Quotes About Evolution

It was Heraclitus, of course, who came up with the formulation that we are never able to step into the same river twice. ... The obverse of Heraclitus's maxim may be that one is never able to step out of the river the same, twice. A neuron in the brain is altered with every experience. The self, if it exists, must be a constantly evolving thing. Those coming to the banks of the Ganges or Jordan to immerse themselves do not expect to leave the same as they arrive.

If there's any interaction between genes and languages, it is often languages that influence genes, since linguistic differences between populations lessen the chance of genetic exchange between them.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Carnal, rocks remember when they were mountains.' They stared at the rocks in the garden. 'And what do mountains remember?' 'When they were ocean floors.' Big Angel, Zen master.

Life shifting, as life does

Abandono mi pasado, pero no quiero olvidarlo. Por eso apuntaré lo que debo recordar.

Without predators, people who can think the unthinkable, and act without fear or hesitation, the world stands still. You are an evolutionary necessity.

Man must become comfortable in flowing from one role to another, one set of values to another, one life to another. Men must be free from boundaries, patterns and consistencies in order to be free to think, feel and create in new ways. Men have admired Prometheus and Mars too long; our God must become Proteus.

In just a few more years, the current homogenized 'voice' of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.…[C]ompanies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone."4

This is life, a pattern of renewal, growth, and change. None of us are really ever the same over the course of a lifetime. The tragedy is not learning the lessons within the experiences we have.

Books only change the world if the world is capable of digesting them.

It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.

Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope or any other instrument of precision which may in the future be invented, constructed or used for the discovery of truth.

And to think of this great country in danger of being dominated by people ignorant enough to take a few ancient Babylonian legends as the canons of modern culture. Our scientific men are paying for their failure to speak out earlier. There is no use now talking evolution to these people. Their ears are stuffed with Genesis.

War-waging and peace-making are as old as ants and apes.

Maybe for now I should try, each day, to be a little less than I usually am.

Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become 'better organized.

E vendo que a libélula enveredava por entre os juncos, ficou pensando que mais importante do que nascer é ressuscitar.

Via agora que jamais poderia se libertar das suas antigas faces, impossível negá-las porque tinha qualquer coisa de comum que permanecia no fundo de cada uma delas, qualquer coisa que era como uma misteriosa unidade ligando umas às outras, sucessivamente, até chegar à face atual.

Literatura, bah. As mulheres já estão encontrando sua medida. Eles virão em seguida, acho que no futuro só vai haver andróginos - digo e fico rindo.

This is what evolution means--ordered progress; development from poorer to richer, from lower to higher, from less to greater--progress. In the material universe, progress to higher forms; in the moral universe, progress to higher life.

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.

We are heirs of the ages because throughout the ages mankind has devised and fashioned new things, and step by step added new conquests to our domain in that incessant contest with nature which means life. But we are decadent heirs if we cannot use the instruments that the ages have put into our hands. The acquisition of these, in the largest scope, is education.

Those that came before you did not have to think so consciously about actively navigating their lives through so many distinct changes, or indeed developing their capacity for transition. Long