Home / Topics / Evolution Quotes

Evolution Quotes

Browse 3937 quotes about Evolution.

Evolution Quotes

“It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago.”

Years Ideas Bigs Process Brain Millions Greater Happened Tree Particular Evolution Intellectual Advantage Years Ago Species Complexity Tree Of Life Primates Twigs Old Ideas

Author:Steven Pinker

“No one supposed that dinoflagellates might actively kill fish as an evolved response for their own specific advantage, including a potential nutritional benefit for the algal cells. And yet the dinoflagellates do seem to be killing and eating fishes in a manner suggesting active evolution for this most peculiar reversal.”

Seems Might Evolution Benefits Eating Advantage Response Killing Including Fishes Active Cells Peculiar Suggesting Reversal

Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History

“Rest assured that whatever station of life we are placed, princely or lowly, it contains the lessons and experiences necessary at the moment for our evolution, and gives us the best advantage for the development of ourselves.”

Giving Moments Development Evolution Lessons Advantage Stations Life Lesson Assured

Book:The Bach Flower Remedies

Source: The Bach Flower Remedies

“People have taken advantage of the very well-trodden pathways that divide science and faith on other issues, such as creation, evolution, and the age of the universe, to pigeonhole climate change as yet another variant on the same theme.”

People Wells Age Universe Issues Taken Creation Evolution Advantage Climate Climate Change Theme Divides Pathways Taken Advantage

Author:Katharine Hayhoe

“Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.”

Has Beens Science Animal Evolution Creatures Survival Advantage Species Genes Continuing Altruism Selected

Book:Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Source: Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

“Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.”

Funny Science Evolution Advantage Accidents

Author:Isaac Asimov

“In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two contradictory sides of a question when a supposed rhetorical advantage could be extracted from each.”

Two Sides Struggle Groups Evolution Advantage Strategy Arguing Usual Classroom Contradictory Genesis Fundamentalist Rhetorical

Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

Source: Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

“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

“Darwin was one of our finest specimens. He did superbly what human beings are designed to do: manipulate social information to personal advantage. The information in question was the prevailing account of how human beings, and all organisms, came to exist; Darwin reshaped it in a way that radically raised his social status. When he died in 1882, his greatness was acclaimed in newspapers around the world, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, not far from the body of Isaac Newton. Alpha-male territory.”

Source: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

“When environments change, they usually do so pretty rapidly, at rates with which adaptation by natural selection would be hard put to keep up. When such change occurs, the quality of your adaptation to your old habitat is irrelevant, and any competitive advantage you might have had may be eliminated at a stroke.”

May Hard Might Would Be Natural Quality Environment Evolution Advantage Rate Strokes Irrelevant Selection Adaptation Natural Selection Habitat Competitive Advantage

Author:Ian Tattersall