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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 to harmonizing the theory of evolution with the Biblical account of creation, I do not believe it can be done, and I do not see why it should be. The story of Genesis is beautiful, and profoundly significant as symbolism: there is no good reason to torture it into conformity with modern theory.”

Should Believe Reason Done Stories Beautiful Religion Modern Creation Theory Evolution Accounts Significant Torture Conformity Biblical Genesis Symbolism Theory Of Evolution

Author:Will Durant

“It seemed that the time would come evolutionarily when humans might have acquired enough knowledge of generalized principles to permit a graduation from class-two (entropically selfish) evolution into class-one (syntropically cooperative) evolution, thereafter making all the right moves for all the right reasons.”

Humans Two Reason Enough Might Moving Class Principles Evolution Selfish Permit Cooperatives

Author:R. Buckminster Fuller

“The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientific reasons to doubt the facticity of evolution, would be propagating a plain untruth.”

Humans Reason Would Be Doubt Mankind Events Evolution Historical Observers Suggesting Untruth Concessions Historical Events Evolution Of Life

Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky

“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.”

“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.”

Ifs Knows Reason Might Would Be Night Strong Force Leader Millions Laughing Evolution Argument Army Philosophical Mere March Frightening Helpless Hammers Recruit Impervious Creationist

Author:Isaac Asimov

“Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.”

Doe Ideas Reason Religion Process Natural Generations Atheism Evolution Diversity Negative Critical Arguing Weed Skepticism New Ideas Selection Natural Selection

Author:Steven Novella

“No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution.”

World Mind Reason Universe Belief Force Teaching Produce Theory Evolution Blind Critical Accidents Fantastic Organized

Author:Alice Hegan Rice

“Some of the most wonderful aspects and consequences of evolution have been discovered only recently. This is in stark contrast to creationism, which offers a static view of the world, one that cannot be challenged or tested with reason. And because it cannot make predictions, it cannot lead to new discoveries, new medicines, or new ways to feed all of us.”

Source: Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“The story of Mirror Mirror is in many ways a story about evolution. Its about the evolution of a child into an adult. Its about the evolution of those dwarves into something a little less rock-like, a little more humanoid. Its about the evolution of history, too, from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the light of the Age of Reason.”

Way Children Littles Reason Stories Light Age Darkness Middle Rocks Evolution Adults Mirrors Middle Ages Dwarves Age Of Reason

Author:Gregory Maguire

“It is amazing that 2001: A Space Odyssey has not aged at all, except for a few minor technical gadgets. The main reason is, of course, the philosophical or spiritual element in this story. We know as little today about the secrets of Creation and evolution as we knew before, and it is not likely that we'll ever know much more. We'll have to be satisfied, as Kubrick was, respectfully admiring the potential for evolution within the mystery of the universe's creation.”

“Take the rose—most people think it very beautiful: I don’t care for It at all. I prefer the cactus, for the simple reason that it has a more interesting personality. It has wonderfully adapted itself to its surroundings! It is the best illustration of the theory of evolution in plant life.”

“The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.”

Men Love Reason Hate Progress Evolution Inertia

Book:The Fra: A Journal of Affirmation

Source: The Fra: A Journal of Affirmation

“The Healthiest Response to life is Laughter.There is always a reason to be grateful.You belong in the scheme of the universe. There's nothing to be afraid of. You are Safe.Your soul cherishes every aspect of your life.There is a Plan, and your soul knows what it is.Ecstasy is the energy of spirit. When life flows, ecstasy is natural.There is a creative solution to every problem. Every possibility holds the promise of abundance.Obstacles are Opportunities in disguise.Evolution leads the way through desire.Freedom is Letting Go.”

“The opposition to teaching evolution is, of course, almost always given a religious reason. That may usually be its real basis, but I think it is often a mask, perhaps unconscious, for underlying anti-intellectualism or antiscientism.”

Thinking May Real Reason Courses Given Religious Teaching Evolution Bases Unconscious Opposition Mask Intellectualism

Author:George Gaylord Simpson

“Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results of evolution.”

Way Want Reason Law Results Evolution Excellence Laws Of Nature Accounting Uniformity

Book:Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)

Source: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)

“To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results of evolution.”

“Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.”

Reason Science Evolution Holy Experience Scientist Observation Trinity Scientific Method Natural Science Observant Scientific Theory Holy Trinity

Author:Robert Green Ingersoll

“I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives.”

Way Feels Mean Reason Values Social Objects Evolution Lessons Social Life

Author:Richard Dawkins

“Turtles hate heights. They don't even like being a few feet off the ground. It's the main reason they have resisted evolution for so long-fear of heights. Turtle thinking goes thus: Sure, first our scales turn into feathers and the next thing you know we're flying and chirping and perching on trees. We've seen it happen. Thanks, but we're staying right here in the mud where we belong. You're not going to see us flying full-tilt boogie into a sliding glass door.”

Thinking Knows Firsts Long Reason Happens Hate Turns Next Doors Tree Feet Evolution Glasses Flying Scales Thanks Height Staying Mud Feathers Turtles Tilt Boogie Feet Off The Ground

Author:Christopher Moore

“The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.”

Way Reason Evolution Endorsements

Author:Daniel Dennett

“The reason we don't often confront the larger question of whether or not war is survivable is because of a failure of imagination. We honestly cannot imagine having reached a state in our own evolution in which we do not fight.”

War States Reason Fighting Imagination Imagine Evolution Honestly

Author:Marianne Williamson

“We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain. I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it's good, we know that it is bad, but because there isn't any other. Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact.”

