Quotessence
Home / Topics / Human Evolution Quotes

Human Evolution Quotes

Browse 107 quotes about Human Evolution.

Related topics

ThinkingSteps

Human Evolution Quotes

“Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative. That is the paradox this book has tried to explain. Human beings have social instincts. They come into the world equipped with predispositions to learn how to cooperate, to discriminate the trustworthy from the treacherous, to commit themselves to be trustworthy, to earn good reputations, to exchange goods and information, and to divide labour.”

TrustCooperationHuman EvolutionNature Versus NurtureSociality
Book:The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
Create image

“We are a species which is naturally moved by curiosity, the only one left of a group of species (the genus Homo) made up of a dozen equally curious species. The other species in the group have already become extinct; some, like the Neanderthals, quite recently, roughly thirty thousand years ago. It is group of species which evolved in Africa, akin to the hierarchical and quarrelsome chimpanzees -- and even more closely akin to the bonobos, the small, peaceful, cheerfully egalitarian and promiscuous type of chimps. A group of species which repeatedly went out of Africa in order to explore new worlds, and went far: as far, eventually, as Patagonia -- and as far, eventually, as the moon. It is not against our nature to be curious: it is in our nature to be so.”

ScienceHumanityHuman NatureEvolutionCuriosityExplorationHuman EvolutionBonobos
Book:Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Create image

“If you ask me, our planet and our entire lives are a [virtual] construct of our own minds and the mind at large. If we were to decode the COVID-19 message coming from the transcendent realm, I would approximate it as: ‘The next phase of human evolution is clearly in the cards now: Consuming synthetic meat and being open to the connectivity explosion with immersive virtual worlds not for escapism but for expansion of the human creative imagination should become a conscientious choice for billions. The ‘Cradle Age’ is almost over.”

MindCovid 19EscapismVirtual RealityHuman EvolutionCreative ImaginationVirtual WorldsConnectivity ExplosionCradle AgeSynthetic Meat
Book:NOOGENESIS: Computational Biology
Create image

“And despite the insignificance of the instant we have so far occupied in cosmic time, it is clear that what happens on and near Earth at the beginning of the second cosmic year will depend very much on the scientific wisdom and the distinctly human sensitivity of mankind.”

MankindIntelligenceHuman Evolution
Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Create image

“we have much to blush for in the acts of our ancestors… We must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken off.”

SocietyEvolutionCapitalismSocialismHuman EvolutionSocial Evolution
Book:The Iron Heel
Create image

“It is our ultimate purpose to continually evolve as a species both physically and emotionally, as change is the mechanism for growth and development, and if we fear change we stunt our own growth and with it, human evolution.”

PurposeFearGrowthChangeHuman NatureSpeciesEvolveChange The WorldHuman EvolutionGrowth ProcessGrowth And DevelopmentEvolved ConsciousnessEvolutionary ProcessEvolution Of ConsciousnessEvolutionary Enlightenment
Book:Anatomy Of Illumination
Create image

“You realize, of course, the Omegans nearly lost this Earth. They had everything yet let it disintegrate through their rampant carelessness. Two hundred years past they possessed the rudimentary beginnings of the NET to bring them together. They called it the Internet. Yet they treated it like a toy, tribalized themselves, and thus nearly lost the planet. “Nationalist wars, self serving ideologies, competing religions . . . more significant, though not to the Omegans, was climate change itself, which mattered more than any petty dogma, but they ignored it until too late. It has ultimately determined our lives, managed now by the CORPORATE, using the only possible tools to survive. There were billions of Humans then. There is now but a fraction of that: some 300 million we know in the MEGS and, of course, the uncounted MASSes.”

FantasyAdventureScience FictionDramaticDystopianHuman EvolutionAndroidGood V S EvilFiction Action
Book:Against the Machine: Evolution
Create image

“When Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth in April 1961, he carried generations of hopes and dreams into space with him. A growing number of thinkers now believe the 'Overview Effect' heralds nothing less than the next 'giant leap' of human evolution. As breathtaking space-down views of our world seep into our collective consciousness, people are waking up to the 'Spaceship Earth' analogy that depicts our planet as a natural vessel that must be steered responsibly by its crew.”

Human EvolutionCollective ConsciousnessSpace QuotesYuri GagarinOverview EffectSpaceship EarthCollective Consciousness Quotes
Book:The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution
Create image

“Research from Baton and Konner in 1985 and Cordain et al. in 2000 estimated that about 65 per cent of the diets of pre-agricultural Palaeolithic humans may still have come from plants – far more than only your recommended five fruit and veg a day, I would say. Interestingly, anatomically modern humans are believed to have more copies of the starch-digesting genes than the Neanderthals and the Denisovans (another extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle palaeolithic), suggesting that the ability to digest starch has been a continuous driver through human evolution as much as walking upright, having big brains and articulate speech - perhaps being a baker may be the oldest profession after all.”

