Evolution Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

George Wald

John Morley

Edward Thorndike

Alfred Jarry

Herbert Read

Charles Sanders Peirce

August Strindberg

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Charles Sanders Peirce

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

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.

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

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, 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.

Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters that he cannot answer them all. He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.

In the science, Evolution is a theory about changes; in the myth it is a fact about improvements.

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

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.

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

George Bernard Shaw

Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless archaic traits.

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.

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

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.

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

Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expression this only means that he has changed his manner of thinking, and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be for the worse.

Progress was a labyrinth... people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they had found it... the invisible king-the élan vital-the principle of evolution... writing a book, starting a war, founding a school...

F. Scott Fitzgerald