Best Evolution Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 30

“Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull & undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite! Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.”

Science Water Animal Mankind Evolution Pleasant Swim Swimming Imperfect Ancestor Tails Skulls Genealogy Bladder Hermaphrodites

Book:Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution

Source: Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution

“Physio-philosophy has to show how, and in accordance indeed with what laws, the Material took its origin; and, therefore, how something derived its existence from nothing. It has to portray the first periods of the world's development from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms, they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and in Man attained self-consciousness.”

“Primates stand at a turning point in the course of evolution. Primates are to the biologist what viruses are to the biochemist. They can be analysed and partly understood according to the rules of a simpler discipline, but they also present another level of complexity: viruses are living chemicals, and primates are animals who love and hate and think.”

Thinking Science Hate Courses Animal Levels Evolution Discipline Understood Complexity Chemicals Viruses Turning Points Love And Hate Biologist Primates

Author:Alison Jolly

“Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.”

Reason Might Science Process Car Evolution Elements Train Destination Resolve Departure

Book:Under the Apple-Trees

Source: Under the Apple-Trees

“Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.”

Different Ends Might Science Taken Seeing Groups Evolution Diversity Bird Originals Structure Species Related Fancy

Book:On the Origin of Species

Source: On the Origin of Species

“Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee much later than others.”

Seems Science Evolution Folks Chimpanzees

Author:Kin Hubbard

“Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again- the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (-that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.”

Needs Mind Reason Science Strong Grows Loses Perfect Evolution Survival Weak Majority Species Acquire Again And Again

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.”

Art Science Order Nature Class Evolution Circumstances Species Variety Nature And Art

Author:Carl Linnaeus

“The central problem of biological evolution is the nature of mutation, but hitherto the occurrence of this has been wholly refractory and impossible to influence by artificial means, although a control of it might obviously place the process of evolution in our hands.”

Mean Has Beens Problem Hands Might Science Process Impossible Influence Evolution Biology Artificial Mutation Biological Evolution

Author:Hermann Joseph Muller

“The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes.”

World Firsts Doe Made Shows Science Change Animal Creation Evolution Mutation Epicurean

Author:Plutarch

“The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.”

Humans Science Understanding Progress Revolution Evolution Strongest Equations Impediments Human Thought

Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“The existence of trousers proves that God meant us to be bipeds.”

Science Existence Evolution Prove Science And Religion Trousers

Author:David C.H. Austin

“The first objection to Darwinism is that it is only a guess and was never anything more. It is called a "hypothesis," but the word "hypothesis," though euphonious, dignified and high-sounding, is merely a scientific synonym for the old-fashioned word "guess." If Darwin had advanced his views as a guess they would not have survived for a year, but they have floated for half a century, buoyed up by the inflated word "hypothesis." When it is understood that "hypothesis" means "guess," people will inspect it more carefully before accepting it.”

“The geologist, in those tables of stone which form his records, finds no examples of dynasties once passed away again returning. There has no repetition of the dynasty of the fish, of the reptile, of the mammal. The dynasty of the future is to have glorified man for its inhabitant; but it is to be the dynasty-"the kingdom"-not of glorified man made in the image of God, but of God himself in the form man.”

Source: The Testimony of the Rocks: Or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed

“The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.”

Thinking Men Persons Form Science Doubt Regret Evolution Conclusion I Regret Barbarians Organised Distasteful

Book:Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies

Source: Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies

“The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”

“The most consequential change in man's view of the world, of living nature and of himself came with the introduction, over a period of some 100 years beginning only in the 18th century, of the idea of change itself, of change over periods of time: in a word, of evolution.”

Men World Years Ideas Science Nature Views Century Evolution Periods Introduction 18th Century

Author:Ernst Mayr

“The neutral zone of selective advantage in the neighbourhood of zero is thus so narrow that changes in the environment, and in the genetic constitution of species, must cause this zone to be crossed and perhaps recrossed relatively rapidly in the course of evolutionary change, so that many possible gene substitutions may have a fluctuating history of advance and regression before the final balance of selective advantage is determined.”

May Science Courses Causes Environment Evolution Balance Advantage Constitution Species Finals Determined Zone Zero Genes Selective Substitution Neighbourhoods Regression

Author:Ronald Fisher

“The ordinary naturalist is not sufficiently aware that when dogmatizing on what species are, he is grappling with the whole question of the organic world & its connection with the time past & with Man; that it involves the question of Man & his relation to the brutes, of instinct, intelligence & reason, of Creation, transmutation & progressive improvement or development. Each set of geological questions & of ethnological & zool. & botan. are parts of the great problem which is always assuming a new aspect.”

“As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best - what we call goodness or virtue - involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless selfassertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect , but shall help his fellows. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process.”

“The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.”

Ifs Knows World Law Science Imagination Existence Keys Goes On Evolution Creatures Models Plant Envy Vain Logical Organisms Inventing Primal Phantoms Living Organisms Envy Me

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of 'decency.' The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.”

Ifs Firsts Done Body Science Religion Names White Evolution Breaths Fingers Teeth Evolve Organized Offensive Decency Tobacco Liquor Rite Coarse Forecasts

Author:Wyndham Lewis

“The question now at issue, whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and least mutilated by the hand of time.”

