Quotessence
Home / Topics / Evolution Quotes

Evolution Quotes

Browse 3937 quotes about Evolution.

Related topics

HumansIfsMenScienceThinkingWorldTheoryProcessBelievePeopleSpeciesKnowsYearsNaturalWayFactsHas BeensProgressUniverseCreationMindIdeasMayTheory Of EvolutionConsciousnessFirstsDoeEvolveMeanEarthWellsWholeAnimalFormIndividualNeedsHuman EvolutionWantAtheismSpiritualTwoShouldDifferentSelectionMatterKindLongDesignSocialNatural SelectionReasonImportantStillsEvidenceHigherLawMadeBrainDevelopmentGivingReligionViewsTryingCoursesHuman BeingsLooksPlanetsProductsSeemsStatesI BelieveSurvivalRealStageNextProblemSoulTermUnderstandingUseWould BeExistenceMillionsSelfTodayBiologyForceOrderConsciousCultureLevelsRaceBeliefEndsHumanityLittlesOrganismsResultsFeelsMightmore

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.”

YearsIdeasBigsProcessBrainMillionsGreaterHappenedTreeParticularEvolutionIntellectualAdvantageYears AgoSpeciesComplexityTree Of LifePrimatesTwigsOld Ideas
Author:Steven Pinker
Create image

“When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breast milk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution. Countless women have regained trust in their bodies through nursing their children, even if they weren't sure at first that they could do it. It is an act of female power, and I think of it as feminism in its purest form.”

IfsThinkingYearsFirstsBelieveChildrenBodyFormThreeLosesChanceAbilityMillionsTechnologyFeminismBabyEvolutionFemaleAspectClaimsSuperiorsThirtyBreastsMakersFormulasMilkNursingThirty YearsBreastfeedingFemale Power
Author:Christiane Northrup
Create image

“Don't you feel something magical when you're in love?... I do, I certainly do ... but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It's a chemical thing in the brain. It's a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.”

ThinkingFeelsYearsFeelingsProcessBrainMillionsMagicEvolutionFlowResponseSpeciesCurrentsAidsPsychologicalChemicalsElectricalProcreation
Author:Alan Lightman
Create image

“Although humans have existed on this planet for perhaps 2 million years, the rapid climb to modern civilization within the last 200 years was possible due to the fact that the growth of scientific knowledge is exponential; that is, its rate of expansion is proportional to how much is already known. The more we know, the faster we can know more. For example, we have amassed more knowledge since World War II than all the knowledge amassed in our 2-million-year evolution on this planet. In fact, the amount of knowledge that our scientists gain doubles approximately every 10 to 20 years.”

KnowsWorldYearsHumansWarFactsLastsGrowthKnownMillionsModernExamplePlanetsEvolutionAmountCivilizationGainsScientistRateDuesFasterWar Of The WorldsClimbsWorld War IiWorld War IExpansionRapidsScientific KnowledgeMore KnowledgeModern Civilization
Author:Michio Kaku
Create image

“However much the creationist leaders might hammer away at their scientific and philosophical points, they would be helpless and a laughing-stock if that were all they had. It is religion that recruits their squadrons. Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for - of even against - evolution, march in the army of the night, their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”

IfsKnowsReasonMightWould BeNightStrongForceLeaderMillionsLaughingEvolutionArgumentArmyPhilosophicalMereMarchFrighteningHelplessHammersRecruitImperviousCreationist
Author:Isaac Asimov
Create image

“The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability.”

WorldBelieveDifferentEarthMillionsIssuesEventsEvolutionCivilizationBillionsAstronomyDevelopingOrganismsProbabilityLineageImprobabilitySaganSpeciation
Author:Ernst Mayr
Create image

“All that's known is this: there is no central processor, no single computer. Nothing that simple. Millions of neurons process information simultaneously and in parallel, not linearly, but the actual chemistry and electrical properties of that integrative process are still being mapped. Even so, it seems odd that during the evolution of brain circuitry and thinking, the ability to understand itself did not get wired in. Such built-in innocence seems like a terrible oversight.”

ThinkingMindStillsSeemsProcessSimpleAbilityBrainKnownMillionsInformationEvolutionTerribleComputerBuiltPropertyInnocenceOddChemistryParallelsElectricalNeuronsOversightProcessors
Book:A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning
Create image

“The Visitors reported by contactees, abductees, and other witnesses may, in fact, be a highly advanced amphibian or reptilian culture from an extraterrestrial world, who evolved into the dominant species on their planet millions of years ago and who have interacted in Earth's evolution as explorers, observers, caretakers, and genetic engineers.”

WorldYearsMayFactsEarthCultureMillionsPlanetsEvolutionYears AgoSpeciesWitnessEngineersDominantObserversVisitorsExplorersExtraterrestrialCaretakersAmphibians
Book:Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds
Create image

“The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.”

NeedsYearsHumansShowsCoursesBeliefUnderstandingHuman BeingsAnimalExistenceMillionsRecordsEvolutionContraryFossilsPrimates
Author:Peter Singer
Create image

“One glance and I knew exactly who and what he was. The classic alpha male, the kind who had spurred evolution forward about five million years ago by nailing every female in sight. They charmed, seduced, and behaved like bastards, and yet women were biologically incapable of resisting their magic DNA.”

