Evolution Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

George Wald

John Morley

Edward Thorndike

Alfred Jarry

Herbert Read

Charles Sanders Peirce

August Strindberg

I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.

To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a mummified form.

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.

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.

So much the worse, it may be, for a particular meeting: but the meeting is the individual, which on evolution principles, must be sacrificed for the development of the race.

Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.

The intellectual evolution of the race consists in an increase in the number, delicacy, complexity, permanence and speed of formation of such associations.

Edward Thorndike

Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another

Evolution is not a force but a process; not a cause but a law.

Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means wasted energy.

August Strindberg

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

Charles Sanders Peirce

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.

George Bernard Shaw

He remarks that "considering their weakness and their size, the work they are represented to have accomplished is stupendous." Here we have an instance of that inability to sum up the effects of a continually recurrent cause, which has often retarded the progress of science, as formerly in the case of geology, and more recently in that of the principle of evolution.

When the theory of evolution destroyed the picture of God as the supreme Creator, confidence in God as the all-powerful Father of man fell with it, although many were able to combine a belief in God with the acceptance of the Darwinian theory.

The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity.

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

Albert Einstein

Physics constitutes a logical system of thought which is in a state of evolution, whose basis cannot be distilled, as it were, from experience by an inductive method, but can only be arrived at by free invention.

Albert Einstein

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilization as against barbarism, of progress as against stability. Even if the agreements were in Denmark's favor — which is very doubtful-this right carries more weight than all the agreements, for it is the right of historical evolution.

Friedrich Engels

Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in the human evolution.

A selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution.

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.

Pope John Paul II

The nineteenth century which prides itself upon the invention of steam and evolution, might have derived a more legitimate title to fame from the discovery of pure mathematics.

Bertrand Russell