Quotes About Evolution

Strange how the past was remade to suit the present.

I will answer in kind. No act is final. Another inevitably awaits.

Why, Lieutenant, are you suggesting that there are forces in the Affiliation opposed to humans evolving into post-consumers, thus freeing themselves from all the pressures of conformity, rabid acquisitiveness, endlessly destructive expansion, pointless competition, and the miserable strictures of hierarchies based on who has the most wealth?

I wonder,' Trull said as he watched the momentary stand-off, 'if this is how domestication first began. Not banding together in a hunt for prey, but in an elimination of rival predators.

is it not true that, from one year to the next, we each ourselves are capable of changes so fundamental that our present selves can in no reasonable way be considered equal to our past selves? If the rule does not apply even within our own individual lives, how can one dare hope to believe that it pertains collectively?

Do you find the need to answer all this, Historian?" he asked. "All those tomes you've read, those other thoughts from other men, other women. Other times. How does a mortal make answer to what his or her kind are capable of? Does each of us, soldier or no, reach a point when all that we've seen, survived, changes us inside? Irrevocably changes us. What do we become, then? Less human, or more human? Human enough, or too human?

What makes a better human being? Is it just a question of faster, stronger, smarter? But smarter in what way? Computationally? This idea of augmenting our species through technology, adding new RAM to the old hard-drive as it were, seems to miss the point. And that is that we can be better right now, without technology. Augmentation is pointless if we keep repeating the same old mistakes. And efficiency is not the same as better, not even close. You want to be a better human being? Start today.

War isn't just one thing, over and over again. It's a thing that never stops changing, and every change is just fucking worse than what went before.

To fit into a new thing you had to leave the old thing behind, and that wasn't as easy as it sounded, since it meant accepting that the old thing was dead, for ever gone, no matter where you tried standing or how stubbornly you held fast.

It is not the same. Nothing ever is, beginning with ourselves.

The Fenn had fallen far from their past glories, yet they remembered enough to know their old name. You cannot even make that claim. Your kind walked this Earth when the T'lan Imass were still flesh. From your blood came the Barghast and the Trell. You are Thelomen Toblakai.

Change was rarely chosen, and its common arrival was slow, subtle.

I sometimes think we only invented war when we ran out of animals to kill.

Civilisation isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he even would have thought possible".

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily.

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily. It

Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there's not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago. Everything is changing.

Let failure be your workshop. See it for what is is: the world walking you through a tough but necessary semester, free of tuition. (from Workbook)

The Death of Trade Unionism, and toward the Birth of a Labor 3.0,

T]he entire universe is evolving, [...] all of its parts are connected and interact, and [...] this evolution applies not only to inert matter, but also to life, intelligence, and culture. Physical, biological, and cultural evolution is the essence of the universe.

Indeed, we humans bear witness to the process of evolution in the very composition of our bodies. The calcium that gives solidity to our bones, the iron that lets our blood carry oxygen to our brains, the sodium and potassium that make possible the transmission of impulses along our nerves, all of these elements were formed inside a star that had its own birth and life and death, hurling its remains outward in a supernova explosion billions of years ago.

That the epic journey of Homo sapiens has taken us from the savannah to space is indisputable, but we do not have one simple, comprehensive account of this multigenerational sojourn—and we never will, no matter how much we excavate. Rather, we have grainy snapshots, faded sketches, souvenirs of mysterious purpose, maps of unspecified scales drawn long after the fact, and stories which change with each storyteller and occasion.

Can we reconcile the observed constructiveness of cosmic evolution with the inherent destructiveness of thermodynamics? Specifically how have the magnificent examples of order all around us arisen from chaos?

Think of a caterpillar entering a cocoon. Once he does so, one of two things will happen: He will either transform into a butterfly, or he will die. But no matter what else happens, he will never climb out of the cocoon as a caterpillar. So it is with your protagonist.