quotations about evolution
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
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
If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?
ED DUSSAULT
attributed, Meditations for New Mothers
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
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
And then there are fossils. Whenever anybody tries to tell me that they believe the Earth was created in seven days, I reach for a fossil and go "Fossil!" And if they keep talking, I throw it just over their head.
LEWIS BLACK
Red, White, and Screwed
Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.
JOHN BANISTER TABB
Evolution
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The Greatest Show on Earth
Evolution is a tinkerer.
FRANCOIS JACOB
"Evolution and Tinkering"
It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive digust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
Impressions and Comments
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.
ROBERT FROST
The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer
Evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say "I believe in gravity," one should not proclaim "I believe in evolution."
MICHAEL SHERMER
Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
All life is evolving, for evolution is God's law; and man grows slowly and steadily along with the rest.
C. W. LEADBEATER
The Science of the Sacraments
Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
The Lost World
Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent, homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations.
HERBERT SPENCER
First Principles
Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.
WOODROW WILSON
letter to Winterton C. Curtis, Aug. 29, 1922
If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.
CORNELIA OTIS SKINNER
The Ape in Me
One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back to Methuselah
Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible - though very unlikely - that our whole world is controlled by elves.
JERRY A. COYNE
Why Evolution Is True
As a historical science, evolution is confirmed by the fact that so many independent lines of evidence converge to its single conclusion. Independent sets of data from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, herpetology, entomology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics and population genetics, and many other sciences each point to the conclusion that life evolved. This is a convergence of evidence. Creationists can demand "just one fossil transitional form" that shows evolution. But evolution is not proved through a single fossil. It is proved through a convergence of fossils, along with a convergence of genetic comparisons between species, and a convergence of anatomical and physiological comparisons between species, and many other lines of inquiry. For creationists to disprove evolution, they need to unravel all these independent lines of evidence, as well as construct a rival theory that can explain them better than the theory of evolution. They have yet to do so.
MICHAEL SHERMER
Why Darwin Matters