quotations about evolution
We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
GEORGE WALD
"The Origin of Optical Activity"
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
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
Darwinian man though well behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved!
ARTHUR SULLIVAN & W. S. GILBERT
Princess Ida
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
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
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
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
Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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
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
Evolution is described by John Fiske as "God's way of doing things." Theology also may be described as an attempt to explain God's way of doing things. Thus, to a certain extent the science of evolution and the science of theology have the same ultimate end. Both attempt to furnish an orderly, rational, and self-consistent account of phenomena. The supposed inconsistency between science and religion is really an inconsistency between two sciences. The theologian and the scientist have given different, and to some extent inconsistent, accounts of God's way of doing things. It is important for us to know which account is correct. It is even religiously desirable that we should know, since our understanding of God's influence upon the human soul affects that influence.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
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
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
Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.
JARED DIAMOND
Why Is Sex Fun?
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
CHARLES DARWIN
On the Origin of the Species
Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
The Worst Years of Our Lives
Man has lost the basic skill of the ape, the ability to scratch its back. Which gave it extraordinary independence, and the liberty to associate for reasons other than the need for mutual back-scratching.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it.
JACQUES MONOD
On the Molecular Theory of Evolution