{ "type": "topic", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution", "heading": "Quotes about evolution", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution.md", "quotes_count": 146, "authors_count": 63, "parent": { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature", "heading": "Quotes about nature" }, "children": [], "quotes": [ { "id": "1b08a9d7-4eb9-4c07-b260-08233a31883b", "slug": "too-often-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-jones/darwins-ghost/too-often-the", "text": "Too often, the notion of progress is used as a code word for perfection, the chain of being in a different guise. The term should be employed with caution. Some see an arrow of time in biology, as in physics, but in the opposite direction — a relentless tendency to improve, just as the universe has a built-in trend toward chaos and disorder. That is too optimistic. Some lineages get more complicated, some simpler, and much of life has to struggle to stay in the same place. If everyone is evolving, nobody can afford to stop, and there may be constant change with no overall advance at all.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steve Jones", "slug": "steve-jones", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-jones" }, "book": { "title": "Darwin's Ghost", "slug": "darwins-ghost", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-jones/darwins-ghost" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 230, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jones_(biologist)#Darwin's_Ghost_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:28" }, { "id": "d1a69888-2686-4055-ba77-8c4a53e21566", "slug": "the-natural-history-of", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/the-voyage-of-the-beagle/the-natural-history-of", "text": "The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America, though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width. The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous productions. Considering the small size of these islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new beings on this earth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "The Voyage of the Beagle", "slug": "the-voyage-of-the-beagle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/the-voyage-of-the-beagle" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 377, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Voyage_of_the_Beagle#XIX._Galapagos_Archipelago", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:21" }, { "id": "abea4b23-3c90-49cb-a8ca-6778b8eef6ea", "slug": "t-he-several-classes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/t-he-several-classes", "text": "[T]he several classes of facts which have been considered in this chapter, seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable species, genera, and families of organic beings, with which this world is peopled, have all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent, that I should without hesitation adopt this view, even if it were unsupported by other facts or arguments.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "On the Origin of Species", "slug": "on-the-origin-of-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 457, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#XIII._Mutual_Affinities_of_Organic_Beings", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:21" }, { "id": "a24ed2d6-fca4-4ec7-a084-c826144eb408", "slug": "what-can-be-more", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/what-can-be-more", "text": "What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include the same bones, in the same relative positions? ... Hence the same names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals. We see the same great law in the construction of the mouths of insects: what can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a beetle?—yet all these organs, serving for such different purposes, are formed by infinitely numerous modifications of an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillæ. Analogous laws govern the construction of the mouths and limbs of crustaceans. So it is with the flowers of plants. 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.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "On the Origin of Species", "slug": "on-the-origin-of-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 434, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#XIII._Mutual_Affinities_of_Organic_Beings", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:21" }, { "id": "6fb32bb3-e54b-4654-8383-a845ed0df2c4", "slug": "authors-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/authors-of-the", "text": "Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled (emphasis, again, not Darwin's).", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "On the Origin of Species", "slug": "on-the-origin-of-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 428, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#XIV._Recapitulation_and_Conclusion", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:21" }, { "id": "5f9b7747-6cc7-456e-9548-f47918298704", "slug": "it-is-interesting", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/it-is-interesting", "text": "It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "On the Origin of Species", "slug": "on-the-origin-of-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 489, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#XIV._Recapitulation_and_Conclusion", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:21" }, { "id": "cdb0ad33-c45b-4eb3-90de-eb588c4afa20", "slug": "as-buds-give", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/as-buds-give", "text": "As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "On the Origin of Species", "slug": "on-the-origin-of-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 130, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#IV._Natural_Selection", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:20" }, { "id": "aa7e79e0-d18d-46ec-a6c5-92931393850d", "slug": "the-expression-often", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/the-expression-often", "text": "The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "On the Origin of Species", "slug": "on-the-origin-of-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 72, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#III._Struggle_for_Existence", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:20" }, { "id": "4ff954b2-40ab-49c5-9a9f-d32639c84ef6", "slug": "this-preservation-of-favourable", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/this-preservation-of-favourable", "text": "This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Darwin", "slug": "charles-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin" }, "book": { "title": "On the Origin of Species", "slug": "on-the-origin-of-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 81, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#IV._Natural_Selection", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:06:20" }, { "id": "da86ad31-bc10-4bf8-a2a4-320e73ae309a", "slug": "all-the-food", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/persepolis-rising/all-the-food", "text": "All the food chemists in the system will never do better than evolution at making a decent tea leaf.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James S. A. Corey", "slug": "james-s-a-corey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey" }, "book": { "title": "Persepolis Rising", "slug": "persepolis-rising", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/persepolis-rising" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 143, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#Persepolis_Rising_(2017)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:37" }, { "id": "9029c216-5387-4b9f-b890-1c5cacc3fe34", "slug": "insects-buzzed-about", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/persepolis-rising/insects-buzzed-about", "text": "Insects buzzed about, still the best-designed pollinating system there was. Technology did a lot of things well, but evolution had it beat when it came to environmental systems.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James S. A. Corey", "slug": "james-s-a-corey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey" }, "book": { "title": "Persepolis Rising", "slug": "persepolis-rising", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/persepolis-rising" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 276, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#Persepolis_Rising_(2017)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:37" }, { "id": "de07173a-4bef-43a6-9357-a98c53f1051d", "slug": "amazing-how-much", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/nemesis-games/amazing-how-much", "text": "Amazing how much we’ve managed to do, considering how we’re doing it all with jumped-up social primates and evolutionary behaviors from the Pleistocene.