# Quote — Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

> “The Core knows what Teilhard de Chardin and other sentimentalists refused to acknowledge: evolution is not progress, that there is no ‘goal’ or direction to evolution. Evolution is change. Evolution ‘succeeds’ if that change best adapts some leaf or branch of its tree of life to conditions of the universe.

- Author: [Dan Simmons](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons.md)
- Book: [The Rise of Endymion](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion.md)
- Page: 406
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons#The_Rise_of_Endymion_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/the-core-knows

## More from this book

> If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe.

p. 701 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/if-one-is-to-observe.md)

> “One of the few benefits of the fall of civilization as we know it,” he says, “is that there are private cellars with fine vintages everywhere one digs. It is not theft. It is archaeology.”

p. 674 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/one-of-the.md)

> There are no ghosts, my love. Death is final. The soul is that ineffable combination of memory and personality which we carry through life...when life departs, the soul also dies. Except for what we leave in the memory of those who loved us.

p. 578 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/there-are-no-ghosts.md)