has produced in our brain a pleasure of solving problems.

Martin Gardner

Science, Skills, Brain

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Contrary to the legend, Darwin's finches do not appear to have inspired his earliest theoretical views on evolution, even after he finally became an evolutionist in 1837; rather it was his evolutionary views that allowed him, retrospectively, to understand the complex case of the finches.

Frank Sulloway

Science, Views, Legends

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Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life-yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammarabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

Michael Shermer

Native American, School, Science

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Darwin abolished special creations, contributed the Origin of Species and hitched all life together in one unbroken procession of Siamese Twins, the whole evolved by natural and orderly processes from one microscopic parent germ.

Mark Twain

Life, Science, Parent

Mark Twain (2003). “Tales of Wonder”, p.223, U of Nebraska Press

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Darwin was a biological evolutionist, because he was first a uniformitarian geologist. Biology is pre-eminent to-day among the natural sciences, because its younger sister, Geology, gave it the means.

Charles Lapworth

Mean, Science, Firsts

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Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

George Wald

Science, Editing, Choices

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Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-a splinter movement ... who believe that every word in the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean.

Stephen Jay Gould

Believe, Home, Mean

Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.270, Harvard University Press

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Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information.

Stephen Jay Gould

Independent, Science, Information

Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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Evolutionary plasticity can be purchased only at the ruthlessly dear price of continuously sacrificing some individuals to death from unfavourable mutations. Bemoaning this imperfection of nature has, however, no place in a scientific treatment of this subject.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Sacrifice, Science, Imperfection

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Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired. Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds.

Donald Cram

Dream, Science, Knowing

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Fifty years from now if an understanding of man's origins, his evolution, his history, his progress is not in the common place of the school books we shall not exist.

Jacob Bronowski

Book, School, Science

"'The Ascent of Man' ('The Long Childhood')". Documentary TV Mini-Series, Episode 13, 1973.

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Five per cent vision is better than no vision at all. Five per cent hearing is better than no hearing at all. Five per cent flight efficiency is better than no flight at all. It is thoroughly believable that every organ or apparatus that we actually see is the product of a smooth trajectory through animal space, a trajectory in which every intermediate stage assisted survival and reproduction.

Richard Dawkins

Science, Animal, Space

Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.96, W. W. Norton & Company

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For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs-as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

Charles Darwin

Dog, Sacrifice, Order

The Descent of Man ch. 21 (1871)

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