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James S. A. Corey", "slug": "james-s-a-corey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey" }, "book": { "title": "Nemesis Games", "slug": "nemesis-games", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/nemesis-games" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 325, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#Nemesis_Games_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:36" }, { "id": "4bef9029-11f7-4847-a364-4e41ed0da28b", "slug": "everything-was-an-artifact", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/cibola-burn/everything-was-an-artifact", "text": "Everything was an artifact of its function. That’s what made evolution so gorgeous.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James S. A. Corey", "slug": "james-s-a-corey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey" }, "book": { "title": "Cibola Burn", "slug": "cibola-burn", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/cibola-burn" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 64, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#Cibola_Burn_(2014)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:35" }, { "id": "73ee3c9d-064e-4309-85d7-a6f5f239f964", "slug": "can-you-think", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeffrey-ford/the-empire-of-ice-cream/can-you-think", "text": "“Can you think of anything, my dear Mr. Fell, more intricately complex, more perfectly compact and thoroughly functional than the human eye?” “No, sir,” said August. “I thought not,” said Larchcroft. “Consider this, though. Our eyes were created by light. Without the existence of light, we would not have eyes. Over the long course of man’s evolutionarily maturation to his modern condition, light sculpted these magical orbs, making subtle adjustments through the centuries, until now they are capable of the incredible process of sight. This most vital sense, not only a means of self-preservation but the single most important catalyst for culture, is a product of the inherent genius of light.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jeffrey Ford", "slug": "jeffrey-ford", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeffrey-ford" }, "book": { "title": "The Empire of Ice Cream", "slug": "the-empire-of-ice-cream", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeffrey-ford/the-empire-of-ice-cream" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 190, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "light", "slug": "light", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/light" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Ford#The_Empire_of_Ice_Cream_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:57" }, { "id": "e3b8a2d2-8438-4cb6-b3f1-060f76cafe16", "slug": "not-long-ago", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-koeppel/to-see-every-bird-on-earth/not-long-ago", "text": "Not long ago, there were only thought to be six thousand bird species on earth. Ten years from now, most ornithologists believe, there will be three times that many. It isn’t that new species are evolving; rather, scientists are arriving at new definitions of what species are. This advanced thinking – and birds are on the cutting edge of it – has profound implications for human understanding. Speciation is evolution. Evolution is at the heart of who we are, what life is on this planet.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Dan Koeppel", "slug": "dan-koeppel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-koeppel" }, "book": { "title": "To See Every Bird on Earth", "slug": "to-see-every-bird-on-earth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-koeppel/to-see-every-bird-on-earth" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Koeppel#To_See_Every_Bird_on_Earth_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:24" }, { "id": "ef120667-b996-4f8c-8ad1-ffd49c8df806", "slug": "it-had-taken", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn/the-wooden-star/it-had-taken", "text": "It had taken a couple of billion years to produce me. In that couple of billion years, I had millions upon millions of ancestors. Slime-like ancestors, jelly-like ancestors, water-breathing ancestors, air-breathing ancestors, ancestors that floated, that swam, that crawled, that ran, that climbed, that finally walked. And all of those ancestors, no matter how different, had one thing in common. They had survived long enough to have descendants. Other species didn’t and their lines were extinct, bare bones in rock strata. But no matter how scarce food got, no matter what enemies they faced, what unprecedented natural upheavals they had to adjust to, my ancestors somehow managed to pull through, and have offspring. That’s how I happen to be here.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Tenn", "slug": "william-tenn", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn" }, "book": { "title": "The Wooden Star", "slug": "the-wooden-star", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn/the-wooden-star" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 51, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "survival", "slug": "survival", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/survival" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Tenn#The_Wooden_Star_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:58" }, { "id": "92685100-fc57-433e-822a-ac4a3502cace", "slug": "evolution-does-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olivia-judson/dr-tatianas-sex-advice-to-all-creation/evolution-does-not", "text": "Evolution does not obey human notions of morality, nor is human morality a reflection of some natural law. The deadly sins would be different if they mirrored evolutionary no-no’s. Lust, for one, would be deemed a virtue; chastity would be deplored.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Olivia Judson", "slug": "olivia-judson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olivia-judson" }, "book": { "title": "Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation", "slug": "dr-tatianas-sex-advice-to-all-creation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olivia-judson/dr-tatianas-sex-advice-to-all-creation" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 120, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olivia_Judson#Dr_Tatiana's_Sex_Advice_to_All_Creation_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:55" }, { "id": "b34b169b-3d49-4783-99de-8fcdd1f6c11a", "slug": "and-now-out", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey/and-now-out", "text": "And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic. In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Arthur C. Clarke", "slug": "arthur-c-clarke", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke" }, "book": { "title": "2001: A Space Odyssey", "slug": "2001-a-space-odyssey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "technological progress", "slug": "technological-progress", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technological-progress" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(novel)#V._The_Moons_of_Saturn", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:45" }, { "id": "e79885d6-6027-4e8b-9fb2-7e98421fc896", "slug": "outside-the-tropics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey/outside-the-tropics", "text": "Outside the tropics, the glaciers slew those who had prematurely left their ancestral home. But, unlike so many others, the man-apes had not merely become extinct - they had been transformed. The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Arthur C. Clarke", "slug": "arthur-c-clarke", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke" }, "book": { "title": "2001: A Space Odyssey", "slug": "2001-a-space-odyssey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "technological progress", "slug": "technological-progress", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technological-progress" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(novel)#I._Primeval_Night", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:44" }, { "id": "abbfd471-8ca7-49de-8c72-ba4551b83d9b", "slug": "moon-watcher-had-no-idea", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey/moon-watcher-had-no-idea", "text": "Moon-Watcher had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Arthur C. Clarke", "slug": "arthur-c-clarke", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke" }, "book": { "title": "2001: A Space Odyssey", "slug": "2001-a-space-odyssey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/2001-a-space-odyssey" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(novel)#I._Primeval_Night", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:44" }, { "id": "af84e9ff-ed8c-4a5d-8acf-9e18893dfe97", "slug": "the-dowager-smiled", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84/the-dowager-smiled", "text": "The dowager smiled. “What an interesting person you are!” Aomame said, “I’m a very ordinary human being. I just happen to like reading books. Especially history books.” “I like history books too. They teach us that we are basically the same, whether now or in the old days. There may be a few differences in clothing and lifestyle, but there’s not that much difference in what we think and do. Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers—passageways—for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don’t think about what constitutes good or evil. They don’t care whether we are happy or unhappy. We’re just a means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.” “In spite of that, we can’t help but think about what is good and what is evil. Is that what you’re saying?” The dowager nodded. “Exactly. People have to think about those things. But genes are what control the basis for how we live. Naturally, a contradiction arises,” she said with a smile.