Evolution Quotes

How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one organic being to another being, been perfected?

Species that struggle to adapt to survive will become extinct.

It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with that given to the plants in countries anciently civilised.

In the eyes of most naturalists, the structure of the embryo is even more important for classification than that of the adult. For the embryo is the animal in its less modified state; and in so far it reveals the structure of its progenitor.

With mankind some expressions, such as the bristling of the hair under the influence of extreme terror, or the uncovering of the teeth under that of furious rage, can hardly be understood, except on the belief that man once existed in a much lower and animal-like condition.

The young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.

It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.

Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of stars in constellations.

Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.

It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short steps.

Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than humans would at first suppose.

Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature's cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception.

He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation ... Man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor.

That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.

Farewell Australia! You ... are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.

I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.