Quotes About Evolution

To become a full human being is nothing less than a lifetime's task.

Even if the rest of man's history were lost, the vocabularies, the grammars, and the literature of all his present languages would testify to a mind infinitely above the level of any other living creature's. And if some sudden mutation afflicting the progeny of the entire human race resulted in the birth of only deaf-mutes, the outcome would be almost as fatal to human existence as that of a nuclear chain reaction.

The technical feat of escaping from the field of gravitation is trivial compared to man's escape from the brute unconsciousness of matter and the closed cycle of organic life.

And then there are fossils. Whenever anybody tries to tell me that they believe it took place in seven days, I reach for a fossil and go "fossil!" And if they keep talking I throw it just over their head.

It seems obvious when you think about it. We evolved in nature, and our spiritual feelings of oneness and worship come from nature. All of the world religions were founded in rural settings. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were born in the desert, where the herding of sheep and the cultivation of grain

The urge to reincarnate while still alive is near universal.

The urge to purge the material I come up with is, I guess, an ongoing process.

As female hormones decrease, they're replaced with an overwhelming urge to grow delphinium.

I don't need to be a frontman all the time, and in fact, the older I get, the less of an urge it is inside me to play that role. I've still got it inside me, and I do occasionally allow it out.

The urge to miniaturize electronics did not exist before the space program. I mean our grandparents had radios that was furniture in the living room. Nobody at the time was saying, 'Gee, I want to carry that in my pocket.' Which is a non-thought.

At different times in life, I've felt like it's time to say goodbye from some form of myself that's been hanging around for a while - you just feel this urge to move on, like a herd of antelope. They're just standing there in a field eating grass. You feel like that as a person sometimes. Where's it's just time to move on.

I used to love going out and celebrating with the lads. But we can do that in the hotel and I don't miss it. I don't feel that urge any more. Once you make the transition to not doing it then you don't miss it.

If necessity is the mother of invention, urgency is the uncle of change. Without it, progress slows and then stops and then reverses.

The urgency to mate persists in all people as in all other mammals because of the evolutionary drive to continue the species, the inborn imperative for genes to reproduce and hormonal differences that evolved over millions of years.

Especially working in infectious disease, it's very interesting because these infectious diseases, these agents, they evolve over time. So it's very much an arms race and understanding how each changes to protect itself and to continue. And so it's very much this puzzle-solving but with this great urgency and importance in what you find.

Patience for me is a big thing. Patience with others. Patience with the way the world is evolving. I have a sense of urgency because I want to help out so much.

The hypocrisy of some is that we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated and evolved, but we're still also driven by primal urges like greed and power.

The industrial revolution allowed us, for the first time, to start replacing human labour with machines.

The good and bad things are what form us as people... change makes us grow.

Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

We've been merging with tools since the beginning of human evolution, and arguably, that's one of the things that makes us human beings.

I realized that nature had invented reproduction as a mechanism for life to move forward, as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life. Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment.

Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving.