Evolution Quotes - Page 18

• 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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• For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.

  Richard Leakey

  Creativity, Science, Years

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• Forty thousand years of evolution and we've barely even tapped the vastness of human potential.

  David Koepp

  Science, Years, Vastness

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• Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by a few observations, to ascertain the history of this world, and the series of events which preceded the birth of the human race?

  Georges Cuvier

  Science, Men, Space

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• History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Time, Science, History

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I like people. I like animals, too-whales and quail, dinosaurs and dodos. But I like human beings especially, and I am unhappy that the pool of human germ plasm, which determines the nature of the human race, is deteriorating.

  Linus Pauling

  Science, Animal, Whales

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Fall, Science, Men

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, J. R. De J. Jackson (2000). “Lectures 1818-1819 on the history of philosophy”, Bollingen Foundation

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• If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.

  Herbert Spencer

  Science, Men, Cells

  Herbert Spencer (1864). “The Principles of Biology”, p.350

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• If the germ plasm wants to swim in the ocean, it makes itself a fish; if the germ plasm wants to fly in the air, it makes itself a bird. If it wants to go to Harvard, it makes itself a man. The strangest thing of all is that the germ plasm that we carry around within us has done all those things. There was a time, hundreds of millions of years ago, when it was making fish. Then ... amphibia ... reptiles ... mammals, and now it's making men.

  George Wald

  Ocean, Science, Men

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• If they [enlightened men] take any interest in examining, in the infancy of our species, the almost obliterated traces of so many nations that have become extinct, they will doubtless take a similar interest in collecting, amidst the darkness which covers the infancy of the globe, the traces of those revolutions which took place anterior to the existence of all nations.

  Georges Cuvier

  Science, Men, Darkness

  Georges Cuvier (Barón, (), Robert Jameson (1817). “Essay on the Theory of the Earth”, p.3

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• If we look round the world, there seem to be not above six distinct varieties in the human species, each of which is strongly marked, and speaks the kind seldom to have mixed with any other. But there is nothing in the shape, nothing in the faculties, that shows their coming from different originals; and the varieties of climate, of nourishment, and custom, are sufficient to produce every change.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Science, Looks, World

  Oliver Goldsmith (1823). “A history of the earth, and animated nature”, p.2

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• In the animal world, on the other hand, the process of evolution is characterised by the progressive discrimination of the animal and vegetative functions, and a consequent differentiation of these two great provinces into their separate departments.

  Wilhelm Wundt

  Science, Animal, Hands

  Wilhelm Max Wundt (1969). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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• In the process of natural selection, then, any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Generations, Natural

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• It is because of his brain that he [modern man] has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above.

  Will Cuppy

  Science, Men, Animal

  "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes".

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• It is certainly true in the United States that there is an uneasiness about certain aspects of science, particularly evolution, because it conflicts, in some people's minds, with their sense of how we all came to be. But you know, if you are a believer in God, it's hard to imagine that God would somehow put this incontrovertible evidence in front of us about our relationship to other living organisms and expect us to disbelieve it. I mean, that doesn't make sense at all.

  Francis Collins

  Mean, Science, Imagination

  "Dr. Francis Collins: ‘There Is An Uneasiness’ About Evolution". www.huffingtonpost.com. January 25, 2014.

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• It is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species. Novelties come from previously unseen association of old material. To create is to recombine.

  Francois Jacob

  Science, Giving, Association

  François Jacob, Nadine Peyrieras, Michel Morange (2002). “Travaux scientifiques de François Jacob”, p.709, Odile Jacob

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• It is with our entire past ... that we desire, will and act ... from this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person ... that is why our duration is irreversible.

  Henri Bergson

  Science, Past, Survival

  Henri Bergson (2014). “Creative Evolution”, p.13, Lulu Press, Inc

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• It is, I believe, justifiable to make the generalization that anything an organic chemist can synthesize can be made without him. All he does is increase the probability that given reactions will 'go.' So it is quite reasonable to assume that given sufficient time and proper conditions, nucleotides, amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids will arise by reactions that, though less probable, are as inevitable as those by which the organic chemist fulfills his predictions. So why not self-duplicating virus-like systems capable of further evolution?

  George Wells Beadle

  Believe, Science, Self

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• It will be possible, through the detailed determination of amino-acid sequences of hemoglobin molecules and of other molecules too, to obtain much information about the course of the evolutionary process, and to illuminate the question of the origin of species.

  Linus Pauling

  Determination, Science, Illumination

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• Snicker on hearing his name: 'the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.'

  Gustave Flaubert

  Science, Thinking, Names

  Gustave Flaubert (1968). “Dictionary of Accepted Ideas”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

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