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Haruki Murakami", "slug": "haruki-murakami", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami" }, "book": { "title": "1Q84", "slug": "1q84", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 268, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/1Q84#Book_1_(April-June)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:38" }, { "id": "c32e0c85-84bb-4fec-b87d-10055e0b2bc7", "slug": "take-the-entire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/take-the-entire", "text": "Take the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the earth and scale it down to a single year, with January 1 being the origin of the earth and midnight on December 31 being the present. Until June, the only organisms were single-celled microbes, such as algae, bacteria, and amoebae. The first animal with a head did not appear until October. The first human appears on December 31. We, like all the animals and plants that have ever lived, are recent crashers at the party of life on earth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Shubin", "slug": "neil-shubin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin" }, "book": { "title": "Your Inner Fish", "slug": "your-inner-fish", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 119, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Shubin#Your_Inner_Fish:_A_Journey_Into_the_3.5-Billion-Year_History_of_the_Human_Body_(2008)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:03" }, { "id": "beb72f72-ab80-4aec-9494-d36b108d33d8", "slug": "the-order-of-fossils", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/the-order-of-fossils", "text": "The order of fossils in the world’s rocks is powerful evidence of our connections to the rest of life.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Shubin", "slug": "neil-shubin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin" }, "book": { "title": "Your Inner Fish", "slug": "your-inner-fish", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 8, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Shubin#Your_Inner_Fish:_A_Journey_Into_the_3.5-Billion-Year_History_of_the_Human_Body_(2008)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:03" }, { "id": "1d6ab244-7d3c-41ef-b401-410f14a523f1", "slug": "do-the-facts", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/do-the-facts", "text": "Do the facts of our ancient history mean that humans are not special or unique among living creatures? Of course not. In fact, knowing something about the deep origins of humanity only adds to the remarkable fact of our existence: all of our extraordinary capabilities arose from basic components that evolved in ancient fish and other creatures. From common parts came a very unique construction. We are not separate from the rest of the living world; we are part of it down to our bones and, as we will see shortly, even our genes.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Shubin", "slug": "neil-shubin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin" }, "book": { "title": "Your Inner Fish", "slug": "your-inner-fish", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 43, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Shubin#Your_Inner_Fish:_A_Journey_Into_the_3.5-Billion-Year_History_of_the_Human_Body_(2008)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:03" }, { "id": "0120a166-6bff-4a9e-ae3f-1805bfd4b945", "slug": "just-as-darwins", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/just-as-darwins", "text": "Just as Darwin’s theory predicted: at the right time, at the right place, we had found intermediates between two apparently different kinds of animals.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Neil Shubin", "slug": "neil-shubin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin" }, "book": { "title": "Your Inner Fish", "slug": "your-inner-fish", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 39, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Shubin#Your_Inner_Fish:_A_Journey_Into_the_3.5-Billion-Year_History_of_the_Human_Body_(2008)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:03" }, { "id": "3a98d68b-a0a0-4bf6-91ea-c3bc55838047", "slug": "we-got-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/we-got-the", "text": "We got the way we are, Jeanie, because life on Earth is one long fight for limited resources. Our bloody-mindedness all started out as food battles, three billion years ago.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Sheffield", "slug": "charles-sheffield", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield" }, "book": { "title": "The Compleat McAndrew", "slug": "the-compleat-mcandrew", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 125, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "violence", "slug": "violence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/violence" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Sheffield#The_Compleat_McAndrew_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:31" }, { "id": "f0e973bf-065c-4c43-94c1-e8f8a5c2c502", "slug": "an-animal-doesnt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-l-forward/dragons-egg/an-animal-doesnt", "text": "An animal doesn’t need to develop curiosity and intelligence if it has no problems that need solving.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robert L. Forward", "slug": "robert-l-forward", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-l-forward" }, "book": { "title": "Dragon's Egg", "slug": "dragons-egg", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-l-forward/dragons-egg" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 7, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intelligence", "slug": "intelligence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intelligence" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "curiosity", "slug": "curiosity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/curiosity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward#Dragon's_Egg_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:15" }, { "id": "62a20a1c-1c50-45a4-bbcc-4448ca780753", "slug": "finally-in-one", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-l-forward/dragons-egg/finally-in-one", "text": "Finally, in one fateful trillionth of a second, a nuclear compound was formed that had two very important properties: it was stable, and it could make a copy of itself. Life had come to the crust of the neutron star.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robert L. Forward", "slug": "robert-l-forward", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-l-forward" }, "book": { "title": "Dragon's Egg", "slug": "dragons-egg", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-l-forward/dragons-egg" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 5, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward#Dragon's_Egg_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:15" }, { "id": "930efc7d-50b9-47e2-b61d-0c633999c8aa", "slug": "the-core-knows", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/the-core-knows", "text": "“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.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Dan Simmons", "slug": "dan-simmons", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons" }, "book": { "title": "The Rise of Endymion", "slug": "the-rise-of-endymion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 406, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons#The_Rise_of_Endymion_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:01:53" }, { "id": "557f6c11-9810-4906-9c60-eb5fefd39f0f", "slug": "humanity-has-evolved-as", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/endymion/humanity-has-evolved-as", "text": "“Humanity has evolved—as far as it has evolved,” continued the old priest, “with no thanks to its predecessors or itself. Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.” “Empathy,” Aenea said softly.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Dan Simmons", "slug": "dan-simmons", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons" }, "book": { "title": "Endymion", "slug": "endymion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/endymion" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 449, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "empathy", "slug": "empathy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/empathy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons#Endymion_(1996)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:01:53" }, { "id": "44f713af-c780-4920-8bf2-90a9299f507e", "slug": "in-a-flash", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/blue-remembered-earth/in-a-flash", "text": "In a flash she understood herself for what she was: an exceedingly smart monkey. She was a smart monkey who had travelled across interplanetary space in a thing made by other smart monkeys. And the fact of this was enough to make her laugh out loud, as if she had suddenly, belatedly, grasped the punchline to a very involved joke. I’m the punchline, Sunday thought. I’m the period, the full stop at the end of an immensely long and convoluted chain of happenstance and contingency stretching from the discovery of fire down in the Olduvai Gorge, through the inventions of language and paper and the wheel, through all the unremembered centuries to…this. This condition. Being brought out of hibernation aboard a spaceship orbiting another planet. Being alive in the twenty-second century. Being a thing with a central nervous system complex enough to understand the concept of being a thing with a central nervous system. Simply being. Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unthinking galaxies and superclusters, wheeling through the oblivious time-haunted megaparsecs of the cosmic supervoid. In all that immensity, she had somehow contrived to be a human being, a microscopically tiny, cosmically insignificant bundle of information-processing systems, wired to a mind more structurally complex than the Milky Way itself, maybe even more complex than the rest of the whole damned universe. She had threaded the needle of creation and stabbed the cosmic bullseye.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "Blue Remembered Earth", "slug": "blue-remembered-earth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/blue-remembered-earth" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 215, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "the universe", "slug": "the-universe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-universe" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Blue_Remembered_Earth_(2012)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:42" }, { "id": "d8ae77b6-dbcd-44a0-abc7-ad35a1837ccc", "slug": "evolution-doesnt-greatly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/chasm-city/evolution-doesnt-greatly", "text": "Evolution doesn’t greatly care about what happens to creatures once they’ve passed on their genetic heritage.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "Chasm City", "slug": "chasm-city", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/chasm-city" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 332, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Chasm_City_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:38" }, { "id": "cf9533fd-6bf8-4b67-9209-109e589c0b09", "slug": "afterwards-when-clavain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/galactic-north/afterwards-when-clavain", "text": "Afterwards, when Clavain tried to imaging how he might describe it, he found that words were never going to be adequate for the task. And that was no surprise: evolution had shaped language to convey many concepts, but going from a single to a networked topology of self was not amongst them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "Galactic North", "slug": "galactic-north", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/galactic-north" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 37, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "language", "slug": "language", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/language" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Galactic_North_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:37" }, { "id": "f8fc9dd7-fa75-4249-862d-09f4bded9197", "slug": "three-revolutions-mark", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey/the-origin-of-humankind/three-revolutions-mark", "text": "Three revolutions mark the history of life on earth. The first was the origin of life itself... The second... was the origin of multicellular organisms... The origin of human consciousness... was the third... Life became aware of itself, and began to transform the world of nature to its own ends.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard E. Leakey", "slug": "richard-e-leakey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey" }, "book": { "title": "The Origin Of Humankind", "slug": "the-origin-of-humankind", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey/the-origin-of-humankind" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "consciousness", "slug": "consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consciousness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Leakey#The_Origin_of_Humankind_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:06" }, { "id": "caacd13a-b1ba-4f94-8891-227933415e94", "slug": "natural-selection-operates", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey/the-origin-of-humankind/natural-selection-operates", "text": "Natural selection operates according to immediate circumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendent of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard E. Leakey", "slug": "richard-e-leakey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey" }, "book": { "title": "The Origin Of Humankind", "slug": "the-origin-of-humankind", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey/the-origin-of-humankind" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Leakey#The_Origin_of_Humankind_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:06" }, { "id": "1f843f2a-732b-4df1-ab8f-e69ca3c63d77", "slug": "ever-since-darwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey/origins/ever-since-darwin", "text": "Ever since Darwin tied knots between human beings and the rest of the animal world, many people have frantically attempted to untie them again, declaring that even though our roots are in the animal world we have left them so far behind as to make any comparisons utterly meaningless. To some extent this is true, because the quality that makes us unique in the biological kingdom is the enormous capacity to learn.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard E. Leakey", "slug": "richard-e-leakey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey" }, "book": { "title": "Origins", "slug": "origins", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-e-leakey/origins" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Leakey#Origins_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:05" }, { "id": "ce76ebca-2a28-48cc-af48-989dca7c4172", "slug": "a-primary-reason", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-kurzweil/the-age-of-spiritual-machines/a-primary-reason", "text": "A primary reason that evolution—of life-forms or technology—speeds up is that it builds on its own increasing order.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ray Kurzweil", "slug": "ray-kurzweil", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-kurzweil" }, "book": { "title": "The Age of Spiritual Machines", "slug": "the-age-of-spiritual-machines", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-kurzweil/the-age-of-spiritual-machines" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines:_When_Computers_Exceed_Human_Intelligence_(1999)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:55" }, { "id": "1857a2b3-6558-4fad-ac4b-56824efa3804", "slug": "evolution-is-a-process", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-kurzweil/the-singularity-is-near/evolution-is-a-process", "text": "Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order....I believe that it's the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ray Kurzweil", "slug": "ray-kurzweil", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-kurzweil" }, "book": { "title": "The Singularity Is Near", "slug": "the-singularity-is-near", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ray-kurzweil/the-singularity-is-near" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 14, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#The_Singularity_Is_Near:_When_Humans_Transcend_Biology_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:55" }, { "id": "380a6a4e-4a19-420e-818f-710aa5aaca65", "slug": "evolution-has-meant", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-hitchens/god-is-not-great/evolution-has-meant", "text": "Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Christopher Hitchens", "slug": "christopher-hitchens", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-hitchens" }, "book": { "title": "God Is Not Great", "slug": "god-is-not-great", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/christopher-hitchens/god-is-not-great" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 8, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great#Chapter_One:_Putting_It_Mildly", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:43" }, { "id": "a316ef9d-4152-427b-ae5c-3a491f6d4510", "slug": "our-genes-push", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-stewart-williams/a-billion-years-of-sex-differences/our-genes-push", "text": "Our genes push us in certain directions, but our genes aren’t the only things shaping us, and thus we can often push right back.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steve Stewart Williams", "slug": "steve-stewart-williams", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-stewart-williams" }, "book": { "title": "A Billion Years of Sex Differences", "slug": "a-billion-years-of-sex-differences", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-stewart-williams/a-billion-years-of-sex-differences" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 24, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Stewart-Williams#A_Billion_Years_of_Sex_Differences:_How_Evolution_Shaped_the_Minds_of_Men_and_Women_(2026)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:32" }, { "id": "66fbb12f-a9c8-4356-ab75-c0b11d889397", "slug": "the-idea-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mayr/what-evolution-is/the-idea-that", "text": "The idea that a few people have about the gene being the target of selection is completely impractical; a gene is never visible to natural selection, and in the genotype, it is always in the context with other genes, and the interaction with those other genes make a particular gene either more favorable or less favorable. In fact, Dobzhanksy, for instance, worked quite a bit on so-called lethal chromosomes which are highly successful in one combination, and lethal in another. Therefore people like Dawkins in England who still think the gene is the target of selection are evidently wrong. In the 30s and 40s, it was widely accepted that genes were the target of selection, because that was the only way they could be made accessible to mathematics, but now we know that it is really the whole genotype of the individual, not the gene. Except for that slight revision, the basic Darwinian theory hasn't changed in the last 50 years", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ernst Mayr", "slug": "ernst-mayr", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mayr" }, "book": { "title": "What Evolution Is", "slug": "what-evolution-is", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mayr/what-evolution-is" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernst_Mayr#What_evolution_is:_Talk_with_Ernst_Mayr_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:09" }, { "id": "55cd1c15-61ba-4487-8ca6-38d08de5a2d1", "slug": "powell-repressed-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alfred-bester/the-demolished-man/powell-repressed-the", "text": "Powell repressed the wave of exasperation that rose up in him. It was not exasperation with Chooka. It was anger for the relentless force of evolution that insisted on endowing man with increased powers without removing the vestigial vices that prevented him from using them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alfred Bester", "slug": "alfred-bester", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alfred-bester" }, "book": { "title": "The Demolished Man", "slug": "the-demolished-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alfred-bester/the-demolished-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 114, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "flaws", "slug": "flaws", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/flaws" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester#The_Demolished_Man_(1953)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:24" }, { "id": "9dae4652-535e-43df-9a59-22ed060605ab", "slug": "evolution-tells-us-where", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jerry-a-coyne/why-evolution-is-true/evolution-tells-us-where", "text": "Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jerry A. Coyne", "slug": "jerry-a-coyne", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jerry-a-coyne" }, "book": { "title": "Why Evolution Is True", "slug": "why-evolution-is-true", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jerry-a-coyne/why-evolution-is-true" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 231, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jerry_Coyne#Why_Evolution_is_True_(2009)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:15" }, { "id": "93fb6272-cd3e-47ea-95da-50ec90d634ec", "slug": "we-are-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jerry-a-coyne/why-evolution-is-true/we-are-the", "text": "We are the one creature to whom natural selection has bequeathed a brain complex enough to comprehend the laws that govern the universe. And we should be proud that we are the only species that has figured out how we came to be.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jerry A. Coyne", "slug": "jerry-a-coyne", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jerry-a-coyne" }, "book": { "title": "Why Evolution Is True", "slug": "why-evolution-is-true", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jerry-a-coyne/why-evolution-is-true" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 233, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jerry_Coyne#Why_Evolution_is_True_(2009)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:15" }, { "id": "9dbf303d-e7ed-41de-8bfa-a80be1237256", "slug": "evolution-is-cut-and-try", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/the-boat-of-a-million-years/evolution-is-cut-and-try", "text": "“Evolution is cut-and-try. If I may anthropomorphize,” he added. “Often it’s hard not to.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Poul Anderson", "slug": "poul-anderson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson" }, "book": { "title": "The Boat of a Million Years", "slug": "the-boat-of-a-million-years", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/the-boat-of-a-million-years" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 333, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Poul_Anderson#The_Boat_of_a_Million_Years_(1989)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:48" }, { "id": "17bef51d-e3c6-4dbe-8834-c3fa3675b3b1", "slug": "something-as-biologically", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/the-boat-of-a-million-years/something-as-biologically", "text": "Something as biologically fundamental as death ought to be in the very fabric of evolution virtually from the beginning.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Poul Anderson", "slug": "poul-anderson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson" }, "book": { "title": "The Boat of a Million Years", "slug": "the-boat-of-a-million-years", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/the-boat-of-a-million-years" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 332, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "death", "slug": "death", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Poul_Anderson#The_Boat_of_a_Million_Years_(1989)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:48" }, { "id": "bef5cec1-0a9d-4f6e-9c70-8314eb944714", "slug": "even-darwins-natural", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-a-simon/models-of-my-life/even-darwins-natural", "text": "[Even Darwin’s] natural selection only predicts that survivors will be fit enough, that is, fitter than their losing competitors; it postulates satisficing, not optimizing.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herbert A. Simon", "slug": "herbert-a-simon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-a-simon" }, "book": { "title": "Models of My Life", "slug": "models-of-my-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-a-simon/models-of-my-life" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 166, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon#Models_of_my_life,_1991", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:32" }, { "id": "e5a7eb51-9bd5-4b8d-b7ff-06a2869b6775", "slug": "are-we-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-stone-that-never-came-down/are-we-not", "text": "Are we not natural creatures? Are we not evolved, too? Surely all the lessons we’ve learned in the past century come to a single point: we have to stop thinking of ourselves as somehow apart from nature, and recognise that we’re inseparable from it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Brunner", "slug": "john-brunner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner" }, "book": { "title": "The Stone That Never Came Down", "slug": "the-stone-that-never-came-down", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-stone-that-never-came-down" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 132, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "ecology", "slug": "ecology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Brunner#The_Stone_That_Never_Came_Down_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:11" }, { "id": "ae0861eb-5717-4070-bc9f-940da15d9bbd", "slug": "killing-the-criticizer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/warren-farrell/women-cant-hear-what-men-dont-say/killing-the-criticizer", "text": "Killing the criticizer, then, is part of our evolutionary past; listening in response to criticism is part of our evolutionary future.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Warren Farrell", "slug": "warren-farrell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/warren-farrell" }, "book": { "title": "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say", "slug": "women-cant-hear-what-men-dont-say", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/warren-farrell/women-cant-hear-what-men-dont-say" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 41, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "criticism", "slug": "criticism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/criticism" }, { "name": "listening", "slug": "listening", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/listening" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Warren_Farrell#Women_Can't_Hear_What_Men_Don't_Say_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:05" }, { "id": "d11df0e7-64ec-4738-8f4d-809870cb2cd1", "slug": "evolution-was-still", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/beyond-infinity/evolution-was-still", "text": "Evolution was still at work, pruning the failures from the gene pool with unblinking patience.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gregory Benford", "slug": "gregory-benford", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford" }, "book": { "title": "Beyond Infinity", "slug": "beyond-infinity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/beyond-infinity" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 234, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gregory_Benford#Beyond_Infinity_(2004)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:25" }, { "id": "e45ce990-f8db-469f-8762-248843ff4feb", "slug": "einstein-said-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/cosm/einstein-said-that", "text": "Einstein said that the only incomprehensible thing about the universe was that it was comprehensible. But resorting to God forgets what biology says—that our minds came out of the physical world, y’know, through evolution of early brain stems and neural systems to higher levels of complexity.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gregory Benford", "slug": "gregory-benford", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford" }, "book": { "title": "Cosm", "slug": "cosm", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/cosm" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 324, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "god", "slug": "god", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/god" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gregory_Benford#Cosm_(1998)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:24" }, { "id": "1fb02260-86cd-4e20-80e6-6c944dea3987", "slug": "minds-embodies-in-strange", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/cosm/minds-embodies-in-strange", "text": "Minds embodies in strange shapes would still find themselves sharpened against evolution’s ceaseless whetstone. What challenges would they face? In the end the universe as a whole was life’s ultimate opponent.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gregory Benford", "slug": "gregory-benford", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford" }, "book": { "title": "Cosm", "slug": "cosm", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-benford/cosm" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 327, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "thinking", "slug": "thinking", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/thinking" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gregory_Benford#Cosm_(1998)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:24" }, { "id": "b923628d-a03b-4cdf-b9f5-810852ec15b3", "slug": "the-next-step", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/a-new-earth/the-next-step", "text": "The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the history of our planet, it can be a conscious choice.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Eckhart Tolle", "slug": "eckhart-tolle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle" }, "book": { "title": "A New Earth", "slug": "a-new-earth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/a-new-earth" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "choices", "slug": "choices", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/choices" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_New_Earth#Chapter_6,_Breaking_Free", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:04" }, { "id": "0a27e49a-92c5-4034-9fee-1ef7324ab117", "slug": "until-very-recently", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/a-new-earth/until-very-recently", "text": "Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness – also pointed to by the ancient teachers – was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not yet imperative. A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Eckhart Tolle", "slug": "eckhart-tolle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle" }, "book": { "title": "A New Earth", "slug": "a-new-earth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/a-new-earth" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "consciousness", "slug": "consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consciousness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_New_Earth#Chapter_10,_A_New_Earth", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:04" }, { "id": "809e4a12-c457-4539-80d1-a4992d5f1cf5", "slug": "a-new-species", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/a-new-earth/a-new-species", "text": "A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Eckhart Tolle", "slug": "eckhart-tolle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle" }, "book": { "title": "A New Earth", "slug": "a-new-earth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/a-new-earth" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "consciousness", "slug": "consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consciousness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle#A_New_Earth_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:01" }, { "id": "a9df501e-8351-43fe-b883-4eaffb69aa7e", "slug": "i-do-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-goodall/reason-for-hope/i-do-not", "text": "I do not want to discuss evolution in such depth, however, only touch on it from my own perspective: from the moment when I stood on the Serengeti plains holding the fossilized bones of ancient creatures in my hands to the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back. You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jane Goodall", "slug": "jane-goodall", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-goodall" }, "book": { "title": "Reason For Hope", "slug": "reason-for-hope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-goodall/reason-for-hope" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "responsibility", "slug": "responsibility", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/responsibility" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall#Reason_for_Hope:_a_Spiritual_Journey_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:55" }, { "id": "3a4a81a2-ba6d-4545-acca-40517f760548", "slug": "our-descendants-will", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-maurice-bucke/cosmic-consciousness/our-descendants-will", "text": "Our descendants will sooner or later reach, as a race, the condition of cosmic consciousness, just as, long ago, our ancestors passed from simple consciousness into self consciousness.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard Maurice Bucke", "slug": "richard-maurice-bucke", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-maurice-bucke" }, "book": { "title": "Cosmic Consciousness", "slug": "cosmic-consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-maurice-bucke/cosmic-consciousness" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "consciousness", "slug": "consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consciousness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Maurice_Bucke#Cosmic_Consciousness_(1901)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:50" }, { "id": "5e54bd90-f5ba-4ee3-9a65-e56cdce4608c", "slug": "now-i-see", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-knowles/a-separate-peace/now-i-see", "text": "Now I see what racing skiing is all about. It's all right to miss seeing the trees and the countryside and all the other things when you've got to be in a hurry. And when you're in a war you've got to be in a hurry. Don't you? So I guess maybe racing skiers weren't ruining the sport after all. They were preparing it, if you see what I mean, for the future. Everything has to evolve or else it perishes. . . I'm almost glad this war came along. It's like a test, isn't it, and only the things and the people who've been evolving the right way survive.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Knowles", "slug": "john-knowles", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-knowles" }, "book": { "title": "A Separate Peace", "slug": "a-separate-peace", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-knowles/a-separate-peace" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 116, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Knowles#A_Separate_Peace_(1959)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:29" }, { "id": "63aca79d-69b7-476f-9466-66d4026187c5", "slug": "evolution-endowed-us-with", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark/our-mathematical-universe/evolution-endowed-us-with", "text": "Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin’s theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. We’ve repeatedly tested this prediction, and the results overwhelmingly support Darwin. At high speeds, Einstein realized that time slows down, and curmudgeons on the Swedish Nobel committee found this so weird that they refused to give him the Nobel Prize for his relativity theory. At low temperatures, can flow upward. At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums... On astronomically large scales... weirdness strikes again: if you intuitively understand all aspects of black holes... put down this book and publish your findings before someone scoops you on the Nobel Prize for quantum gravity… [also,] the leading theory for what happened [in the early universe] suggests that space isn’t merely really really big, but actually infinite, containing infinitely many exact copies of you, and even more near-copies living out every possible variant of your life in two different types of parallel universes.