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Evolution Quotes

Browse 3937 quotes about Evolution.

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Evolution Quotes

“In order to survive, all systems must evolve by providing greater and greater access to the currents that flow through them. This applies to all physical, biological and social systems that survive and thrive.... But let’s take that one step forward... the systems just described are ... constantly evolving. This suggests another design principle: ... design for evolution rather than creating a static design optimizing for the present.”

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Author:John Hagel
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“Somewhere in the world there is a person who could ask you the precise question you need to hear in order to catalyze the next phase of your evolution. Do what's necessary to run into that person.”

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Book:Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
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“The existing and long-standing use of the word 'evolution' in our state's textbooks has not adversely affected Georgians' belief in the omnipotence of God as creator of the universe, There can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology, biology, and astronomy. There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith.”

NeedsLongStatesFactsUseEarthChristianOrderFallUniverseBeliefStarsReligiousTeachSkyLandEvolutionStandingCreatorAstronomyBiologyFlatsAffectedProvenReligious FaithTextbooksChristian FaithGeologyOmnipotenceIncompatibilityGeorgians
Author:Jimmy Carter
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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.”

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Book:The Story of Religious Controversy
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“If the positive innovations connect exponentially before the massive breakdowns reinforce one another, the system can re-pattern itself to a higher order of consciousness and freedom without the predicted economic, environmental, and social collapse...If the system could go either way, a slight intervention to assist the convergence of the positive can tip the scales of evolution in favor of the enhancement of life on Earth.”

IfsWayEarthOrderSocialConsciousnessEconomicEvolutionHigherInnovationHarmonyEnvironmentalPatternsFavorsScalesMassiveCollapseInterventionBreakdownConvergenceEnhancement
Author:Barbara Marx Hubbard
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“Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to apes to monkeys to lemurs] - leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had forseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.”

IfsMenShouldHumansSeemsOrderAnimalStepsCreationEvolutionCreaturesIntelligentSlaveSeriesExtraordinaryIntellectDustTriumphArroganceCrownsSmallestMonkeysLowestSummitApesConquerorMammalsSeverityProminenceLemurs
Author:Thomas Huxley
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“There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex behavioural patterns can be triggered by a tiny concentration of moleculas coursing through the bloodstream, and that different animals of the same species generate different amounts of these hormones, is something worth thinking about when it's time to judge such matters as free will, individual responsibility, and law and order.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“In the complex course of its evolution, life exhibits a remarkable contrast to the tendency expressed in the Second Law to Thermodynamics. Where the Second Law expressed an irreversible progression toward increased entropy and disorder, life evolves continually higher levels of order. The still more remarkable fact is that this evolutionary drive to greater and greater order also is irreversible. Evolution does not go backward.”

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Author:J. H. Rush
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“I presume that few who have paid any attention to the history of the Mathematical Analysis, will doubt that it has been developed in a certain order, or that that order has been, to a great extent, necessary -- being determined, either by steps of logical deduction, or by the successive introduction of new ideas and conceptions, when the time for their evolution had arrived.”

Has BeensIdeasCertainOrderAttentionStepsDoubtEvolutionPaidDeterminedMathematicalAnalysisLogicalConceptionNew IdeasIntroductionDeductionsMathematical Analysis
Book:A Treatise on Differential Equations
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“Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow this is what evolution is.”

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Author:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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“The universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level. The novelty, the new, more complex order, doesn't emerge from the present in a steady stream, nor at all places at the same rate. It comes, as all things do, in rhythmic waves; there will always be times and places of scarcity and stagnation and retrogression. Still, the long-term direction is clear. The intention of the universe is evolution.”

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Book:The Silent Pulse
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“Wherever the Net arises, there arises also a rebel to resist human control...A network nurtures small failures in order that large failures don't happen as often. It is...fertile ground for learning, adaptation, and evolution...The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or unguided learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen.”

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Author:Kevin Kelly
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“Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order....I believe that it's the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Evolution works through indirection: each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.”

