Evolution Quotes - Page 16

• There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Men, Religion

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.71, Delphi Classics

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• 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.

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Religious, Believe, Ignorance

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• Evolutionary biology is genuinely scientific, but more than that it opens the door to a world more marvellous than any Christian fundamentalist has ever read into the pages of the Bible.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Christian, Doors, World

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• 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.

  Charles Darwin

  Lying, Men, Intellectual

  "The Descent of Man". Book by Charles Darwin, part I, chap. IV, 1871.

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• God made all the animals in a single day; he could have swept them all away in the flood and re-created them in one day when they were again needed. Therefore it was an odd idea to save specimens of them for eleven months in the ark, whilst aware that eight persons could not feed or water them by any human possibility. If they were to be preserved by miracle, the ark was not necessary - to let them swim would have answered the purpose and been more indubitably miraculous.

  Mark Twain

  Animal, Eight, Ideas

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• There is no god higher than truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Truth, Religion

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• The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Essence, Raw Materials

  Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.44, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can only be doubted by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or plain bigotry.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Block, Emotional, Ignorant

  "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". The American Biology Teacher, volume 35, p.125-9, March, 1973.

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• Opponents say natural selection is not a theory supported by observation or experiment; that it is not based on fact; and that it cannot be proved. Well, no, you cannot prove the theory to people who won't believe in it any more than you can prove that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. However, we know the battle happened then, just as we know the course of evolution on earth unambiguously shows that Darwin was right.

  David Attenborough

  Believe, People, Battle

  "How Darwin won the evolution race" by Robin McKie, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2008.

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• The initial configuration of the universe may have been chosen by God, or it may itself have been determined by the laws of science. In either case, it would seem that everything in the universe would then be determined by evolution according to the laws of science, so it is difficult to see how we can be masters of our fate.

  Stephen Hawking

  Fate, Law, May

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• Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of idealogy [sic], that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art etc.

  Friedrich Engels

  Art, Simple, Law

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• After having produced aquatic animals of all ranks and having caused extensive variations in them by the different environments provided by the waters, nature led them little by little to the habit of living in the air, first by the water's edge and afterwards on all the dry parts of the globe. These animals have in course of time been profoundly altered by such novel conditions; which so greatly influenced their habits and organs that the regular gradation which they should have exhibited in complexity of organisation is often scarcely recognisable.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Animal, Air

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• All I ever aim to do is to put the Development hypothesis in the same coach as the creation one. It will only be a question of who is to ride outside & who in after all.

  Joseph Dalton Hooker

  Science, Development, Creation

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• An irrefutable proof that such single-celled primaeval animals really existed as the direct ancestors of Man, is furnished according to the fundamental law of biogeny by the fact that the human egg is nothing more than a simple cell.

  Ernst Haeckel

  Science, Simple, Men

  Ernst Haeckel, Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, L. Dora Schmitz (1906). “The History of Creation: Or The Development of the Earth and Its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes. A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in General, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in Particular. From the 8th German Ed. of Ernst Haeckel ... The Translation Rev. by E. Ray Lankester”

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• The world has been evolved, not created: it has arisen little by little from a small beginning, and has increased through the activity of the elemental forces embodied in itself, and so has rather grown than come into being at an almighty word.

  August Weismann

  Littles, World, Force

  August Weismann, Sir John Arthur Thomson, Margaret R. Thomson (1904). “The Evolution Theory”

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• What a sublime idea of the infinite might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father of all fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it would surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects than to produce the effects themselves.

  August Weismann

  Father, Ideas, Sublime

  August Weismann, Sir John Arthur Thomson, Margaret R. Thomson (1904). “The Evolution Theory”

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• During cycles long anterior to the creation of the human race, and while the surface of the globe was passing from one condition to another, whole races of animals-each group adapted to the physical conditions in which they lived-were successively created and exterminated.

  Roderick Murchison

  Science, Animal, Race

  Roderick Impey Murchison (1854). “Siluria the History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold Over the Earth by Roderick Impey Murchison”, p.5

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• Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere.

  Jacques Monod

  Science, Views, Expression

  Jacques Monod (1971). “Chance and necessity: an essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology”

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• Evolution on the large scale unfolds, like much of human history, as a succession of dynasties.

  Edmund Beecher Wilson

  Science, History, Dynasty

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• Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.

  Julian Huxley

  Synthesis, Modern

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• Evolution... is the most powerful and the most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on Earth.

  Julian Huxley

  Powerful, Science, Ideas

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• 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.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Animal, Giving

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• For in disease the most voluntary or most special movements, faculties, etc., suffer first and most, that is in an order the exact opposite of evolution. Therefore I call this the principle of Dissolution.

  John Hughlings Jackson

  Science, Opposites, Order

  John Hughlings Jackson, James Taylor, Sir Gordon Holmes (1931). “Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson: On Epilepsy and epileptiform convulsions”

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• However, if we consider that all the characteristics which have been cited are only differences in degree of structure, may we not suppose that this special condition of organization of man has been gradually acquired at the close of a long period of time, with the aid of circumstances which have proved favorable? What a subject for reflection for those who have the courage to enter into it!

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Reflection, Men

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• I am above the forest region, amongst grand rocks & such a torrent as you see in Salvator Rosa's paintings vegetation all a scrub of rhodods. with Pines below me as thick & bad to get through as our Fuegian Fagi on the hill tops, & except the towering peaks of P. S. that, here shoot up on all hands there is little difference in the mt scenery—here however the blaze of Rhod. flowers and various colored jungle proclaims a differently constituted region in a naturalists eye & twenty species here, to one there, always are asking me the vexed question, where do we come from?

  Joseph Dalton Hooker

  Flower, Eye, Rocks

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