quotations about evolution
We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
GEORGE WALD
"The Origin of Optical Activity"
A high place of honor, although doubtless one to be obtained only after enduring the pangs of a prolonged crucifixion, awaits that philosophical biologist, or that philosopher sufficiently acquainted with scientific biology, who subjects the modern doctrine of evolution to a thoroughly critical analysis, with a view to detect and to estimate its metaphysical assumptions.
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD
Philosophy of Mind: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Psychology
In short, evolution is not so much progress as it is simply change. It does not leave all its primitive forms behind. It carries them over from age to age, well knowing that they are the precious base of the pyramid on which the more fantastic and costly experiments must be carried.
DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE
An Almanac for Moderns
I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.
JOHN MCCAIN
GOP primary debate, May 3, 2007
I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you?
H. G. WELLS
The Island of Dr. Moreau
To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant--inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
DANIEL C. DENNETT
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
The question is this--Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fangled theories.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
speech, Nov. 25, 1864
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
God ... created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed -- that is the meaning of evolution.
GRAHAM GREENE
Travels with My Aunt
If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?
ED DUSSAULT
attributed, Meditations for New Mothers
I don't understand why people insist on pitting concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can't they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid package that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What's wrong with that idea?
GARTH STEIN
The Art of Racing in the Rain
For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man
The general direction of evolution is to produce a serially imprinting, multibrained creature able to decipher its own program, create the technology to leave the planet and live in post-terrestrial mini-worlds, decode the aging sectors of the DNA code--thus assuring immortality, and act in harmony with stages of evolution to come.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Musings on Human Metamorphoses
Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Darwinian man though well behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved!
ARTHUR SULLIVAN & W. S. GILBERT
Princess Ida
Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.
JARED DIAMOND
Why Is Sex Fun?
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
CHARLES DARWIN
On the Origin of the Species
Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It is simply a history of the process of life. With the secret cause of life evolution has nothing to do. A man, therefore, may be a materialistic evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist; that is, he may believe that the cause is some single unintelligent impersonal force, or he may believe that the cause is a wise and beneficent God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Evolution has never found a way to be any speed but very slow.
JARON LANIER
"One Half of a Manifesto", The New Humanists: Science at the Edge
A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it.
JACQUES MONOD
On the Molecular Theory of Evolution