Quotessence
Home / Topics / Natural Selection Quotes

Natural Selection Quotes

Browse 280 quotes about Natural Selection.

Related topics

EvolutionIfsSpeciesTheoryOrigin Of SpeciesScienceDoeFormHas BeensVariationWorldMenPeopleAtheismDesignFactsMayTheory Of EvolutionHumansMechanismPrinciplesIdeasKnowsProcessShouldSurvivalThinkingMindAdaptationBrainEnvironmentIndividualAnimalBelieveCertainComplexesConsequenceGenesGeneticsLawProblemProduceViewsCoursesCultureFundamentalsGivingLongMadeProgressReligionSeemsSurvival Of The FittestTermWells

Natural Selection Quotes

“When one ponders on the tremendous journey of evolution over the past three billion years or so, the prodigious wealth of structures it has engendered, and the extraordinarily effective teleonomic performances of living beings from bacteria to man, one may well find oneself beginning to doubt again whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at random. [Nevertheless,] a detailed review of the accumulated modern evidence [shows] that this conception alone is compatible with the facts.”

FactsScienceChanceDoubtDesignEvolutionEvidenceBiologyNatural SelectionCompatibility
Book:Chance and necessity: an essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology
Create image

“Any species that devours its natural environment will eventually fall victim to the resulting silence and I call the toxicity of silence: Extinction Silence”

NaturalSilenceEnvironmentVictimSpeciesEnvironmentalExtinctionNatural WorldEnvironmentalismNatural SelectionNatural LawNaturalismEnvironmental ProtectionVictimsEnvironmental ConservationEnvironmental DegradationSilence QuoteEnvironmental ValuesSilencedDevourNatural DisastersSpecies RelationsDevoursDevoured
Book:Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
Create image

“The human has genetic adaptation to natural electromagnetic radiation. Increasing, reducing or removing the natural radiation exposures results in a sickened human that may progress onto a diseased state.”

NaturalResultsProgressDiseaseHumanSickSicknessProgressiveRadiationAdaptationExposureReducingProgressionGeneticsElectromagneticNatural SelectionStateDiseasedResultDiseasesRadiation EffectsSickenedExposuresSicklySickness And DiseasesElectromagnetic RadiationGenetic MutationAdaptability QuotesGeneticElectromagnetic WaveResults QuotesSickness Of The MindElectromagnetic Theory Of LightIncreasingRemovingGenetically Damaged
Author:Steven Magee
Create image

“The human skin evolved in a natural electromagnetic radiation environment and is now in a very unnatural man-made one that is making many people sick.”

HumansHumanityNaturalEnvironmentHumanEnvironmentalEvolveRadiationHumanity And SocietyNatural WorldElectromagneticNatural SelectionNatural LawHuman DevelopmentSkinHuman BeingElectronicsEnvironmental DegradationSkin DeepSkin CareRadiation EffectsElectromagnetic RadiationElectromagnetismElectronicElectromagnetic WaveElectronic RevolutionRadiationsEvolvedElectrocutionEnviron
Book:Electrical Forensics
Create image

“Sapient Selection (The Sonnet) Some people engineer machines, I engineer human evolution. How can we engineer evolution, Simply by taking accountable action. This is what I call sapient selection, When humans choose the path they take. Sure, nature still has a huge hold over us but, We have the neurons to override her influence. It is extremely difficult to conquer nature, But the important thing is, it is not impossible. With enough resolve, honor and conscience, Anybody can tame their inner animal. Monkeys that walk upright are still monkeys. Sapiens with hate are but good-looking chimpanzees.”

Human NatureSelf DeterminationHumanity And SocietyEvolutionary PsychologyDiversity And InclusionBe The ChangeHate CrimeNatural SelectionSocial Justice PoetryCruelty And Hatred
Book:Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None
Create image

“Many ask: “Why are we so insincere, why are we so hypocrites?”. Well, it is because this is how human nature works. If there was a time and a place where human beings were 100% of the time honest, who always said what they had in mind and who didn’t care to cover their shortcomings by displaying a better persona than the “real” one, it is long since gone, wiped out from the relentless force of natural selection.”

Human NatureHypocriteNatural SelectionInsincerity
Book:A PHILOSOPHICAL KALEIDOSCOPE: Thoughts, Contemplations, Aphorisms
Create image

“Instincts are older, but thoughts are recent, that's why instincts are more powerful than thoughts - that's why it takes great will power to express a thought through action, while instincts come so easily. However, if we continue practicing our thoughts long enough, eventually the instincts that hold power over us will turn powerless. And this my friend, ought to be the next step of our evolution, and that's why it's no longer merely a matter of natural selection, it's what I hereby dub "sapient selection", that is the process of determining the path of our evolution ourselves.”

EvolutionThoughtsPrejudiceBrainy QuotesSelf DeterminationNeuroscienceEvolutionary PsychologyNatural SelectionInstinctsSapient Selection
Book:Ain't Enough to Look Human
Create image

“Natural selection,” in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of “the struggle for life” when a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predator’s power of appreciation. I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.”