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Max Tegmark", "slug": "max-tegmark", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark" }, "book": { "title": "Our Mathematical Universe", "slug": "our-mathematical-universe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark/our-mathematical-universe" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "intuition", "slug": "intuition", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intuition" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark#Our_Mathematical_Universe:_My_Quest_for_the_Ultimate_Nature_of_Reality_(2014)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:24" }, { "id": "7f5ec0d2-2b08-409a-8966-d55a33745584", "slug": "human-consciousness-isnt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/rule-34/human-consciousness-isnt", "text": "Human consciousness isn’t optimized for anything, except maybe helping feral hominids survive in the wild.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Stross", "slug": "charles-stross", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross" }, "book": { "title": "Rule 34", "slug": "rule-34", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/rule-34" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 305, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#Rule_34_(2011)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:07" }, { "id": "4a734474-bd45-484f-9345-5785dd9494ec", "slug": "humans-are-just", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/accelerando/humans-are-just", "text": "Humans are just barely intelligent tool users; Darwinian evolutionary selection stopped when language and tool use converged, leaving the average hairy meme carrier sadly deficient in smarts.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Charles Stross", "slug": "charles-stross", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross" }, "book": { "title": "Accelerando", "slug": "accelerando", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/accelerando" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 266, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intelligence", "slug": "intelligence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intelligence" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#Accelerando_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:05" }, { "id": "cc53419e-67fc-4656-9d26-784945e6f535", "slug": "humans-are-molded", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde/something-rotten/humans-are-molded", "text": "“Humans are molded by evolution to be short-termists, Miss Next,” he continued. His voice rumbled deeply and seemed to echo inside my head. “We need only to see our children to reproductive age to be successful in a biological sense. We have to move beyond that. If we see ourselves as residents on this planet for the long term, we need to plan for the long term.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jasper Fforde", "slug": "jasper-fforde", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde" }, "book": { "title": "Something Rotten", "slug": "something-rotten", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jasper-fforde/something-rotten" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 148, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "the future", "slug": "the-future", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-future" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jasper_Fforde#Something_Rotten_(2004)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:00" }, { "id": "73417bd3-903f-4aae-8cdd-2034c90202d8", "slug": "design-in-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/design-in-nature", "text": "Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Pollan", "slug": "michael-pollan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan" }, "book": { "title": "The Botany of Desire", "slug": "the-botany-of-desire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "chance", "slug": "chance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/chance" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan#The_Botany_of_Desire_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:33" }, { "id": "4517ab4d-1304-4341-ad96-cdabd4d3eb8d", "slug": "beauty-and-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/beauty-and-nature", "text": "Beauty and nature often shows up in the vicinity of sex—think of the plumage of birds or mating rituals through out the animal kingdom. “Sexual selection”—that is, evolution’s favoring of features that increase a plant’s or animal’s attractiveness and therefore it's reproductive success—is the best explanation we have for the otherwise senseless extravagance of feathers and flowers, maybe also sports cars and bikinis. In nature, at least, the expense of beauty is usually paid for by sex. There may or may not be a correlation between the beautiful and the good, but there probably is one between beauty and health. (Which, I suppose, in Darwinian terms, is the good.) Evolutionary biologists believe that in many creatures beauty is a reliable indicator of health, and therefore a perfectly sensible way to choose one mate over another. Gorgeous plumage, lustrous hair, symmetrical features are “certificates of health,” as one scientist puts it, advertisements that a creature carries genes for resistance to parasites and is not otherwise under stress. A fabulous tail is a metabolic extravagance only the healthy can afford.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Pollan", "slug": "michael-pollan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan" }, "book": { "title": "The Botany of Desire", "slug": "the-botany-of-desire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 74, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "beauty", "slug": "beauty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beauty" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "health", "slug": "health", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/health" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan#The_Botany_of_Desire_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:33" }, { "id": "0bf3dbf7-2bdb-4747-85ae-095bed583454", "slug": "evolution-doesnt-depend", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/evolution-doesnt-depend", "text": "Evolution doesn’t depend on will or intention to work; it is, almost by definition, an unconscious, unwilled process.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Pollan", "slug": "michael-pollan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan" }, "book": { "title": "The Botany of Desire", "slug": "the-botany-of-desire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan#The_Botany_of_Desire_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:33" }, { "id": "512d4879-2b38-4bf5-9465-b93ecb469f44", "slug": "man-wants-to-see", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-kurlansky/cod/man-wants-to-see", "text": "Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mark Kurlansky", "slug": "mark-kurlansky", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-kurlansky" }, "book": { "title": "Cod", "slug": "cod", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-kurlansky/cod" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 204, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Kurlansky#Cod:_A_Biography_of_the_Fish_That_Changed_the_World_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:13" }, { "id": "52c210bb-ff0a-457c-bdab-7c46add6156d", "slug": "evolution-is-a-technological", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control/evolution-is-a-technological", "text": "Evolution is a technological, mathematical, informational, and biological process rolled into one. It could almost be said to be a law of physics, a principle that reigns over all created multitudes, whether they have genes or not.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kevin Kelly", "slug": "kevin-kelly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly" }, "book": { "title": "Out Of Control", "slug": "out-of-control", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)#Out_of_Control:_The_New_Biology_of_Machines,_Social_Systems_and_the_Economic_World_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:16" }, { "id": "4d41335c-4860-4855-88a9-1c2765e04294", "slug": "the-capacity-to-evolve", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control/the-capacity-to-evolve", "text": "The capacity to evolve must be evolved itself. Evolution has been, and will keep on, exploring the space of possible evolutions. Organisms, memes, the whole ball of wax are only evolution's way to keep evolving.