Best evolution & social Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

Source: Selected writings: poetry and criticism

“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.”

Order Social Steps Principles Greater Design Evolution Creating Flow Currents Access Evolve Thrive Providing Static Steps Forward Social Systems

Author:John Hagel

“I think it is now time for social scientists to step out of the shadow and to establish an advanced social sciences methodology that integrates science (third-person view) social transformation (second-person view) and the evolution of self (first-person view) into a coherent framework of consciousness-based action research”

“Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. [...] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.”

Facts Found Social Progress Creation Products Theory Evolution Scientist Construction Interaction Worldview Intertwined Great Scientist Social Construction

Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted for the constraint of a definite "thing" cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw "evolution" or "social organization," not to mention the more mundane "digestion" or "self-interest," without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar's mind.”

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.”

People Thinking May Mean Facts Able Social Theory Evolution Aspect Scientist Philosopher Curious Biology Theory Of Evolution

Author:Jacques Monod

“Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.”

Humans Culture Courses Force Social Natural Effects Evolution Institutions Climate Selection Predator Human Evolution Social Institutions Food Supply

Book:The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology

Source: The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology

“The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.”

Mean Long Social Opinion Class Novel Movement Evolution Office Leisure Propositions Commonplace Retard Popular Opinion

Book:The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class

“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.”

“The newborn infant is now seen to be wired with awesome precision... This marvelous robot will be launched into the world under the care of its parents... But to what extent does the wiring of the neurons, so undeniably encoded in the genes, preordain the directions that social development will follow?”

World Doe Care Social Parent Development Evolution Genes Marvelous Robots Infant Precision Social Development Newborn Neurons Wiring

Author:E. O. Wilson

“Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist.”

“It should soon be possible dramatically to increase the intelligence and life span of a few individuals. They and their offspring could become a master race. Evolution pays no regard to social justice. It was not fair on the Neanderthals they were replaced by modern humans.”

“If you put on a lousy production with white actors, it's lousy. There is a problem, or can be, at this stage of our social evolution, with mixing the casts. It may not be a question of race so much as class. You would rarely find a black man in a high executive position where he was swinging his weight around.”

Ifs Men May Problem Actors Social Black White Race Class Stage Position Evolution Weight Casts Productions Executives Mixing

Author:Howard Schultz

“The social web can't exist until you are your real self online. I have to be me. You have to be you. Once we are online as ourselves, connected to each other and our other friends, then you can have the evolution of what becomes the social web.”

Real Self Social Evolution Connected Online Be You Real Self

Author:Sheryl Sandberg

“Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity.”

Source: Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice

“If you look at the evolution of games from console to Internet to mobile, and look at social networking from Web to mobile, everything is fragmenting.”

Ifs Looks Games Social Evolution Internet Mobile Networking Social Networking Console Social Network

Author:Chris DeWolfe

“A … difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.”

“The social dynamics of human history, even more than that of biological evolution, illustrate the fundamental principle of ecological evolution - that everything depends on everything else. The nine elements that we have described in societal evolution of the three families of phenotypes - the phyla of things, organizations and people, the genetic bases in knowledge operating through energy and materials to produce phenotypes, and the three bonding relations of threat, integration and exchange - all interact on each other.”

“We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and "history" took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists.”

Humans Social Evolution Scientist Notion Various Absurd Narrative Human Evolution

Author:Robert Neelly Bellah

“It's not the 'nice' guy who brings about real social change. 'Nice' guys look nice because they're conforming. It's the 'bad' guys, who only look nice a hundred years later, that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution.”

Years Looks Real Guy Force Social Nice Evolution Hundred Conform Social Change Bad Guys Nice Guy

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“Social evolution may be the result of intention, but it rarely, if ever, produces the result intended.”

Ifs May Social Results Produce Evolution Intention

Book:Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change

Source: Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change

“A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.”

Thinking Facts Hands Social Evolution Remarkable Parallels

Book:The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality

Source: The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality

“There is first the problem of acquiring content, which is learning. There is another problem of acquiring learning skills, which is not merely learning, but learning to learn, not velocity, but acceleration. Learning to learn is one of the great inventions of living things. It is tremendously important. It makes evolution, biological as well as social, go faster. And it involves the development of the individual.”

Firsts Wells Important Problem Individual Social Development Evolution Skills Invention Faster Living Things Velocity Acceleration Great Inventions

Author:Ralph W. Gerard

“In spite of all these disquieting triumphs in the field of natural science, it's astonishing how little man has learned about himself, and how much there is to learn. How little we know about this brain which made social evolution possible, and of the mind. How little we know of the nature and spirit of man and God. We stand now before this inner frontier of ignorance. If we could pass it, we might well discover the meaning of life and understand man's destiny.”

Ifs Knows Men Mind Wells Littles Made Might Spirit Social Natural Brain Destiny Fields Ignorance Evolution Triumph Meaning Of Life Spite Frontiers Astonishing Natural Science Little Man

Author:Wilder Penfield

“Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors: the individual ... bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.”

Two Hands Dies Individual Social Community Environment Evolution Essentials Factors Impulse Interaction Initiative Rejecting Adopting Social Environment

Book:Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays

Source: Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays

“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

“We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion. . . To continue to place our hopes in a social order achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits.”