Homo SapiensVegan QuotesHuman EvolutionPlant Based DietPaleo DietPaleolithicOmnivores
Book:Ethical Vegan: A Personal and Political Journey to Change the World
Create image

“Advances in technology can be empowering, progressive and enriching. History has shown this across civilisations and societies. But it has also shown, and the present and future will continue to show, that it is foolish, risky, flawed and folly without us raising our individual and collective consciousness and mindfulness to accompany it - to ensure we use it shrewdly, kindly and wisely.”

ScienceMotivational QuotesBusinessTechnologyProgressBusiness QuotesProgressiveInspiring QuotesSociety QuotesFuture QuotesRasheed Ogunlaru QuotesRasheed OgunlaruTechnology QuotesHuman EvolutionInnovation QuotesTechHistory Of MankindFuture QuotationsTechnology AddictionTechnological ProgressInventionsAdvanceTechnological EvolutionInnovatorInventions QuotesInnovation WisdomAdvances
Author:Rasheed Ogunlaru
Create image

“The Stephen Pinkers of the modern world have made us understand that the human senses of fairness, equity, and empathy, the fundaments of the moral code, do not in fact spring from organized religion or advanced culture but have roots in our very evolution as a social species. We are beings with brains that are endlessly taking stock of favors and slights, reciprocity and advantage. Morality did not emerge from religious teachings. Rather, religious teachings encoded a morality that sprang from human social evolution.”

ReligionEvolutionMoralityHuman Evolution
Book:Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History
Create image

“[Evolutionary selection pressures for general communication] explain why humans are peculiar in having our rather small irises set against a white background—the sclera—in our eyes. Anyone watching us can infer where we are looking or whom we are looking at. Experiments with apes and infants show that apes watch the orientation of the heads of others while human infants watch the eyes.”

SightEyesHuman EvolutionNonverbal CommunicationSociality
Book:The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
Create image

“The human condition is plagued with a labyrinth of shortcomings, frailties and limitations that hinder man from reaching his fullest potential. Therefore, it only makes sense that we find ourselves at the next phase in human evolution where restricted man merges with the infinite possibilities of hyper-evolving technologies. This techno-human transmutation will prove to be ‘the’ quantum leap in human progression. The harmonization of technologically extending oneself, consciousness, artificial intelligence and machine learning will reverse the failures of genetic predisposition and limitation.”

TechnologyAiArtificial IntelligenceCybersecurityMachine LearningHuman EvolutionJames ScottMl
Author:James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
Create image

“As shortcuts to spiritual and transcendent experiences, psychedelics played an important role in human evolution and galvanized pre-historic ritualistic cultures. In modern times, banning psychedelic drugs has proven to be counterproductive. Just as banning sexual activity does not stop sexual desire, outlawing psychedelic drugs does nothing to suppress the innate human urge for transcendental experiences. Besides, prohibition rarely works as we saw with alcohol or marijuana. Despite their classification and the legal hurdles around working with Schedule I substances in the U.S., psychedelics have undergone something of a renaissance among researchers, and for good reason.”

Spiritual ExperienceHuman EvolutionPsychedelicsPsychedelic DrugsPsychedelic RenaissanceRitualisticTranscendent Experience
Book:The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence
Create image

“The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely distinguished from the group of animals most nearly allied to him, than they are from one another.”

ScienceAnimalDevelopmentEvolutionBiologyAnatomyResultHuman EvolutionDistinguishDisputation
Book:Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The
Create image

“with rare exceptions (chiefly the social insects), mammals and birds are the only organisms to devote substantial attention to the care of their young; an evolutionary development that, through the long period of plasticity which it permits, takes advantage of the large information-processing capability of the mammalian and primate brains. Love seems to be an invention of the mammals.”

BrainIntelligenceHuman EvolutionBrain Plasticity
Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Create image

“…either we behave like intelligent, rational animals, respecting Nature and accelerating as much as possible the process of humanization we are only just beginning, or the quality of human life will deteriorate. Some of us are starting to have doubts about the rationality of human groups. But if we do not act rationally, we will suffer the same fate as some cultures and some stupid species of animals, of whose suffering and path to extinction all that remains are fossils. Species that do not change biologically, ecologically or socially when their habitat changes are bound to perish after a period of indescribable suffering.”

EvolutionRationalityRational ThinkingHuman EvolutionHuman Evolution And Tolerance
Book:Teoría Y Práctica De Salud Pública
Create image

“By our very nature, we humans are linear thinkers. We evolved to estimate a distance from the predator or to the prey, and advanced mathematics is only a recent evolutionary addition. This is why it’s so difficult even for a modern man to grasp the power of exponentials. 40 steps in linear progression is just 40 steps away; 40 steps in exponential progression is a cool trillion (with a T) – it will take you 3 times from Earth to the Sun and back to Earth.”