World States Hands Age Past Science Common Study Issues Creation Evolution Species Connected Former Extinction Monument Descent Relics

Book:The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man: With Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man: With Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation

“The real question is, Did God use evolution as His plan? If it could be shown that man, instead of being made in the image of God, is a development of beasts we would have to accept it, regardless of its effort, for truth is truth and must prevail. But when there is no proof we have a right to consider the effect of the acceptance of an unsupported hypothesis.”

Ifs Men Made Real Use Science Effort Accepting Plans Effects Acceptance Development Evolution Truth Is Proof Beast Hypothesis God Image Real Questions

Author:William Jennings Bryan

“The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.”

Long Science Numbers Secret Environment Evolution Environmental Enormous Extinction Succession Adapted Mutation

Book:Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

“The stars are laboratories in which the evolution of matter proceeds in the direction of large molecules.”

Matter Science Stars Evolution Laboratory Molecules

Book:The Phenomenon of Man

Source: The Phenomenon of Man

“The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.”

Persons Body Science Nations Progress Evolution Carrie Tides

Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana

Source: Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana

“The tree of life should perhaps be called the coral of life, base of branches dead; so that passages cannot be seen-this again offers contradiction to constant succession of germs in progress.”

Should Science Progress Tree Evolution Offers Constant Branches Contradiction Passages Succession Germs Tree Of Life

Book:On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection

Source: On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection

“The University of Cambridge, in accordance with that law of its evolution, by which, while maintaining the strictest continuity between the successive phases of its history, it adapts itself with more or less promptness to the requirements of the times, has lately instituted a course of Experimental Physics.”

Law Science Courses History Evolution Discovery University Physics Phases Requirements Maintaining Continuity Cambridge Enquiry Promptness

Book:Maxwell on Molecules and Gases

Source: Maxwell on Molecules and Gases

“There are as many species as the infinite being created diverse forms in the beginning, which, following the laws of generation, produced many others, but always similar to them: therefore there are as many species as we have different structures before us today.”

Different Today Form Law Science Generations Evolution Infinite Structure Species Following Diverse

Author:Carl Linnaeus

“This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.”

Would Be Science Left Natural Evolution Elements Survival Destruction Affected Preservation Selection Variation Natural Selection Survival Of The Fittest

Book:On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

Source: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

“This spontaneous emergence of order at critical points of instability, which is often referred to simply as "emergence," is one of the hallmarks of life. It has been recognized as the dynamic origin of development, learning, and evolution. In other words, creativity-the generation of new forms-is a key property of all living systems.”

Life Has Beens Form Science Order Creativity Learning Generations Keys Development Evolution Property Critical Spontaneous Emergence Hallmark Instability

Book:The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community

Source: The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community

“This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.”

Science Evolution Survival Survival Of The Fittest Multiplication

Author:Herbert Spencer

“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.”

Humans Long Science Process Term Human Nature Evolution Limits Behavior Deeper Long Term Significance Human Behavior Deeper Meaning

Author:E. O. Wilson

“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.”

Trying May Has Beens Seems Science Lying Found Process Nature Realizing Produce Theory Evolution Simplicity Complicated Biology Mechanism Simplest Physicist Clutter

Author:Francis Crick

“Uniformity and Evolution are one.”

Science Evolution Uniformity

Author:Charles Lapworth

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

Science Lying Simple Plans Evolution Diversity Structure Unity Complexes Mask

Book:Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews

Source: Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews

“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.”

Science Process Results Products Evolution Enormous Fragile Definite Predictable Improbability

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“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.”

Knows Doe Science Wealth Animal Views Common Democracy Evolution Lows Bases Philosophical Point Of View Kingdoms Former Vegetables Highs And Lows Puzzling Animal Kingdom

Book:Letters of Asa Gray

Source: Letters of Asa Gray

“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.”

May Has Beens Said Science Process Understanding Nature Stage Evolution Scientist Notion Primitive Essays Paradigm Refined Explicit Implicit Developmental

Author:Thomas Kuhn

“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.”

Men Soul Science Progress Stage Movement Evolution Conscious Participating Anomalies

Author:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“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.”

Men World Science Evolution Habit Ears Tails Old World

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)

“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.”

Ifs Thinking World Should Years Wells Stories School Science Community Creation Taught Theory Evolution Biblical Infallible Scientific Theory

Author:Ronald Reagan

“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.”

Source: The Library of Oratory: Ancient and Modern, with Critical Studies of the World's Great Orators by Eminent Essayists

“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.”

Stills Science Opportunity Brain Evolution Behavior Controlled Behaviour Inheritance Pathways

Book:Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Source: Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“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.”

Self Whole Science Dies Process Answers Acting Race Enemy Generations Effects Evolution Healthy Disease Survival Superiors Strongest Inferiors Hunters Cunning Famine Digestion

Author:Alfred Russel Wallace

“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.”

Ifs Knows Men World Should Doe Stills Whole Science Asks Natural Animal Principles Evolution Vices Whole World Conform Theologian Apes Recognise Vice Versa Generic Natural History

Author:Carl Linnaeus

“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.”

Thinking Knows Mind Firsts Believe Lasts Science Next I Believe Forget Principles Development Evolution Let Me Wings Fishes Superiors Shells Crow

Book:Tancred: Or, The New Crusade

Source: Tancred: Or, The New Crusade

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Evolution Quotes