Social Darwinism Quotes

• There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist.

  Jonah Goldberg

  People, Leader, Intellectual

  "Do Liberals Live Under A 'Tyranny Of Cliches'?". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. May 2, 2012.

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• The predominant idea behind globalization, in its most virulent form, is an unpleasant kind of social Darwinism - that the world is for winners not losers, that only the successful count, that money is considerably more important than votes.

  Anita Roddick

  Successful, Ideas, Important

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• In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Two, Race, Europe

  "Europe’s New Anti-Semitism" by Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 11, 2012.

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• Carnegie believed in the survival of the fittest. He believed in Social Darwinism. He believed that you had to give an opportunity to the fittest, who were going to survive, to the fittest to rise themselves as high as they could.

  David Nasaw

  Opportunity, Giving, Survival

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• ... what's been building since the 1980's is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. That's what will last after this flurry on family values.

  Stephanie Coontz

  Family, Politics, Lasts

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• It is clear that 'social Darwinism' and 'survival of the fittest' were intended by Obama to evoke feelings of fear and disgust. It is highly doubtful that Obama knows anything about the history of these ideas, and it is even more doubtful that he cares. A concern for truth is not the coin of the political realm.

  George H. Smith

  Ideas, Political, Feelings

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• Since the universe is stupid, it's no wonder that social Darwinism tends to support, promote and finance the evolution of fools.

  William C. Brown

  Stupid, Support, Fool

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• Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker. Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute.

  Peter Singer

  Long, Littles, Philosopher

  Peter Singer (2011). “The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress”, p.61, Princeton University Press

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• ... no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Data, Support, Atheism

  Stephen Jay Gould (2006). “The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)”, p.238, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Im not advocating social Darwinism, I am witnessing actual Darwinism.
  If you are in a camp with a bunch of campers, and a bear attacks, you don't have to be faster than the bear.
  You only have to be faster than the slowest camper

  Michael Ruppert

  Bears, Social, Advocating

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