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Evolution Quotes

Browse 3937 quotes about Evolution.

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Evolution Quotes

“Christ did not come to civilize. He came to save. Civilization is not the solution; it does not destroy the works of the devil. All civilization aims at world improvement, at the gradual elimination of the curse; it is a process of evolution. It is like a man who is suffering from a terrible disease, and the physician who comes to help him gives him a salve to apply. He treats the skin symptoms but the source of the disease he never considers and never touches. Such is a boasted and progressive civilization. It is a delusion.”

MenWorldGivingDoeHelpingChristianSufferingProcessChristSourceEvolutionTerribleCivilizationDiseaseSolutionsDevilSkinsTreatsAimImprovementCurseDelusionProgressivePhysiciansSymptomsElimination
Author:Arno C. Gaebelein
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“Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.”

MenGivingHas BeensMadeI CanFactsTogetherRememberReligiousVirtueHappenedTeachingStupidExampleEvolutionAuthorityIntelligentPraiseEducatedMinistersIllegalOne WordIdentificationOwingEducated ManReligious Education
Book:Education and the Social Order
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“Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future.”

MenGivingMayStillsFactsFeelingsDestinyPrideEvolutionHigherScalesSummitRisenExertionOrigin Of Man
Book:The Descent of Man: Human Sexuality
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“The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.”

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Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Today we know not only that there is a terrible amount of disorder in the heavens - great catastrophes or conflagrations occur frequently - but evolution gives us a perfectly natural explanation of such order as there is. No distinguished astronomer now traces "the finger of God" in the heavens; and astronomers ought to know best.”

KnowsGivingTodayOrderHeavenNaturalAtheismOughtEvolutionAmountTerribleFingersExplanationDisorderCatastropheDistinguishedAstronomersPerfectly Natural
Book:The Story of Religious Controversy
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“This is a living planet. Look around. Mars, Venus, Jupiter. Look beyond our solar system. Where else is there a place that works, that is just right for the likes of us? It has not happened just instantly. It is vulnerable to our actions. But it's the result of four and a half billion years of evolution, of change over time. And it changes every day, all the time. It would be in our interest to try to maintain a certain level of stability that has enabled us to prosper, to not wreck the very systems that give us life.”

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Author:Sylvia Earle
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“Stanford may be the best university in the world, but you can get all the way through here without knowing where your food came from, without being able to say where we came from, without being able to give a coherent description of why the climate is changing and why we should be concerned about it. So I started teaching a course in human evolution and the environment that's open to all Stanford students, no prerequisites.”

WorldWayGivingShouldHumansMayAbleCoursesKnowingEnvironmentTeachingStudentsEvolutionConcernedClimateUniversityBeing The BestDescriptionPrerequisitesHuman EvolutionStanfordWhere We Came
Author:Paul R. Ehrlich
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“If someone comes in without having been on a spiritual path for long, he or she still will understand what is happening to them in their human lives, what is happening through the evolution, how their humanness is playing such an important role at this time, and where they are in their lives with their inner feelings. It actually gives them a support system, a base from which they can start to evolve naturally within themselves through the understanding of our humanness, of our imperfection.”

IfsGivingHumansLongStillsImportantFeelingsSpiritualUnderstandingRolesSupportPathEvolutionHappeningsEvolveHuman LifeImperfectionSpiritual PathHumannessSupport SystemsInner FeelingsHumanness Is
Author:Christine McCormick Day
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“Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.”

GivingIdeasMomentsSpiritDesireTurnsUniverseCreationEvolutionConversationIncludingFree WillAcceptableCreation Of The Universe
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us? Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.”

IfsThinkingWayGivingDoeLaughingStrangeEvolutionBenefitsAppreciateResponseMake SenseOddNonsenseSense Of HumorAbsurdityPhysiologicalHobbesComic Strips
Author:Bill Watterson
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“You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.”

