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Evolution Quotes

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Evolution Quotes

“There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

Should Reason Enough Humanity Evolution Prove Equal Intellectual Capacity Universal Firm Heritage Reserves Anticipate Equal Power

Book:Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science

Source: Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science

“As a bio-philosopher - as someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and in a sense, we have become the process itself - through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and to anticipate the future and to choose from amongst alternatives.”

Process Consciousness Imagine Awareness Products Evolution Draws Capacity Philosopher Scripture Alternatives Recognizing Anticipate Emergence Bios

Author:Jonas Salk

“When certain unmarried men, who had lost their capacity to sin, sat indoors, breathing bad air, and passed resolutions about what was right and what wrong, making rules for the guidance of the people, instead of trusting to the natural, happy instincts of the individual, they ushered in the Dark Ages. These are the gentlemen who blocked human evolution absolutely for a thousand years.”

“Its taken 14 billion years for matter to gain the capacity to become conscious of itself. If this is true, it wouldn't make any sense that the whole point of enlightenment would be to escape from the whole process at the very instant that the universe is beginning to awaken to itself.”

Ifs Life Years Matter Whole Would Be Spirituality Universe Process Taken Evolution Enlightenment Conscious Gains Capacity Awakening Billions Instant

Author:Andrew Cohen

“Evolution is always the work of pioneers, and their followers are always small in number. This following is not a clique; it is the result of all the existing social forces; it is composed of all those who through innate or acquired capacity are ready to represent the existing degree of human revolution.”

Humans Force Social Results Numbers Ready Revolution Evolution Degrees Capacity Following Followers Innate Pioneers Clique

Author:Piet Mondrian

“I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It's simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.”

Knows Feels Believe Facts Spiritual Universe Consciousness Wonder Evolution Discovery Capacity Kingdoms Admiring Increasing Knowledge

Author:Conrad Aiken

“When we speak of ordinary unqualified knowledge, my thought is that we are implicitly relativizing to the standards imposed by our evolution-derived humanity. These are standards that determine when we consider it appropriate to store beliefs just as a human being, rather than in one's capacity as an expert of one or another sort. Such stored beliefs are to be available for later use in one's own thought or in testimony to others.”

Humans Use Humanity Belief Speak Human Beings Evolution Standards Ordinary Capacity Determine Available Stores Experts Appropriate My Thoughts Testimony Unqualified

Author:Ernest Sosa

“When I first met Laurence I was Keanu's [Reeves] stunt double on the first Matrix. So, a little evolution there with career status. But then cut to the thirteen/fourteen years later where now I'm asking Laurence Fishburne to trust my directorial capacity [in John Wick 2].”

Years Firsts Littles Careers Cutting Evolution Mets Capacity Asking Fourteen Thirteen

Author:Chad Stahelski

“There is no evolutionary pressure to create minds capable of forming sciences; it just happened. Evolutionary pressure has not led to higher rates of reproduction for people capable of solving scientific problems or creating new scientific ideas. So if, in fact, the science-forming capacities evolved for other reasons, it would not be too surprising if those particular structures that have developed proved to be rather special in their nature, reflecting the contingencies of their evolution or the working of physical law.”

People Ifs Mind Ideas Reason Facts Problem Law Happened Special Particular Evolution Higher Creating Capable Capacity Pressure Structure Rate Surprising Reflecting Reproduction Contingency

Author:Noam Chomsky

“The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.”

Stills Real Reality Would Be Science Special Evolution Capacity Errors Attributes Dna Blunders Bacteria

Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays

Source: A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays

“Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny.”

Source: Punctuated Equilibrium

“In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.”

Giving Has Beens Use Science Used Animal Development Evolution Limits Capacity Disappear Permanent Length Organs Diminish

Author:Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

“Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.”

Source: The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man

“The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool. The brain is a product of evolution. Human behavior-like the deepest capacities for emotional respone which drive and guide it-is the circuitous technique by which human genetic material has been and will be kept intact.”

Humans Long Has Beens Science Values Culture Brain Effects Emotional Materials Products Evolution Behavior Capacity Guides Technique Pool Genes Human Behavior Leashes

Author:E. O. Wilson

“The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.”

Humans States Revolution Evolution Capacity Feminist Human Capacity

Book:The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique