Best evolution & species Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Evolution doesn't care whether you believe in it or not, no more than gravity does. I want to rekindle excitement over what we've achieved as a species with the space program. We can't afford to regress back to the days of superstition.”

Want Believe Doe Care Space Evolution Program Species Excitement Gravity Superstitions Space Program

Author:Seth MacFarlane

“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.”

Years Ideas Bigs Process Brain Millions Greater Happened Tree Particular Evolution Intellectual Advantage Years Ago Species Complexity Tree Of Life Primates Twigs Old Ideas

Author:Steven Pinker

“Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth. The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself.”

Humans Earth Law Evolution Species Environmental Abnormal Dice Human Species Abnormality

Author:E. O. Wilson

“Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.”

Humans Goal Evolution Species Notion Finals Selfish Absurd Vanity Cherish Selfish Gene

Book:The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

Source: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

“We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.”

“My feeling is that Darwinism is only at best a partial solution, and an extremely dangerous partial solution. I would say, based on the little I know, Darwinism explains microevolution within species quite well. As to its broader consequence and implications, I don't think it explains individual species evolution at all well.”

Thinking Knows Wells Littles Feelings Individual Dangerous Evolution Solutions Consequence Species Implications Darwinism

Author:Ben Stein

“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.”

Thinking Feels Years Feelings Process Brain Millions Magic Evolution Flow Response Species Currents Aids Psychological Chemicals Electrical Procreation

Author:Alan Lightman

“Society never progresses because the majority one day wakes up and says, “Let’s do things differently.” The majority didn’t wake up and say, “Oh, let’s just free the slaves.” ... Society always progressed because a relatively small group of people — usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their time — had a better idea and articulated another way. That’s simply how evolution works; it’s the mutation — the member of the species who does things differently - that points the way to the future because they’re better adapted for survival.”

“We know from astronomy that the universe had a beginning, from physics that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see, perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the process of evolution.”

“It is astonishing to realise that the human species survived hundreds of thousands of years, more than 99 percent of its time on this planet, with a life expectancy of only eighteen years.”

Years Humans Planets Evolution Percent Species Realising Survived Astonishing Eighteen Human Species Expectancy Life Expectancy

Book:How and why we age

Source: How and why we age

“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.”

“The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to explain table manners or road safety or gardening, only sex. Anyway, it was bad Darwinism. Taking the example of a monkey and applying it to yourself misses the point that animal behaviour is made for the benefit of the species, not as an excuse for the individual. Being incapable of sustaining a stable pair and supporting children is really not in the interests of our species. Neither is it really in the best interests of the philanderer.”

“Why does evolution matter? There is so much about the evolution of life, the development of life on Earth that should rivet the attention of everyone to understand where we've come from and where we might be going. We need to understand the world around us if we are to succeed as a species on the planet.”

Ifs World Needs Should Doe Matter Might Earth Attention Planets Development Evolution Succeed Species Evolution Of Life

Author:Sylvia Earle

“It's just as hard for man to break the habit of thinking of himself as central to the species as it was to break the habit of thinking of himself as central to the universe. He sees himself quite unconsciously as the main line of evolution, with a female satellite revolving around him as the moon revolves around the earth. This not only causes him to overlook valuable clues to our ancestry, but sometimes leads him into making statements that are arrant and demonstrable nonsense.”

Thinking Men Sometimes Hard Earth Universe Causes Lines Break Evolution Habit Moon Female Species Valuable Statements Nonsense Clue Ancestry Satellites Revolving

Author:Elaine Morgan

“In this twenty-first century, there's no one like Sharona Muir who can write, in bright accurate language, animals real or imaginary in an updated bestiary that riffs on evolution, extinction, and what it means to be human among other species. We need this view, and you'll be right there with her on every page of Invisible Beasts.”

Needs Writing Firsts Humans Mean Real Language Animal Views Century Evolution Pages Twenties Species Invisible Beast Imaginary Accurate Extinction What It Means To Be Human

Author:John Felstiner

“The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark.”

Years Millions Sea Evolution Behavior Species Fishes Speed Defense Mechanism Prey Sharks Predator Camouflage Defense Mechanisms Apex Apex Predators

Author:Paul Watson

“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all species are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

“When you deal with something like compassion for physical pain, which we know is very, very old in evolution - we can find evidence for it in nonhuman species - the brain processes it at a faster speed. Compassion for mental pain took many seconds longer.”

Knows Pain Process Deals Brain Compassion Evolution Evidence Species Speed Faster Seconds Physical Pain Mental Pain

Author:Antonio Damasio

“I don't worry about anything in the Internet age. I have been online since I was aware of it: 1985 in San Francisco. It has changed everything in my life. I would not want to even be alive in an era that did not have it because it is essential to our evolution as a species.”

Want Has Beens Age Worry Alive Changed Evolution Internet Essentials Species Eras Online San Francisco

Author:Augusten Burroughs

“Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war.... The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land.”

Doe War Individual Chance Animal Land Evolution Plant Species Ships Reaching Expenses Crew Swimmer

Book:Collected essays

Source: Collected essays

“Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved”

Has Beens Beautiful Form Wonderful Evolution Species Endless Evolve Grandeur Natural Selection Theory Of Evolution Origin Of Life Origin Of Species Creation And Evolution

Author:Charles Darwin

“A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.”

Wells Might Courses Space Animal Brain Four Planets Evolution Species Peculiar Observers Bugs Casual Predictable Outer Space

Author:Kenneth E. Boulding

“The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing.”

Ifs Whole Culture Goal Risk One Thing Evolution Diversity Lows Increase Species Great Risk Perishing Monoculture

Author:George M. Church

“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.”

Source: Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds

“Evolution usually occurs in response to a crisis situation, and we now are faced with such a crisis situation. This is why there is indeed an enormous acceleration in the awakening process of our species.”

Process Situation Evolution Crisis Response Species Awakening Enormous Acceleration

Author:Eckhart Tolle

“We are at a point in human evolution when human solidarity on a global scale is absolutely vital for the survival of the human species. That means understanding that ... we are all co-inhabitants of this planet.”

Humans Mean Understanding Planets Evolution Survival Species Scales Solidarity Human Species Human Evolution

Author:Petra Kelly

“The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.”

Thinking Way Mind Humans Reality Purpose Understanding Products Evolution Cost Species Recognition Human Mind Way Of Thinking Cardinals Humbling

Author:E. O. Wilson

“Nor are we the culmination of evolution, except in the sense that there has never been another species so bizarrely ingenious that it could create both iambic pentameter and plutonium.”

Evolution Species Ingenious Culmination Plutonium

Book:Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind

Source: Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind

“The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the "mutations" of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly.”

Different Form Culture Theory Evolution Circumstances Prove Species Patterns Determined Arise Prevailing Mutation

Book:Science And Human Behavior

Source: Science And Human Behavior

“All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that moulded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and the system of behaviour of a species are parts of the same whole.... Wordsworth is right: there is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no correspondingly adequate inhibition.”

Knows Whole Body Grows Process Plans Evolution Weapons Instinct Species Possession Impulse Behaviour Adequate Usage Inhibitions Wordsworth

Book:King Solomon's ring: new light on animal ways

Source: King Solomon's ring: new light on animal ways

“The discovery informs about the origins and early evolution of arthropods, the most ubiquitous, species-rich, morphologically diverse and successful animal group on Earth.”

Earth Animal Successful Rich Groups Evolution Discovery Species Diverse Arthropods

Author:Benjamin Van Roy

“If evolution exists in every living species, likewise so too does devolution.”

Ifs Doe Evolution Species Devolution

Author:Samael Aun Weor

“The business of proving evolution has reached a stage when it is futile for biologists to work merely to discover more and more evidence of evolution. Those who choose to believe that God created every biological species separately in the state we observe them, but made them in a way calculated to lead us to the conclusion that they are the products of an evolutionary development are obviously not open to argument. All that can be said is that their belief is an implicit blasphemy, for it imputes to God an appalling deviousness.”

Way Believe Made Said States Belief Stage Products Development Evolution Prove Evidence Argument Species Conclusion Blasphemy Biologist Implicit Deviousness

Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats.”

Mean Common Evolution Survival Intelligent Threat Species Available Strongest Adaptability Adaptable

Author:Charles Darwin

“It is an odd fact of evolution that we are the only species on Earth capable of creating science and philosophy. There easily could have been another species with some scientific talent, say that of the average human ten-year-old, but not as much as adult humans have; or one that is better than us at physics but worse at biology; or one that is better than us at everything. If there were such creatures all around us, I think we would be more willing to concede that human scientific intelligence might be limited in certain respects.”

“It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply the most focused form of the demands on the evolution of the species. It imposes a certain responsibility, moral, ethical and esthetic responsibility, and the species simply doesn't want to oblige.”

Want Form Certain Literature Decision Responsibility Moral Evolution Demand Institutions Faults Species Focused Ethical Relieved

Author:Joseph Brodsky

“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.”

“As far as I can see, our concentration of different abilities in one species - there's nothing I can see that in this Darwinian evolution that could've done that. So it seems to be a miracle of some sort.”

I Can Different Done Seems Ability Evolution Miracle Species Concentration

Author:Freeman Dyson

“Our own species evolved under the influence of group selection, as Darwin emphasized when he discussed the evolution of altruism.”

Groups Influence Evolution Species Altruism Selection

Author:Elliott Sober

“Group selection and individual selection are just two of the selection processes that have played important roles in evolution. There also is selection within individual organisms (intragenomic conflict), and selection among multi-species communities (an idea that now is getting attention in work on the human microbiome). All four of these levels of selection find a place in multi-level selection theory.”

Humans Two Important Ideas Individual Process Community Levels Attention Roles Four Groups Theory Evolution Conflict Species Organisms Selection

Author:Elliott Sober

“Another way to test hypotheses about adaptation is to consider trait variation across a group of species instead of focusing on the trait of a single species. Rather than seeking to explain why polar bears have fur of a certain thickness, one tries to explain why bears in colder climates have thicker fur than bears in warmer climates. The former problem is hard to solve, since it is hard to say exactly what fur thickness polar bears should have if natural selection guided the evolution of that trait.”

“You can imagine a different world in which a number of species developed with different genetically determined linguistic systems. It hasn't happened in evolution. What has happened is that one species has developed, and the genetic structure of this species happens to involve a variety of intricate abstract principles of linguistic organization that, therefore, necessarily constrain every language, and, in fact, create the basis for learning language as a way of organizing experience rather than constituting something learned from experience.”

“Every reader of the Conversations with the God is invited to self-select, that is, to choose themselves, to be among those who commit to moving forward their own individual and personal evolution by embracing and demonstrating behaviors that serve to awaken the species to who and what human beings really are Individuations of Divinity, and how that may be made manifest in our experience.”

“We have new media, new forms of connectivity, and an enormous transference of knowledge. When you study evolution, you see that when new genes meet and multiply, they create new contexts and new species. In a sense, the gene-pool of knowledge and of people connecting at all levels is literally spawning a kind of mind-pool of possibilities.”

People Mind Kind Form Levels Study Media Possibility Evolution Species Enormous Pool Genes Connecting New Media Transference

Author:Jean Houston

“I read five books on the Constitution. My favorite was 'Plain, Honest Men' by Richard Beeman. I went on a science jag in the same way. I kept getting in arguments about evolution and being bested. So I read Charles Darwin's 'On the Origin of the Species,' a fantastic book that is not that difficult.”

Men Way Book Difficult Five Honest Evolution Argument Constitution Species My Favorite Fantastic Honest Man

Author:Denis O'Hare

“Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.”

Has Beens Science Animal Evolution Creatures Survival Advantage Species Genes Continuing Altruism Selected

Book:Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Source: Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

“As a species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the face of the earth in just a few thousand years, no time at all as evolution clocks time, covering all livable parts of the planet, endangering other forms of life, and now threatening ourselves.”

Years Stills Earth Faces Form Young Planets Evolution Thousand Species Spread Clock Trusted Thousand Years Threatening Covering Juvenile

Book:Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Source: Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

“Darwin's theory of evolution is a framework by which we understand the diversity of life on Earth. But there is no equation sitting there in Darwin's 'Origin of Species' that you apply and say, 'What is this species going to look like in 100 years or 1,000 years?' Biology isn't there yet with that kind of predictive precision.”

Years Looks Kind Earth Theory Evolution Diversity Sitting Species Biology Equations Framework Precision Theory Of Evolution Origin Of Species Diversity Of Life

Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.”

Literature Individual Successful Atheism Evolution Species Experiments Accumulation Successful Individuals

Book:A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Evolution Quotes

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Evolution Quotes