YearsKindMillionsFiveMagicEvolutionFemaleYears AgoSightMalesClassicIncapableGlancesDnaResistingAlpha MaleAlphasCharmed
Book:The Travis Family Series, Books 1-3: Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Taking Stranger and Sugar Daddy
Create image

“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.”

WayGivingYearsBelieveScienceNaturalMoralMillionsCasesEvolutionErrorsSpeciesTrialsMysteriousEvolveTunesCosmosCyclesFrustratingBackboneFiberTrial And ErrorMoral Fiber
Book:Reaper Man: A Novel of Discworld
Create image

“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists”

YearsMayAgeEarthReligionAnswersMillionsGroupsAtheismEvolutionHigherCreaturesYears AgoSpeciesAtheistFishesLegsIceOddPeculiarQuartersHookAnatomyCrooksIce AgeFins
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“This last chapter .. may have given the impression that somehow man is the ultimate triumph of evolution, that all these millions of years of development have had no purpose other than to put him on earth. There is no scientific evidence whatever to support such a view and no reason to suppose that our stay here will be any more permanent than that of the dinosaur.”

MenYearsMayReasonEarthLastsPurposeGivenViewsMillionsSupportDevelopmentEvolutionEvidenceUltimateImpressionTriumphPermanentNo ReasonChaptersDinosaursScientific Evidence
Author:David Attenborough
Create image

“For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.”

WorldWayYearsHumansMadeTodayScienceThreeBrainCreativityMillionsCreativeModernEvolutionComfortablePressureFruitMiserablePlentyMidstHuntersScandalModern WorldDeprivationAdaptableInventivenessHunter Gatherers
Author:Richard Leakey
Create image

“If the germ plasm wants to swim in the ocean, it makes itself a fish; if the germ plasm wants to fly in the air, it makes itself a bird. If it wants to go to Harvard, it makes itself a man. The strangest thing of all is that the germ plasm that we carry around within us has done all those things. There was a time, hundreds of millions of years ago, when it was making fish. Then ... amphibia ... reptiles ... mammals, and now it's making men.”

IfsMenWantYearsDoneScienceMillionsAirEvolutionOceanBirdYears AgoFishesFlightSwimHarvardGermsMammalsReptiles
Author:George Wald
Create image

“Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If The Eiffel Tower were now to represent the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.”

IfsMenWorldYearsHas BeensDoneAgeScienceUniverseMillionsShareEvolutionHundredBuiltSkinsPaintProofPerceiveTowersSummitPinnacleEiffel TowerKnobsEiffel
Book:Mark Twain’s Book of Animals
Create image

“There is little chance that aliens from two societies anywhere in the Galaxy will be culturally close enough to really 'get along.' This is something to ponder as you watch the famous cantina scene in Star Wars. ... Does this make sense, given the overwhelmingly likely situation that galactic civilizations differ in their level of evolutionary development by thousands or millions of years? Would you share drinks with a trilobite, an ourang-outang, or a saber-toothed tiger? Or would you just arrange to have a few specimens stuffed and carted off to the local museum?”

YearsLittlesDoeTwoWarEnoughScienceGivenStarsChanceLevelsSituationWatchesMillionsShareDevelopmentEvolutionDrinkCivilizationSceneLocalsAliensMake SenseMuseumsTigersGalaxyPondering
Author:Seth Shostak
Create image

“(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the movie Jurassic Park was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some Orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago-when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashonhan and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old.”

IfsYearsReligionUniverseAcceptingMillionsFiguresTaughtEvolutionPercentHundredYears AgoAtheistIsraelChinaAcceptedParksOrthodoxCeremonyDinosaursRabbiWedding CeremonyJurassic Park
Book:Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Create image

“The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.”

IfsWorldFactsReligionSpaceMillionsAtheismEvolutionSpeciesIslandsContinentsDistributionFossilsPointingWrong Direction
Author:Richard Dawkins
Create image

“Our ancestors were eating meat over 2.5 million years ago. We mainly ate meat, fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts. We have to assume our physiology evolved in association with this diet. The balanced diet for our species was what we could acquire then, not what the government and doctors tell us to eat now.”

YearsGovernmentMillionsEvolutionEatingYears AgoDoctorsAssumingSpeciesFruitFishesMeatDietsAcquireNutsVegetablesAssociationAncestorBalancedPhysiologyEating MeatBalanced Diet
Author:Lionel Tiger
Create image

“Communistic evolution, according to the Senate committee that examined it, is responsible for 135 million deaths in peacetime. There's no religion that has a tiny fraction of that many deaths on its conscience. There are scientists who will admit that there's not one iota of scientific evidence to support it.”

ReligionMillionsSupportAtheismEvolutionConscienceEvidenceScientistResponsibleTinySenateCommitteesFractionsScientific Evidence
Author:D. James Kennedy
Create image

“Since Serengeti-scale savanna scenes are only one or two million years old, our earliest after-the-apes ancestors didn't move into this scene so much as they evolved with it, as the slower climate changes and uplift produced more grass and less forest.”

YearsTwoMovingMillionsEvolutionSceneClimateClimate ChangeScalesForestsUpliftingGrassAncestorApesSavanna
Book:A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change
Create image