Evolution Quotes - Page 2

• Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Pathways, Events, Alternatives

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• Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Tests, Dogma, Nonsense

  "Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history".

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• Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

  Richard Dawkins

  Distance, Science, Vanity

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.58, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Nature, Science, Years

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• I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Science, Views, Would Be

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• I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle.

  Thomas Huxley

  Strong, Science, Intelligent

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.277, University of Georgia Press

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• It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Errors, Perfection

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2004). “Evolution And Ethics”, p.247, 1st World Publishing

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• Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If The Eiffel Tower were now to represent the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Men, Years

  Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain’s Book of Animals”, p.165, Univ of California Press

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• I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Memorable, Thinking, Intelligent

  The Observer, December 27, 1987.

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• We're in the midst of an evolution, not a revolution.

  James Levine

  Revolution, Midst

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• Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Life, Peace, Honesty

  "Innovate Like Edison : The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success". Book by Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, p. 67,

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• Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Science, Libertarian, Faces

  Konrad Lorenz (2005). “On Aggression”, p.115, Routledge

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• As a chemist, I wanted to ask myself the question frustrated by biology: What is the minimal unit of matter that can undergo Darwinian evolution?

  Leroy Cronin

  Motivation, Inspiration, Frustrated

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• The worst censors are those prohibiting criticism of the theory of evolution in the classroom.

  Phyllis Schlafly

  Theory Of Evolution, Criticism, Classroom

  "Time To End The Censorship". eagleforum.org. December 29, 2004.

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• Evolution seems to close the heart to some of the plainest spiritual truths while it opens the mind to the wildest guesses advanced in the name of science.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Spiritual, Heart, Names

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• I have been interested in phenomena involving complexity, diversity and evolution since I was a young boy.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Boys, Diversity, Young

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• Those early steps are very important in understanding the evolution. But in themselves, maybe now you need the later records to understand the significance of the earlier records!

  Evan Parker

  Understanding, Important, Needs

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• Kubrick's vision seemed to be that humans are doomed, whereas Clarke's is that humans are moving on to a better stage of evolution.

  Marvin Minsky

  Moving On, Vision, Moved On

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• Where there is age there is evolution, where there is life there is growth.

  Anjelica Huston

  Growth, Age

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• The stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Law, Tendencies, Streams

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• Out of the dusk a shadow, Then a spark; Out of the cloud a silence, Then a lark; Out of the heart a rapture, Then a pain; Out of the dead, cold ashes, Life again.

  John B. Tabb

  Pain, Heart, Clouds

  John B Tabb (1894). “Poems by John B Tabb”

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• Pouter, tumbler, and fantail are from the same source; The racer and hack may be traced to one Horse; So men were developed from monkeys of course, Which nobody can deny.

  Bill Vaughan

  Horse, Men, May

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• The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.

  Eric Hoffer

  Men, Survival, Kind

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• Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
  And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Science, Climbing, Mud

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)”, p.1434, Delphi Classics

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• The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Imagination, Design, Fossils

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