Information TechnologyHuman EvolutionExponential GrowthExponentialMathematics Quotes
Book:The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence
Create image

“On the other hand, mere critical thinking, without creative and intuitive insights, without the search for new patterns, is sterile and doomed. To solve complex problems in changing circumstances requires the activity of both cerebral hemispheres: the path to the future lies through the corpus callosum.”

Human EvolutionBrain FunctionBrain Anatomy
Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Create image

“In a way, science might be described as paranoid thinking applied to Nature: we are looking for natural conspiracies, for connections among apparently disparate data. Our objective is to abstract patterns from Nature (right-hemisphere thinking), but many proposed patterns do not in fact correspond to the data. Thus all proposed patterns must be subjected to the sieve of critical analysis (left-hemisphere thinking).”

Human BrainHuman EvolutionBrain FunctionBrain Anatomy
Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Create image

“Some evidence suggests the left-handers are more likely to have problems with such left-hemisphere functions as reading, writing, speaking and arithmetic; and to be more adept at such right -hemisphere functions as imagination, pattern recognition and general creativity.”

Human EvolutionBrain FunctionBrain Anatomy
Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Create image

“There is no doubt that right-hemisphere intuitive thinking may perceive patterns and connections too difficult for the left hemisphere; but it may also detect patterns where none exist. Skeptical and critical thinking is not a hallmark of the right hemisphere. And unalloyed right-hemisphere doctrines, particularly when they are invented during new and trying circumstances, may be erroneous or paranoid.”

Human EvolutionBrain FunctionBrain Anatomy
Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Create image

“What’s your business, Sir?” “Jus’ call me Gord. Labour relations.” “What’s that?” “I’m a broker, kid. Middlemen need workers an’ wagons t’ bring their recyclings south. I’m the one who supplies ‘em.” “Where are they now?” “Over there, you can just see the wagons under the tubes. The men sleep under ‘em.” “They’re shackled.” “Yup.” “Prisoners?” “Nope. Indentured labour.”

FantasyAdventureDramaDestructionScience FictionDramaticDystopianHuman EvolutionFiction Action
Book:Against the Machine: Evolution
Create image

“In Egyptian Arabic, the word 'insan' means 'human'. If we remove the 'n', the word becomes 'insa', which means 'to forget'. So you see, the word 'forget' is taken from the word 'human'. And since it was God who created our minds and hearts, He knew from the very beginning that we would quickly forget our history, only to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. So the ultimate test of every human is to seek wisdom. After all, wisdom is gained from having a good memory. Only after we have passed this test will we evolve to become better humans. Man is only a forgetful mortal, but God — He sees, hears and remembers everything.”

LifeHeartGodWisdomPainRememberPurposeHumanityUniverseGrowthChangeForgetMistakeLordWiseMankindCreationEvolutionLessonsFutureErrorsMemoryCreatorMistakesManEvolveMeaningMemorableSpiritual GrowthMissionCreateBeginningForgiveMeaningful LifeHumanity QuotesGrowPurposeful LivingEgyptianTestForgetfulMindsHuman EvolutionMakerMortalPast MistakesArabicEvolvingFinding MeaningSeek TruthSeek WisdomEgyptian Arabic
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Create image

“What functions do dreams serve today? One view, published in a reputable scientific paper, holds that the function of dreams is to wake us up a little, every now and then, to see if anyone is about to eat us. But dreams occupy such a relatively small part of normal sleep that this explanation does not seem very compelling. Moreover, as we have seen, the evidence points just the other way: today it is the mammalian predators, not the mammalian prey, who characteristically have dream-filled sleep.”

SleepDreamsHuman Evolution
Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Create image

“Our time has been distinguished, more than by anything else, by a mastery, a control, of the external world, and by an almost total forgetfulness of the internal world. If one estimates human evolution from the point of view of knowledge of the external world, then we are in many respects progressing. If our estimate is from the point of view of the internal world, and of oneness of internal and external, then the judgment must be very different.”

IfsWorldHumansHas BeensDifferentViewsProgressEvolutionJudgmentPoint Of ViewOnenessOur TimeInternalsMasteryDistinguishedForgetfulnessHuman Evolution
Author:R. D. Laing
Create image

“Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.”

IfsHumansHeartSometimesJobsMovingCoursesNextCenturyEvolutionMoving ForwardWitnessUnfairHuman EvolutionFaint Of Heart
Book:A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society
Create image

“When certain unmarried men, who had lost their capacity to sin, sat indoors, breathing bad air, and passed resolutions about what was right and what wrong, making rules for the guidance of the people, instead of trusting to the natural, happy instincts of the individual, they ushered in the Dark Ages. These are the gentlemen who blocked human evolution absolutely for a thousand years.”

PeopleMenYearsHumansAgeCertainIndividualLostNaturalDarkSinAirAtheismEvolutionThousandCapacityInstinctPositive AtheismBreathingGuidanceGentlemanSatResolutionThousand YearsDark AgesBlockedUnmarriedHuman Evolution
Author:Elbert Hubbard
Create image