NatureBeautyEvolutionDeceptionNatural SelectionEnchantmentButterfliesCamouflageDarwinAdaption
Book:Speak, Memory
Create image

“I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection. (Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866)”

ScienceEvolutionAgreeBiologyLetterNatural SelectionSurvival Of The FittestSpencerWallaceHerbert SpencerAlfred Russel Wallace
Author:Charles Darwin
Create image

“For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”

Science FictionNatural SelectionBacteriaMartiansAlien Invasion
Book:The War of the Worlds
Create image

“What is natural selection? Do organisms develop due to an environment, or does the environment only trigger the potential to evolve in almost endless ways? What determines the survival of the fittest? How are the fittest organisms or animals formed? How can the first fittest animal be formed, and based on what? How can anybody, or anything, become stronger or better than anybody else or anything else, from the same material, under the same conditions? (Is fitness already there?)”

GodFaithUniverseAtheismCosmosAbsoluteNatural Selection
Book:ABSOLUTE
Create image

“First Law In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears. Second Law All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.”

ScienceNatureInfluenceEvolutionFunctionBiologyGeneticsNatural SelectionReproductionNaturalismHeredity
Book:Zoological Philosophy
Create image

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.”

Natural SelectionEugenicsDarwinismSurvival Of The FittestPlanned ParenthoodPopulation ControlSterilizationSocial DarwinismSterilisationArtificial Selection
Book:The Descent of Man
Create image

“When we are underconfident, we desire to be accepted unconditionally. That way no matter how much goes wrong and how little we accomplish, we are still guaranteed a place in society. Those who are so damaged in confidence and self-esteem that they assume they will never get anything right, and never accomplish anything of note, demand not only a place in society, but one equal to those who get things right and accomplish things. Although a defensive outlook, this viewpoint is projected forward as a pre-emptive strike on feelings of inadequacy, regret and doubt. When enough people gather who have this viewpoint, we create a society where social factors - being nice, novelty of approach, possessions owned, ironic or unusual lifestyles - become more important than ability. If you want to know how the path to Idiocracy is paved, this is it. Natural selection now favors the social, not the competent, and so society breeds future generations of incompetent (but very sociable) people.”

AbilityEqualityCompetenceNatural SelectionSociabilityIdiocracy
Author:Brett Stevens
Create image

“Quantity isnt to be equated with quality, but success in propagation is, in the end, as necessary for memes (however excellent) as it is for organisms. Most organisms leave no issue, and most published books have readerships in the dozens, not thousands, before going out of print for good. Even the greatest works of genius must still pass the test of differential replication.”

PhilosophyCultureEvolutionNatural SelectionCultural Evolution
Book:From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
Create image

“Might one not say that in the chance combination of nature's production, since only those endowed with certain relations of suitability could survive, it is no cause for wonder that this suitability is found in all species that exist today? Chance, one might say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number turned out to be constructed in such fashion that the parts of the animal could satisfy its needs; in another, infinitely greater number, there was neither suitability nor order: all of the later have perished; animals without a mouth could not live, others lacking organs for reproduction could not perpetuate themselves: the only ones to have remained are those in which were found order and suitability; and these species, which we see today, are only the smallest part of what blind fate produced.”

LifeSciencePurposeNatureChanceExistenceWonderEvolutionSurvivalInnovationBlindBiologyNatural SelectionSurvival Of The FittestIncredibleStruggle For Life
Author:Pierre-Louis Moreau De Maupertuis
Create image

“The boys lived in their own simple, carefree world, unconcerned with hygiene and unaware of the theory of evolution. Yet ruthless natural selection—further intensified by human disregard for its principles and the laws of biology—allowed only the strongest and most enduring to survive. — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Three Context note: This quote reflects childhood lived under harsh social neglect, where survival depended not on care or knowledge, but on physical resilience. Set against the backdrop of Soviet Ukraine, it uses the metaphor of natural selection to expose how indifference to basic human and biological needs shaped who endured—and who did not.”

SurvivalHistorical FictionNatural SelectionTheory Of EvolutionHarsh RealityStruggle For LifeHuman ResilienceEarly 20th CenturyChildhood HardshipNeglecting Yourself
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга третя. Несправджені сподівання.: Все буде Голодомор.
Create image

“George Williams, the revered evolutionary biologist, describes the natural world as “grossly immoral.” Having no foresight or compassion, natural selection “can honestly be described as a process for maximizing short-sighted selfishness.” On top of all the miseries inflicted by predators and parasites, the members of a species show no pity to their own kind. Infanticide, siblicide, and rape can be observed in many kinds of animals; infidelity is common even in so-called pair-bonded species; cannibalism can be expected in all species that are not strict vegetarians; death from fighting is more common in most animal species than it is in the most violent American cities. Commenting on how biologists used to describe the killing of starving deer by mountain lions as an act of mercy, Williams wrote: “The simple facts are that both predation and starvation are painful prospects for deer, and that the lion's lot is no more enviable. Perhaps biology would have been able to mature more rapidly in a culture not dominated by Judeo-Christian theology and the Romantic tradition. It might have been well served by the First Holy Truth from [Buddha's] Sermon at Benares: “Birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is painful...”” As soon as we recognize that there is nothing morally commendable about the products of evolution, we can describe human psychology honestly, without the fear that identifying a “natural” trait is the same as condoning it. As Katharine Hepburn says to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

EvolutionNatural SelectionWild Animal SufferingPredationIdyllic View
Book:The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Create image

“The point of the prey being paralysed rather than killed, by the way, is that they don't decay but are eaten alive and are therefore fresh. It was macabre habit, in the related Ichneumon wasp, that provoked Darwin to write: 'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent god would have designedly created the Ich-neumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars...' He might as well have used the example of a french chef boiling lobsters alive to preserve their flavor.”

