quotations about evolution
Some call it evolution,
And others call it God.
WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH
Each In His Own Tongue
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Origin of Species
Higher has always been the trajectory of intelligent evolution.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain is God
The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.
ISAAC ASIMOV
The Beginning and the End
All modern men are descended from a wormlike creature, but it shows more on some people.
WILL CUPPY
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes
I am interested in a phase that I think we are entering. I call it "teleological evolution," evolution with a purpose. The idea of evolution by design, designing the future, anticipating the future. I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?
JONAS SALK
Academy of Achievement interview, May 16, 1991
Once evolution gets a good basic design, it tends to throw away the variants and concentrate on the near-infinite diversity within that design.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Plants and plant-eaters co-evolved. And plants aren't the passive partners in the chain of terrestrial life. Hence today's Pop Ecology movement is quite wrong in believing that plants are happy to fill their role as fodder for herbivores in a harmonious and perfectly balanced ecosystem. A birch tree doesn't feel cosmic fulfillment when a moose munches its leaves; the tree species, in fact, evolves to fight the moose, to keep the animal's munching lips away from vulnerable young leaves and twigs. In the final analysis, the merciless hand of natural selection will favor the birch genes that make the tree less and less palatable to the moose in generation after generation. No plant species could survive for long by offering itself as unprotected fodder.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
The Dinosaur Heresies
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man
It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.
COLSON WHITEHEAD
The Intuitionist
Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.
SCOTT D. WEITZENHOFFER
attributed, How to Prove God Does Not Exist
This is evolution
The monkey
The man
And then the gun
MARILYN MANSON
"Revelation #9", Get Your Gunn
We are ashamed at the sight of a monkey--somehow as we are shy of poor relations.
CHARLES LAMB
"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb
Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Life and Habit
This is what evolution means--ordered progress; development from poorer to richer, from lower to higher, from less to greater--progress. In the material universe, progress to higher forms; in the moral universe, progress to higher life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
We know from astronomy that the universe had a beginning, from physics that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see, perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the process of evolution.
KENNETH R. MILLER
Finding Darwin's God
After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays
Evolution does not mark out a solitary route ... it takes directions without aiming at ends ... it remains inventive even in its adaptations.
HENRI BERGSON
Creative Evolution