Giving Humans Earth Spirit Order Passion Social Common Violence Evolution Amount Limits Giving Up Crossroads Social Order Human Evolution

Author:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Today we are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a moral and social nightmare because the intellectual level of evolution, in its struggle to become free of the social level, has ignored the social level's role in keeping the biological level under control.”

Today Social Levels Moral Roles Struggle Evolution Intellectual Paradise Nightmare Technological Ignored

Book:LILA An Inquriry into Morals

Source: LILA An Inquriry into Morals

“But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones.”

“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

“The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment.”

Important Moving Form Life Is Purpose Social Religious Moral Destiny Environment Evolution Ego Ultimate Fabric Religious Life

Book:Stories and Biographies from Iqbal

Source: Stories and Biographies from Iqbal

“Transformation of language through psychedelic drugs is a central factor of the evolution of the social matrix of the rest of the century.”

Language Social Century Evolution Drug Transformation Factors Psychedelic Psychedelic Drugs

Author:Terence McKenna

“Social evolution is demonstrated by movement towards unity, not separatism.”

Social Movement Evolution Unity

Book:Conversations with God, Books 2 & 3: An Uncommon Dialogue

Source: Conversations with God, Books 2 & 3: An Uncommon Dialogue

“What makes the existence and the evolution of society possible is precisely the fact that peaceful cooperation under the social division of labor in the long run best serves the selfish concerns of all individuals. The eminence of the market society is that its whole functioning and operation is the consummation of this principle.”

“I try to look at the evolution of these utopian claims. In the late '60s there was an assumption that the wealth generated by industry would be taxed and then put into social programs and it would provide a baseline of stability that would allow people to have the time for self-expression; and that social contract has eroded over the last four decades and now it's every person for themselves.”

“On the one hand the world is getting more integrated and we should not dismiss social values as "Western" when they are actually modern values. On the other hand, individual countries have their own history and their own evolution. Trade unions, for example, don't play the same role in China as they do in Europe or the US.”

World Should Country Play Hands Values Individual Social Roles Modern Example Evolution Europe Trade Unions Western China Integrated Trade Unions Social Values

Author:Zhang Xin

“It is important to understand that while oxytocin may be the hub of the evolution of the social brain in mammals, it is part of a very complex system. Part of what it does is act in opposition to stress hormones, and in that sense release of oxytocin feels good - as stress hormones and anxiety do not feel good.”

Feels May Doe Important Social Brain Evolution Anxiety Stress Complexes Feel Good Release Opposition Hormones Mammals Complex Systems Hub Oxytocin

Author:Patricia Churchland

“Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lived through times of cruel and ruthless capitalism where the workers, the masses of the population, saw themselves living in a precarious state of employment and subsistence conditions. The impact of this reality took hold and impacted the evolution of the social situation of those countries and even though that produced movements that were not exactly political movements but social movements.”

“The evolution of social media into a robust mechanism for social transformation is already visible. Despite many adamant critics who insist that tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are little more than faddish distractions useful only to exchange trivial information, these critics are being proven wrong time and again.”

“Trade has played a vital role in the social evolution of humankind. It allowed people to specialise, which raises both skill levels and efficiency. It brought people from different lands together, co-operating rather than competing over resources.”

People Different Together Social Levels Roles Land Evolution Skills Resources Raises Trade Humankind Efficiency Competing

Author:Julian Baggini

“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”

Humans Law Social Peace Term Hurt Existence Evolution Weakness Species Strongest Ethical

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“With the passage of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the color of our blood and the salt of our tears.”

Wells Social Blood Tears Color Evolution Conscience Passages Salt Passage Of Time

Author:Jose Saramago

“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

“With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.”

Ifs Trying Wells Kind Made Enough Shows Eye Social Results Blood Tears Evolution Conscience Mirrors Deny Passing Passings Colour Salt Reserves

Author:Jose Saramago

“Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exception, self-styled progressives. Radical views--even the awful ones--improve with age.”

“There has always been a longing in the human heart for a more just, free, loving and creative society. But it was never before possible to fulfill these aspirations, because we had neither the evolutionary drivers and global crises to force us to change, nor did we have the scientific and technological powers that can free us from the limitations of scarcity, poverty, disease, and ignorance. This is the time of awakening for the social potential movement.”

“The social potential movement is on the threshold of a mass awakening, seeking to carry into society what individuals have learned spiritually and personally.”

Individual Social Society Movement Evolution Mass Seeking Awakening Threshold

Book:Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential

Source: Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential

“In the next 30 years we can destroy our world. With the very same powers - spiritual, social, scientific - we can evolve our world. Our mission is to serve as catalysts for a planetary awakening in our lifetime, to take a non-violent path to the next stage of our evolution.”

World Years God Spiritual Spirituality Next Social Path Stage Evolution Lifetime Missions Awakening Violent Evolve Our World Nonviolence Catalyst Non Violent

Book:The revelation: our crisis is a birth

Source: The revelation: our crisis is a birth

“Looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker... the social instincts, - the prime principle of man's moral constitution - with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you; do ye to them likewise"; and this lies at the foundation of morality.”

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Evolution Quotes