Quotes About Evolution

Like fever and pain, anxiety and low mood are useful normal responses to some situations.

Natural selection involves no plan, no goal, and no direction — just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals with those genes have, relative to other individuals, greater or lesser reproductive success.

Why has the medical profession not taken advantage of the help available from evolutionary biology, a well-developed branch of science with great potential for providing medical insights? One reason is surely the pervasive neglect of this branch of science at all educational levels. Religious and other sorts of opposition have minimized the impact in general education of Darwin's contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.

Strong selection for extreme mental capacities may have given us all minds like the legs of racehorses, fast but vulnerable to catastrophic failures. This model fits well with the idea that schizophrenia is intimately related to language and cognitive ability.93 It also fits well with the observation that schizophrenia may be intimately related to the human capacity for "theory of mind," our ability to intuit other people's motives and cognitive abilities in general.

The body is not shaped for maximum health or longevity; it is shaped for maximum transmission of its genes. Alleles (different versions of a gene) that increase the number of offspring become more common over the generations, even if that shortens life and increases suffering. This is not merely theoretical. Half of the human population has been shaped by selection to live fast and die young.

Mood allocates] investments of time, effort, resources, and risk taking to maximize Darwinian fitness in situations of varying propitiousness. High and low moods adjust cognition and behavior to cope with propitious and unpropitious situations.

Just as the capacity for experiencing fatigue has evolved to protect us from overexertion, the capacity for sadness may have evolved to prevent additional losses. Maladaptive extremes of anxiety, sadness, and other emotions make more sense when we understand their evolutionary origins and normal, adaptive functions.

Emotional capacities are shaped by situations that occurred repeatedly in the course of evolution and that were important to fitness. Attacks by predators, threats of exclusion from the group, and opportunities for mating were frequent and important enough to have shaped special patterns of preparedness, such as panic, social fear, and sexual arousal. Situations that are best avoided shape aversive emotions, while situations that involve opportunity shape positive emotions.

The President is an elected king, but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance in the course of political evolution than the fact that he is pragmatically a king.... Kings have often been selected this way in European history, and the Roman Emperor was regularly chosen by election.

Learn about the world, the way it works, any kind of science and anthropology, it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea, even more than the idea of God I think.

Failure is not just acceptable, it's often essential." The Last Lecture

Failure is not just acceptable, it's essential.

Failure is not just acceptable, it's often essential

Beauty is a genetic device: trickery that instigates competition.

Humanity has a limited biological capacity for change but an unlimited capacity for spiritual change. The only human institution incapable of evolving spiritually is a cemetery." S.M. Tomlinson, One Fathom Above Sea Level

How can you tell it's the end of an era? When a suddenly intolerable present crystallizes in a short period of time what was so uneasily put up with in the past. And everyone is suddenly quite easily convinced that he or she is either going to be reborn in the birth of a new world, or die in the archaic netherworld of a society less and less adapted to the living.

It's worth asking ourselves what skills are more commonly needed today. Games should be evolving towards teaching us those skills.

We must learn from the past, not relive it time and again.

One scratch on the wall is just a scratch. Many scratches, however, may change the shape of the wall. Often many incremental steps rather than a single blow, bring about historical changes.

As soon as we pass through the birth canal we begin to become 90 percent microbe.

Do not expect your life to "return to normal." That's not what you had in mind when you embarked on this odyssey.

My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel.

I have to say, you know, I've seen so many people go through the cycle and become famous and not famous anymore and, you know, want - have their priorities change and want different things.

Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature.