Gradualism Quotes

• The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Secret, Paleontology, Records

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• Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Children, Real, Dark

  "I Have a Dream". Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. August 28, 1963.

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• Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Dark, Justice, Path

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Children, Reality, Justice

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Real, Luxury, America

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Practice, Liberty, Libertarian

  William Lloyd Garrison, Bruce Rogers (1905). “The Words of Garrison: A Centennial Selection (1805-1905) of Characteristic Sentiments from the Writings of William Lloyd Garrison”

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• The history of life is more adequately represented by a picture of 'punctuated equilibria' than by the notion of phyletic gradualism. The history of evolution is not one of stately unfolding, but a story of homeostatic equilibria, disturbed only 'rarely' (i.e. rather often in the fullness of time) by rapid and episodic events of speciation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Events, Stories, History Of Life

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• Has not the experience of two centuries shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice? Is there an instance, in the history of the world, where slaves have been educated for freedom by their task-masters?

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Practice, Two, Tasks

  William Lloyd Garrison, Bruce Rogers (1905). “The Words of Garrison: A Centennial Selection (1805-1905) of Characteristic Sentiments from the Writings of William Lloyd Garrison”

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• The Revolution won't happen with guns, rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism.

  Max Horkheimer

  Education, Philosophy, Moving

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• The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. It in fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Yield, Theory Of Evolution, Doe

  Stephen Jay Gould (2002). “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory”, p.990, Harvard University Press

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• This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Luxury, Drug, I Have A Dream Speech

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record.

  Ernst Mayr

  Long, Population, Different

  Ernst Mayr (1991). “One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought”, p.138, Harvard University Press

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• Hillary Clinton's such a classic Democratic political figure and believes so much in institutions and in gradualism in the old way of reaching compromises with the opposition in the back rooms. That's what she did in Congress. It's what I imagine she'll try to do in the White House.

  George Packer

  Believe, White, House

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties.

  Mark Levin

  Imperfection, Liberty, Weakness

  Mark R. Levin (2012). “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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