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Author:Ray Kurzweil
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“Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS and Wal-Mart have all figured out the evolution of life and they grabbed all the products that are necessary for a life. And they stuck them in one aisle and they put them in order according to how you mess up... First thing you're going to see: condoms. Next to that: lubricant. Next to that: pregnancy test. Next to that: Pampers. Next to that: formula. And at the end of the aisle they sell beer.”

FirstsEndsOrderNextProductsEvolutionTestsSellsAidsStuckMessBeerPregnancyFormulasRiteAisleCondomEvolution Of LifePregnancy Test
Author:Gabriel Iglesias
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“There is a relative order to the fossilized species of plants found in the geologic record for which Flood Geology cannot account, unless you can imagine apple and orange trees with Nike sneakers on their roots, racing past the magnolias and primitive mammals, leaving the ginkgoes back there with the dinosaurs when the Flood waters began to rise.”

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Author:Frank Zindler
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“On some dimension or other, every event in life can be causing only one of two things: either it is good for you, or it is bringing up what you need to look at in order to create good for you. Evolution is win-win…life is self-correcting.”

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Book:The Book Of Secrets: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?
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“For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs-as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.”

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Author:Charles Darwin
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“Men are impatient, and for precipitating things; but the Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow, successive steps. And there is a plan of things beforehand laid out, which, from the nature of it, requires various systems of means, as well as length of time, in order to the carrying on its several parts into execution.”

MenWellsMeanEndsScienceOrderNatureNaturalStepsPlansEvolutionVariousOperationsLengthExecutionDeliberateImpatientCarrying On
Book:The Analogy of Religion: Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. To which are Added, Two Brief Dissertations: I. On Personal Identity. II. On the Nature of Virtue. Together with a Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham, ... in the Year MDCCLI. By Joseph Butler, ... A New Edition, Corrected. With a Preface, ... by Samuel Halifax, ...
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“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.”

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Book:The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community
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“For in disease the most voluntary or most special movements, faculties, etc., suffer first and most, that is in an order the exact opposite of evolution. Therefore I call this the principle of Dissolution.”

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Book:Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson: On Epilepsy and epileptiform convulsions
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“When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin Of The Species, no one could have known that the ice cap would melt, that the waters would rise and that life on earth would have to evolve in order to live beneath the sea once more or perish. We came from water and now, with the help of stem cell technology and cloning, we must go back to it to survive.When the waters rise, humanity will go back to the place from whence it came.Make no mistake, this is not sci-fi, this is evolution”

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Author:Alexander McQueen
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“Evolution goes beyond what went before, but because it must embrace what went before, then its very nature is to transcend and include and thus it has an inherent directionality, a secret impulse, toward increasing depth, increasing intrinsic value, increasing consciousness. In order for evolution to move at all, it must move in those directions-there's no place else for it to go!”

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Author:Ken Wilber
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“It is quite true that many scientists, many physicists, maintain that the physical constants, the half dozen or so numbers that physicists have to simply assume in order to derive the rest of their understanding ... have to be assumed. You can't provide a rationale for why those numbers are there. Physicists have calculated that if any of these numbers was a little bit different, the universe as we know it wouldn't exist.”

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Author:Richard Dawkins
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“The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle-an architect.”

KnowsWorldWellsDoeTogetherOrderChanceExistencePrinciplesKnow HowTypeDependsEvolutionFunctionComplicatedDuesConvincedConceptionArchitectOrganismsUnbelievableLiving ThingsInterconnectionBiochemistryExistence Of Life
Author:Allan Sandage
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“If you pay attention to those aspects of God that demonstrate love, truth, beauty, intelligence, order, and spiritual evolution, those aspects will begin to expand in your life. Bit by bit, like a mosaic, disparate fragments of grace will merge to form a complete picture. Eventually this picture will replace the ore threatening one you have carried around inside you since infancy.”

IfsSpiritualFormOrderBitsPayAttentionGraceEvolutionTruth IsAspectPay AttentionThreateningFragmentsInfancyTruth LoveMosaicsSpiritual Evolution
Author:Deepak Chopra
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“In order for the Prevail Scenario to work ... you will have to have a world in which you have both differences between people and opportunities for intense connectedness.”

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Book:Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human
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