Quotes About Evolution

Since when does the butterfly ask about the caterpillar?

Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on the pan; it always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on developing and changing like our own.

War is the great auditor of institutions

We don't care about what you did yesterday—we care about what you're going to do tomorrow.

It was so easy for an old normal to make way for a new one, so easy to blot the memories of that old normal. That was a skill that had served her well, but in that bite and its honey, she'd counted the cost for the first time.

Every good thing comes to some kind of end, and then the really good things come to a beginning again.

Ten thousand years ago, the state-of-the-art was a goat.

You're going to hate to hear this, but you're too young to get it. Anything invented before you were eighteen was there all along. Anything invented before you're thirty is exciting and will change the world forever. Anything invented after that is an abomination and should be banned. You don't remember what life was like twenty years ago, before walkaways. You don't understand how different things are, so you think things don't change that much.

Because evolution isn't directed. It's not streamlined. We're an attic stuffed with everything our ancestors found useful, even if it stopped being useful thousands of years ago. Unless it makes you have fewer babies, it hangs around in the genome. Being out of control of your rational priorities certainly increases the number of babies you'll make.

You and I are cobbled out of carbon cells that were once other things entirely. We could have a carbon cell in one of our elbows that was once part of a trilobite's tail. Or a cell from Atilla the Hun's moustache in our eye. Or an ancient lotus petal in our tonsils.

A mark is just a symbol, and symbols can change.

My heart clutched - it was one of those moments when you feel time is a rug that's been yanked out from under you; everything around you has changed so gradually that it is only all at one you look up and realize how different your life has become.

It was generally less shocking to Liz that twenty years after high school she was still her essential self, the self she'd grown up as, unencumbered by spouse or child, than that nearly everyone else had changed, moved on, and multiplied. After

era greu sa-mi imaginez ca m-as fi putut simti vreodata ca o tipa "misto", dar ma simteam ca o persoana de care eu insami as fi fost intrigata in primii mei ani acolo.

There had been certain things I'd wanted badly in my childhood, and instead of getting them, I'd grown up; I did not want them any longer.

As we actually taste the flavor of what he's teaching, we begin to see that it's not proverbs for daily living, or ways of being virtuous. He's proposing a total meltdown and recasting of human consciousness, bursting through the tiny acorn-selfhood that we arrived on the planet with into the oak tree of our fully realized personhood. He pushes us toward it, teases us, taunts us, encourages us, and ultimately walks us there.

A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves, drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart, the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; — such is our personality.

When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.

The best way to learn is through experience. To continue to improve, add to your experience, take small steps, and do it every day.

For God's sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

And besides, look at elder flowers and bluebells-they are a sign that pure creation takes place - even the butterfly. But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings.It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.

Man is a mistake. He must go.

She was not herself--she was not anything. She was something that is going to be--soon--soon--very soon. But as yet, she was only imminent.

A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.