Evolution Quotes - Page 23

• This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

  Herbert Spencer

  Science, Survival, Multiplication

  'Principles of Biology' (1865) pt. 3, ch. 12, 164.

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• To be anthropocentric is to remain unaware of the limits of human nature, the significance of biological processes underlying human behavior, and the deeper meaning of long-term genetic evolution.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Long, Limits

  4 Copy quote

• To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.

  Francis Crick

  Nature, Lying, Science

  16 Copy quote

• Uniformity and Evolution are one.

  Charles Lapworth

  Science, Uniformity

  4 Copy quote

• Unity of plan everywhere lies hidden under the mask: of diversity of structure-the complex is everywhere evolved out of the simple.

  Thomas Huxley

  Lying, Science, Simple

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.101

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are the accidental result of an unplanned process ... the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the predictable product of any definite process.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Process, Results

  6 Copy quote

• We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.

  Asa Gray

  Philosophical, Science, Animal

  Asa Gray (1973). “Letters of Asa Gray”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We may... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth... The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Nature, Science, Understanding

  53 Copy quote

• We see not only thought as participating in evolution as an anomaly or as an epiphenomenon; but evolution as so reducible to and identifiable with a progress towards thought that the movement of our souls expresses and measures the very stages of progress of evolution itself. Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Science, Men, Soul

  31 Copy quote

• We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Men, Tails

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.6833, Delphi Classics

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, it [evolution] is a theory, it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.

  Ronald Reagan

  School, Science, Biblical

  6 Copy quote

• When Franklin drew the lightning from the clouds, he little dreamed that in the evolution of science his discovery would illuminate the torch of Liberty for France and America. The rays from this beacon, lighting this gateway to the continent, will welcome the poor and the persecuted with the hope and promise of homes and citizenship.

  Chauncey Depew

  Dream, Home, Science

  Chauncey Mitchell Depew (1902). “The Library of Oratory: Ancient and Modern, with Critical Studies of the World's Great Orators by Eminent Essayists”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Opportunity, Brain

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.3, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain-that is, the fittest would survive.

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Science, Race, Self

  23 Copy quote

• Yet man does recognise himself [as an animal]. But I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history, I certainly know of none... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Science, Animal, Men

  44 Copy quote

• You know, all is development. The principle is perpetually going on. First, there was nothing, then there was something; then-I forget the next-I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came-let me see-did we come next? Never mind that; we came at last. And at the next change there will be something very superior to us-something with wings. Ah! That's it: we were fishes, and I believe we shall be crows.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Believe, Science, Thinking

  Benjamin Disraeli (1847). “Tancred: Or, The New Crusade”, p.124

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, 'That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,' you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong.

  Charles Kingsley

  Wise, Science, Boys

  Charles Kingsley (2015). “The Water-Babies”, p.38, Booklassic

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Science, Process, Stem

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1995). “Hymn of the Universe”, p.15, Рипол Классик

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but ... it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it ... I was surprised that so many people seemed not only unaware of the elegant and beautiful solution to this deepest of problems but, incredibly, in many cases actually unaware that there was a problem in the first place!

  Richard Dawkins

  Beautiful, Science, People

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.7, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines. Is it any wonder that many sadly turn away from faith concluding that they cannot believe in a God who asks for an abandonment of logic and reason?

  Francis Collins

  Believe, Views, Discipline

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The succession of individuals, connected by reproduction and belonging to a species, makes it possible for the specific form itself to last for ages. In the end, however, the species is temporary; it has no "eternal life." After existing for a certain period, it either dies or is converted by modification into other forms.

  Ernst Haeckel

  Life, Science, Age

  Ernst Haeckel (1904). “Wonders of life”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We do not draw conclusions with our eyes, but with our reasoning powers, and if the whole of the rest of living nature proclaims with one accord from all sides the evolution of the world of organisms, we cannot assume that the process stopped short of Man. But it follows also that the factors which brought about the development of Man from his Simian ancestry must be the same as those which have brought about the whole of evolution.

  August Weismann

  Nature, Eye, Science

  6 Copy quote

• We have long been seeking a different kind of evolutionary process and have now found one; namely, the change within the pattern of the chromosomes. ... The neo-Darwinian theory of the geneticists is no longer tenable.

  Richard Goldschmidt

  Science, Long, Different

  54 Copy quote

• Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1,000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition.

  Lawrence Hargrave

  Future, Science, Ideas

  14 Copy quote