The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.
—Charles Darwin (1809–82) English Naturalist
After listening to a lecture on evolution by a science professor, a student wrote a poem and titled it “The Amazing Professor.” The poem read: Once I was a tadpole when I began to begin. Then I was a frog with my tail tucked in. Next I was a monkey on a coconut tree. Now I am a doctor with a Ph.D.
—Unknown
The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world… life, being and ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth. The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence, of that very doubling back upon himself becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) French Jesuit Philosopher, Paleontologist
One of the stupidest theories of Western life.
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–90) English Journalist, Author, Satirist, Media Personality
Its taken 14 billion years for matter to gain the capacity to become conscious of itself. If this is true, it wouldn’t make any sense that the whole point of enlightenment would be to escape from the whole process at the very instant that the universe is beginning to awaken to itself.
—Andrew Cohen (1955-2025) American Spiritual Teacher, Author
Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–2022) American Social Critic, Essayist
There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. ‘You forget,’ said the Devil, with a chuckle, ‘that I have been evolving too.’
—William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) English Anglican Clergyman, Priest, Mystic
Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.
—Richard Dawkins (b.1941) British Evolutionary Biologist, Atheist
It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899–1979) American Actress, Playwright
Man has lost the basic skill of the ape, the ability to scratch its back. Which gave it extraordinary independence, and the liberty to associate for reasons other than the need for mutual back-scratching.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed—that is the meaning of evolution.
—Graham Greene (1904–1991) British Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright
Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
Evolution has developed man to such a high degree that he builds zoos to keep his ancestors in cages.
—Unknown
I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.
—Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American Paleontologist, Science Writer
The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.
—Arthur Koestler (1905–83) British Writer, Journalist, Political Refugee
An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
—Steven Wright (b.1955) American Comedian, Actor, Writer
It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Essayist, Physician
All the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution.
—William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) American Orator, Politician, Secretary of State
There are no shortcuts in evolution.
—Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Jurist
The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces—in nature, in society, in man himself.
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Russian Marxist Revolutionary
Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Since evolution became fashionable, the glorification of Man has taken a new form.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
We seem to exist in a hazardous time, Driftin’ along here through space; Nobody knows just when we begun, Or how far we’ve gone in the race.
—Benjamin Franklin King Jr. (1857–94) American Poet, Humorist
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