GeneticsNatural SelectionPopular ScienceRichard Dawkins
Book:The Selfish Gene
Create image

“Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is therefore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the selective process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted to listening to music.”

ScienceMusicEvolutionBiologyNatural SelectionSurivivalSelections
Author:August Weismann
Create image

“It is therefore scientifically correct to say that 'natural selection has been proved to be an agent of evolutionary change' - we can, in fact, prove it by doing. But it is totally illegitimate to claim that the discovery of this mechanism - natural selection - proves that the cause of evolution 'was automatic with no room for divine guidance or design'.”

EvolutionNatural SelectionDivine GuidanceDivine Design
Book:A Guide for the Perplexed
Create image

“People who are depressed at the thought that all our motives are selfish are [confused]. They have mixed up ultimate causation (why something evolved by natural selection) with proximate causation (how the entity works here and now). [A] good way to understand the logic of natural selection is to imagine that genes are agents with selfish motives. [T]he genes have metaphorical motives — making copies of themselves — and the organisms they design have real motives. But they are not the same motives. Sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is wire unselfish motives into a human brain — heartfelt, unstinting, deep-in-the-marrow unselfishness. The love of children (who carry one's genes into posterity), a faithful spouse (whose genetic fate is identical to one's own), and friends and allies (who trust you if you're trustworthy) can be bottomless and unimpeachable as far as we humans are concerned (proximate level), even if it is metaphorically self-serving as far as the genes are concerned (ultimate level). Combine this with the common misconception that the genes are a kind of essence or core of the person, and you get a mongrel of Dawkins and Freud: the idea that the metaphorical motives of the genes are the deep, unconscious, ulterior motives of the person. That is an error.”

EvolutionSelfishnessAltruismEvolutionary PsychologyEgoismNatural SelectionSelfish GeneSelfish Gene TheoryProximate CauseGene Centered EvolutionGene Centered Natural SelectionUltimate Cause
Book:The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Create image

“In my life as a human, I see clues that evolution on Earth and elsewhere in the cosmos at large is not being pushed from behind in entropic randomness but being pulled forward by complexification, natural selection and other evolutionary forces orchestrated by a strange unseen teleological attractor, in McKenna’s words the 'Transcendental Object' at the end of time. The Noosphere is the collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which we all are immersed, it’s a cognitive layer of the planet, which has found a physical expression in the form of today’s Internet. As the Noosphere gains more coherence, typical of a biological brain, this process of “planet cognification” accelerates.”

Humanity QuotesNatural SelectionRandomnessCollective ConsciousnessInternet QuotesPlanet QuotesNoosphereTeleological AttractorEvolution On EarthTranscendental Object
Book:The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and the Omega Point Cosmology
Create image

“Although a version of Hamilton's rule is indeed a fully general evolutionary truth, nothing about individual maximization can be deduced directly from this generalized form of the rule, contrary to what is sometimes implied. In particular, although the generalized Hamilton's rule yields the rb > c condition for the social trait to spread, one cannot conclude that that individuals behave as if trying to maximize the quantity (rb - c); they cannot do this, as this quantity is frequency-dependent.”

EvolutionNatural SelectionInclusive FitnessHamilton S Rule
Book:Agents and Goals in Evolution
Create image

“In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end. Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all—seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions; then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent. Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustration's sake, supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what the establishment of Darwin's Theory will do for the organic world. For the notion that every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished.”

SciencePurposeNaturalDesignEvolutionEvidenceAdaptationVariationSuperstitionNatural SelectionIllustrationDarwinCharles DarwinDesign ArgumentWatchmaker Argument
Book:Criticism on "The Origin of Species"
Create image

“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 kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. 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.”

SciencePurposeSufferingFearDesignEvolutionDiseaseIndifferenceBiologyStarvationNatural Selection
Book:River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
Create image

“The most essential prediction of Darwinism is that, given an astronomical number of chances, unintelligent processes can make seemingly-designed systems, ones of the complexity of those found in the cell. ID specifically denies this, predicting that in the absence of intelligent input no such systems would develop. So Darwinism and ID make clear, opposite predictions of what we should find when we examine genetic results from a stupendous number of organisms that are under relentless pressure from natural selection. The recent genetic results are a stringent test. The results: 1) Darwinism’s prediction is falsified; 2) Design’s prediction is confirmed.”

ScienceChanceEvolutionBiologyPredictionsNatural SelectionNaturalismDarwinismIntelligent DesignIdMacroevolutionMacro Evolution
Author:Michael J. Behe
Create image