Knows Years Reason Waiting Known Accepting Teach Students Taught Theory Evolution Let Me Acceptable Something Better Present Time Theory Of Evolution Synthetic

Author:Jerome Lejeune

“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

“Evolution is variation and selection. If you can vary alternatives, and select among them, improvement emerges. It works in technology, in apps, and in life itself. What stunned me about seasteading is that it's a technology for variation and selection in governance itself. The reason some two hundred nation-states do a poor job of governing seven billion people is that they don't vary, and people don't select.”

People Reason Poor Technology Evolution Seven Improvement Select Vary

Author:Joe Quirk

“Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.”

Reason Problem Natural Environment Evolution Consequence Property Adaptation Natural Selection Biologist

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“For some reason, the evolutionists have not come up with an evolution-based explanation for why human beings react so powerfully to music. But surely they will.”

Humans Reason Human Beings Evolution Come Up Explanation

Author:Dennis Prager

“A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric.”

Ifs Men Feels Should Real Reason Science Evolution Shame Ashamed No Reason Ancestor Grandfather Rhetoric Obscure Acquaintance Be A Man Apes Plunge Religious Prejudice

Author:Thomas Huxley

“Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.”

Humans Reason Social Keys Evolution Agents Organized Skepticism Decency Civics

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer--a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer--a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.”

“The Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).”

People Believe Stills Reason Facts Term Accepting Century Evolution Argument Institutions Don't Believe Silly Evolve Persuasive

Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“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.”

“Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly.”

Men World May Reason Beautiful Evil Force Understanding Teach Doubt Evolution Increase Ugly Intuition Tendencies Reason Why Good And Evil Faculty Cosmic Aesthetic Diminish Incompetent

Book:Collected essays

Source: Collected essays

“Man has lost the basic skill of the ape, the ability to scratch its back. Which gave it extraordinary independence, and the liberty to associate for reasons other than the need for mutual back-scratching.”

Men Needs Reason Lost Ability Liberty Evolution Skills Independence Extraordinary Mutual Associates Scratches Apes Evolution Of Man

Book:Cool memories

Source: Cool memories

“Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution?”

Reason Views Evolution Variety Protest Adaptation

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“'Creation science' has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.”

Reason Simple Forget Teacher Creation Evolution Curriculum Good Teacher Creationism Creation Science Creation And Evolution

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.”

Reason Might Science Process Car Evolution Elements Train Destination Resolve Departure

Book:Under the Apple-Trees

Source: Under the Apple-Trees

“Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again- the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (-that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.”

Needs Mind Reason Science Strong Grows Loses Perfect Evolution Survival Weak Majority Species Acquire Again And Again

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“The ordinary naturalist is not sufficiently aware that when dogmatizing on what species are, he is grappling with the whole question of the organic world & its connection with the time past & with Man; that it involves the question of Man & his relation to the brutes, of instinct, intelligence & reason, of Creation, transmutation & progressive improvement or development. Each set of geological questions & of ethnological & zool. & botan. are parts of the great problem which is always assuming a new aspect.”

“The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines. Is it any wonder that many sadly turn away from faith concluding that they cannot believe in a God who asks for an abandonment of logic and reason?”

“Most scientists who are religious look for God in what science does understand and has explained. So the way in which my view is different from the creationists or intelligent design proponents is that I find knowledge a compelling reason to believe in God. They find ignorance a compelling reason to believe in God.”

Way Believe Looks Doe Different Reason Religious Views Design Ignorance Evolution Scientist Intelligent Believe In God Compelling Intelligent Design Compelling Reason

Author:Kenneth R. Miller

“The great age of the earth will appear greater to man when he understands the origin of living organisms and the reasons for the gradual development and improvement of their organization. This antiquity will appear even greater when he realizes the length of time and the particular conditions which were necessary to bring all the living species into existence. This is particularly true since man is the latest result and present climax of this development, the ultimate limit of which, if it is ever reached, cannot be known.”

“The resources of the Deity cannot be so meagre, that, in order to create a human being endowed with reason, he must change a monkey into a man.”

Men Humans Reason Science Order Human Beings Evolution Resources Monkeys Deities

Book:Methods of Study in Natural History

Source: Methods of Study in Natural History

“There are a lot of very brilliant scholars who believe the reason we have incomplete science on evolution is that there is a higher power involved in this.”

Believe Reason Religion Atheism Evolution Higher Involved Brilliant Scholar Incomplete Higher Power

Author:Bill O'Reilly

“From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked up ... . And why is this done? For no other reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.”

Firsts Reason Done Lasts Evolution Independent Creator Materialism Dishes

Author:Adam Sedgwick

“One reason education undoes belief is its teaching of evolution; Darwin's own drift from orthodoxy to agnosticism was symptomatic. Martin Lings is probably right in saying that more cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution ... than to anything else.”

Reason Belief Religious Loss Cases Teaching Theory Evolution Religious Faith Orthodoxy Agnosticism Theory Of Evolution

Author:Huston Smith

“If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement ... collapsed like a house of cards.”

Ifs Men Firsts Reason Stories Fall House Parent Sin Animal Christianity Evolution Historical Cards Fabric Eden Atonement House Of Cards

Book:H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…

Source: H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…

“I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.”

“But nature - that is, biological evolution - has not fitted man to any specific environment. On the contrary, ... he has a rather crude survival kit; and yet -this is the paradox of the human condition - one that fits him to all environments. Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.”

“When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.”

Ideas Reason Happens Law Purpose Universe Nature Realizing Behinds Produce Evolution Plant Theologian Physicist Laws Of Nature Everything Happens For A Reason Conspiring Anthropic Principle

Author:John Polkinghorne