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Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, our feelings must have a history too. Perhaps certain qualities of feeling that found expression in music can be recorded by being notated on paper, have become so remote that we can no longer inhabit them as feelings, can get a grasp of them only after long training in the history and philosophy of music, the philosophical history of music, the history of music as a history of the feeling soul.”

GivingLongSoulPhilosophyFeelingsCertainFoundSpaceQualityExpressionEvolutionShapesPaperTrainingPhilosophicalFormalHistory Of Music
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.”

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Book:Reaper Man: A Novel of Discworld
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“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

WorldGivingBelieveImportantRealInspirationScienceBeliefI BelieveImaginationKnowledgeImagineProgressEvolutionBirthResearchEmbraceI Believe InIntuitionFactorsMy ImaginationScientific ResearchGiving BirthLimited Knowledge
Book:Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
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“I believe in rendering to science the things that belong to science. I have no problem with evolution or discussions of the age of the Earth, for I don't believe that we come anywhere near comprehending the mind of God or the workings of the universe. Science can explain a lot, but it cannot give us faith, and I think we need both.”

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Author:Brandon Sanderson
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“Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.”

GivingWisdomScienceAdviceDevelopmentEvolutionPhilosopherInsightCynicalAssuranceAssuredOrganic LifeEvolution Of Life
Book:Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections
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“It is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species. Novelties come from previously unseen association of old material. To create is to recombine.”

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Book:Travaux scientifiques de François Jacob
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“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.”

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Author:Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
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“The plan of spiritual evolution is marked not only by God's will that we move ever in the direction of love, nut also by another of God's creative principles: that humanity has free will. What that means is that in any given moment, it is our choice whether we move toward love or retreat from it. What is not love is fear. But in the larger scheme of things, there is a limit past which lovelessness cannot remain. Fear is not life-giving enough to sustain itself. We can move in the direction of fear only so long before it brings us to our knees, or to our end.”

GivingMeanLongSoulEndsEnoughMomentsPastSpiritualMovingHumanityChoicesGivenLove IsPrinciplesCreativePlansEvolutionLimitsGods WillKneesFree WillNutsSchemesRetreatOur ChoicesSpiritual EvolutionLovelessness
Author:Marianne Williamson
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“The proof given by Wright, that non-adaptive differentiation will occur in small populations owing to "drift," or the chance fixation of some new mutation or recombination, is one of the most important results of mathematical analysis applied to the facts of neo-mendelism. It gives accident as well as adaptation a place in evolution, and at one stroke explains many facts which puzzled earlier selectionists, notably the much greater degree of divergence shown by island than mainland forms, by forms in isolated lakes than in continuous river-systems.”

GivingWellsImportantFactsFormScienceGivenChanceResultsGreaterEvolutionDegreesRiversMathematicsPopulationAccidentsProofMathematicalAnalysisIslandsLakesIsolatedStrokesAdaptationOwingPuzzledMutationDifferentiationFixationAdaptiveDivergenceMathematical Analysis
Author:Julian Huxley
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“Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea.”

IfsGivingIdeasLawPurposeCausesNaturalSpaceWonderfulEffectsDangerousEvolutionLet MeTablesLaysCardsRealmsMeaning Of LifeAwardsMechanismStrokesSelectionTime And SpaceNewtonCause And EffectNatural SelectionLife MeansDangerous IdeasCards On The Table
Author:Daniel Dennett
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“Some physicists solve that problem of the necessity of finely tuned physical constants ... by invoking the anthropic principle, saying, well, here we are, we exist, we have to be in the kind of universe capable of giving rise to us. That in itself is, I think, unsatisfying, and as John Lennox rightly says, some physicists solve that by the multiverse idea-the idea that our universe is just one of many universes.”

ThinkingGivingWellsKindIdeasProblemUniversePrinciplesEvolutionCapableSolveJust OnePhysicistMultiverseAnthropic Principle
Author:Richard Dawkins
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