Quotes About Evolution

Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal,  and yet if  a melody has not  reached its end, it has not reached its goal.

You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

A man recovers best from his exceptional nature - his intellectuality - by giving his animal instincts a chance.

Truth as Circe. - Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?

the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.

Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says 'All for me' is a horror to us.

Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction;

That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels.

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves

Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.

My task: the dehumanization of Nature, and then the naturalization of humanity, after it has attained the pure concept of 'Nature'. Human beings and philosophers have in the past projected the human into nature — let us dehumanize nature.

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves. Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and revert back to the beast rather than surpass mankind? What is the ape to a man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just so shall a man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Man vergibt seinem Lehrer schlecht, wenn man immer nur der Schüler bleibt. (One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.)

You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm.

Each individual represents the whole course of Evolution and he is not, as morals teach, something that begins at his birth.

It is not true that the unconscious goal in the evolution of every conscious being (animal, man, mankind, etc) is its 'highest happiness': the case, on the contrary, is that every stage of evolution possesses a special and incomparable happiness neither higher nor lower but simply its own. Evolution does not have happiness in view, but evolution and nothing else.

We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for.

The ancestors of the mightiest tribes must have grown to prodigious proportions . . . in the end the ancestor is necessarily transfigured into a god.

I learned to walk; since then I have let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot.

I transform myself to fast: my today refutes my yesterday.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.

Error has turned animals into men; might truth be capable of turning man into an animal again?