Human Evolution Quotes

• For the first time in human evolution, the individual life is long enough, and the cultural transformation swift enough, that the individual mind is now a constituent player in the global transformation of human culture.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Player, Long, Mind

  William Irwin Thompson (2015). “Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Cutlture, Second Enlarged Edition”, p.95, Andrews UK Limited

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• What we usually call human evolution is the awakening of the divine nature within us.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Divinity, Awakening, Evolution

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• The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness.

  Robert E. Ornstein

  Motivational, Selfishness, May

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• The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.

  Franz Kafka

  Spiritual, Movement, Evolution

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Light, Theory Of Evolution

  Charles Darwin (1869). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.578

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• In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

  Charles Darwin

  Teamwork, Creativity, Knowledge

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution”, p.23, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the history of the planet, it can be a conscious choice. Who is making that choice? You are. And who are you? Consciousness that has become conscious of itself.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Choices, Next, Firsts

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.140, Penguin

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• Forget the Bible, the greatest argument against human evolution is a YouTube comment thread.

  Damien Fahey

  Funny, Evolution, Forget

  Twitter post from May 11, 2012

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• Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Mean, Responsibility, Science

  George Gaylord Simpson (1967). “The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man”, p.311, Yale University Press

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• Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?

  Steven Pinker

  Ocean, Moon, Tree

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• That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart.

  E. O. Wilson

  Evolution, Mystery, Calculus

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.76, Vintage

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• Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Change, Years, Language

  William Irwin Thompson (2015). “Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Cutlture, Second Enlarged Edition”, p.95, Andrews UK Limited

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• I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I'll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution.

  Donald Johanson

  Thinking, Discovery, Ideas

  "The Quest for Human Origins". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. January 25, 1991.

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• Fears of creating new kinds of plagues or of altering human evolution or of irreversibly altering the environment were only some of the concerns that were rampant.

  Paul Berg

  Creating, Kind, Evolution

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• I do not believe we will get to Ray Kurzweil's proposed "singularity" in which human minds meld with machines to produce, in effect, synthetic human evolution. Our basic problems with maintaining the electric grid argue against that fantasy.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Believe, Mind, Maintaining

  Interview With Simmons B. Buntin, www.terrain.org.

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• The point of Jesus' existence wasn't to lessen or diminish our appreciation of each other, but to expand our appreciation of each other by reminding us what lies within all of us, because Jesus was an example of the pinnacle of human evolution.

  Marianne Williamson

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Jesus

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• I am appalled that the term we use to talk about aging is 'anti'. Aging is human evolution in its pure form. Death, taxes and aging .... We are ALL going to age and soften and mellow and transition.

  Jamie Lee Curtis

  Age, Transition, Use

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• Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of the theory of natural selection. Following their twin announcements of the theory in 1858, both Darwin and Wallace struggled like Laocoöns with the serpentine problem of human evolution and its encoiling difficulty of consciousness. But where Darwin clouded the problem with his own naivete, seeing only continuity in evolution, Wallace could not do so.

  Julian Jaynes

  Twins, Evolution, Problem

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• 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.

  Petra Kelly

  Mean, Understanding, Survival

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• Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.

  Peter Singer

  Climate, Culture, Predator

  Peter Singer (1982). “The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology”, Plume

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• 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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• Killing is fundamentally in our nature because over the eons of human evolution murder was so surprisingly beneficial in the intense game of reproductive competition.

  David Buss

  Games, Competition, Evolution

  "Professor Conducted A Huge Study To Find Out Why People Kill" by Erin Fuchs, www.businessinsider.com. February 17, 2013.

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• The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Mean, Thinking, Next Steps

  Eckhart Tolle (2003). “Stillness Speaks”, p.20, New World Library

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• I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!

  Frans de Waal

  Caring, Empathy, Intellectual

  Frans de Waal (2006). “Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are”, p.41, Penguin

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• For every human illness, somewhere in the world there exists a plant which is the cure. I believe that there is a healing potential locked inside plants which is integral with their evolution, just as it is part of human evolution to learn to tap this wonderful gift of Nature.

  Rudolf Steiner

  Believe, Healing, World

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