Quotes About Evolution

No one, either in the nineteenth century or the twentieth, has ever built a persuasive case proving that dinosaurs as a whole were more like reptilian crocodiles than warm-blooded birds. No one has done this because it can't be done.

If we measured success by longevity, then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land life.

Man, a wild beast, cousin of the gorilla, has emerged from the profound darkness of animal instinct into the light of the mind, which explains in a wholly natural way all his past mistakes and partially consoles us for his present errors.

If it is justifiable, and even useful and necessary, to turn back to study our past, it is only in order to establish what we have been and what we must no longer be, what we have believed and thought and what we must no longer believe or think, what we have done and what we must do nevermore.

Every development, I have said, implies the negation of its point of departure.

Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

An acquaintance with the laws of nature does not always, nor even commonly, carry with it the means of controlling them. Knowledge is seldom power. And a sociologist so coldly independent of the social forces among which he lived as thoroughly to understand them, would, in all probability, be as impotent to guide the evolution of a community as an astronomer to modify the orbit of a comet.

The movements of belief are gradual. They resemble the slow rise or fall of ancient coast-lines, where, by imperceptible degrees, sea turns into land, or land into sea. So, without shock or clamor, man smoothly modifies his point of view, till, gazing over the spaces he has traversed, he greatly marvels at the change.

I, of course, admit that the conception of God has taken many shapes in the long-drawn course of human development, some of them degraded, all of them inadequate.

The greatest works which the world has seen have not been dedicated to an unknown posterity, but have been produced to satisfy the daily needs of their age, and have, therefore, of necessity conformed to the tastes, and usually to the fashion and the prejudices, of the period which gave them birth.

Religions emerged too early in human evolution — they set up symbols that people took literally, and they're as dead as a line of totem poles. Religions should have come later, when the human race begins to near its end.

So, with all this time on my hands, I decided to start a revolution.

A small revolution was taking place, so modest and well behaved that almost no one had noticed.

Begin with another's to end with your own.

At 20 a man is a peacock, at 30 a lion, at 40 a camel, at 50 a serpent, at 60 a dog, at 70 an ape, and at 80 nothing.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane

If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment -- giving to that word its exact significance. Man does not create forces; he employs the only force that exists and which includes all others, namely Motion, the breath incomprehensible of the sovereign Maker of the universe.

Man himself is not a finished creation; if he were, God would not Be.

Once you've recognized your own limits, you've raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you're closer to the real you...

Tutti di solito sono convinti che le persone si separano perché una si è stancata dell'altra, per propria volontà o per volontà dell'altra persona. Ma non è così. I periodi finiscono, come cambiano le stagioni

When we start something new, at first it is very muddy, and clouded. But soon, it becomes a clean stream, whose flows conducts itself quietly, through spontaneous movements.

I started out thinking I'd just have to look the part to get by, and before I knew it the poison had seeped in and changed me inside.

When we start something new, at first it is very muddy, and clouded. "But soon, it becomes a clear stream, whose flow conducts itself quietly, through spontaneous movements.

You know all the right techniques, all the secrets. You understand how to flow with time, and not get stuck in one place. Once you master one thing and have done it enough, you move on. Or at least you're good at pretending to move on. I think most people live their lives repeating the same patterns, again and again and again.