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kevin Kelly", "slug": "kevin-kelly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly" }, "book": { "title": "Out Of Control", "slug": "out-of-control", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)#Out_of_Control:_The_New_Biology_of_Machines,_Social_Systems_and_the_Economic_World_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:16" }, { "id": "20df5c7a-dc4f-4dab-8818-2a1a00d9ea64", "slug": "we-should-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control/we-should-not", "text": "We should not be surprised that life, having subjugated the bulk of inert matter on Earth, would go on to subjugate technology, and bring it also under its reign of constant evolution.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kevin Kelly", "slug": "kevin-kelly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly" }, "book": { "title": "Out Of Control", "slug": "out-of-control", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "technological progress", "slug": "technological-progress", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technological-progress" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)#Out_of_Control:_The_New_Biology_of_Machines,_Social_Systems_and_the_Economic_World_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:16" }, { "id": "03a3ebd0-6822-4e90-9b1f-d73e3e1e1e0d", "slug": "we-cannot-import", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control/we-cannot-import", "text": "We cannot import evolution and learning without exporting control.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kevin Kelly", "slug": "kevin-kelly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly" }, "book": { "title": "Out Of Control", "slug": "out-of-control", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)#Out_of_Control:_The_New_Biology_of_Machines,_Social_Systems_and_the_Economic_World_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:16" }, { "id": "c9fda0f9-85d5-4b96-bb04-1914b3abc072", "slug": "any-highly-evolved", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control/any-highly-evolved", "text": "Any highly evolved form is beautiful.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kevin Kelly", "slug": "kevin-kelly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly" }, "book": { "title": "Out Of Control", "slug": "out-of-control", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "beauty", "slug": "beauty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beauty" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)#Out_of_Control:_The_New_Biology_of_Machines,_Social_Systems_and_the_Economic_World_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:15" }, { "id": "8e580091-d1ed-4f5b-abf7-e78159914269", "slug": "what-humans-cant", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control/what-humans-cant", "text": "What humans can't engineer, evolution can.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kevin Kelly", "slug": "kevin-kelly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly" }, "book": { "title": "Out Of Control", "slug": "out-of-control", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)#Out_of_Control:_The_New_Biology_of_Machines,_Social_Systems_and_the_Economic_World_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:15" }, { "id": "8d13eda7-5492-4187-ba76-011b4996ddc1", "slug": "the-nature-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control/the-nature-of-life", "text": "The nature of life is to delight in all possible loopholes. Every creature is in some way hacking a living by reinterpreting the rules.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kevin Kelly", "slug": "kevin-kelly", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly" }, "book": { "title": "Out Of Control", "slug": "out-of-control", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kevin-kelly/out-of-control" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)#Out_of_Control:_The_New_Biology_of_Machines,_Social_Systems_and_the_Economic_World_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:15" }, { "id": "ec937652-f121-4d85-bf6e-791a70efcc45", "slug": "though-seemingly-remote", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun/though-seemingly-remote", "text": "Though seemingly remote from human sexuality, shorebird sexuality is instructive because it illustrates the main message of this book: a species’ sexuality is molded by other aspects of the species’ biology. It’s easier for us to acknowledge this conclusion about shorebirds, to which we don’t apply moral standards, than about ourselves.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "Why Is Sex Fun?", "slug": "why-is-sex-fun", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 29, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "sex", "slug": "sex", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/sex" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Why_Is_Sex_Fun%3F:_The_Evolution_of_Human_Sexuality_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:06" }, { "id": "e6c623c7-5b56-43b1-a89f-c58cb2e0a239", "slug": "behavior-evolves-through", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun/behavior-evolves-through", "text": "Behavior evolves through natural selection, just as anatomy does. Hence if sex is enjoyable, natural selection must have been responsible for that outcome.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "Why Is Sex Fun?", "slug": "why-is-sex-fun", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 66, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "sex", "slug": "sex", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/sex" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Why_Is_Sex_Fun%3F:_The_Evolution_of_Human_Sexuality_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:06" }, { "id": "8df4743e-a183-4075-9c71-c486b6550b21", "slug": "in-particular-while", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun/in-particular-while", "text": "In particular, while natural selection favors both males and females that leave many offspring, the best strategy for doing so may be different for fathers and mothers. That generates a built-in conflict between the parents, a conclusion that all too many humans don’t need scientists to reveal to them. We make jokes about the battle of the sexes, but the battle is neither a joke nor an aberrant accident of how individual fathers or mothers behave on particular occasions. It is indeed perfectly true that behavior that is in a male’s genetic interests may not necessarily be in the interests of his female co-parent, and vice versa. That cruel fact is one of the fundamental causes of human misery.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "Why Is Sex Fun?", "slug": "why-is-sex-fun", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 18, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "men", "slug": "men", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/men" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Why_Is_Sex_Fun%3F:_The_Evolution_of_Human_Sexuality_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:06" }, { "id": "39851f06-6011-4b6f-9b1c-7587ec748d9e", "slug": "put-another-way", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/the-third-chimpanzee/put-another-way", "text": "Put another way, the chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but humans.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "The Third Chimpanzee", "slug": "the-third-chimpanzee", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/the-third-chimpanzee" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#The_Third_Chimpanzee:_The_Evolution_and_Future_of_the_Human_Animal_(1991)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:06" }, { "id": "0686944b-cd7c-47df-a5ff-efa5516b04a4", "slug": "perhaps-our-greatest", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun/perhaps-our-greatest", "text": "Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "Why Is Sex Fun?", "slug": "why-is-sex-fun", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 62, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "free will", "slug": "free-will", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/free-will" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Why_Is_Sex_Fun%3F:_The_Evolution_of_Human_Sexuality_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:06" }, { "id": "03b928c1-2531-4fbd-8ef4-affb0eeea8d1", "slug": "physiologists-and-molecular", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun/physiologists-and-molecular", "text": "Physiologists and molecular biologists regularly fall into the trap of overlooking this distinction, which is fundamental to biology, history, and human behavior. Physiology and molecular biology can do no more than identify proximate mechanisms; only evolutionary biology can provide ultimate causal explanations.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "Why Is Sex Fun?", "slug": "why-is-sex-fun", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/why-is-sex-fun" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 108, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Why_Is_Sex_Fun%3F:_The_Evolution_of_Human_Sexuality_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:06" }, { "id": "7126eba7-ea67-4635-8ce1-12b09683346a", "slug": "if-you-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/six-moon-dance/if-you-have", "text": "If you have read your assignment, you know that mankind has a stratified mentality. The ancient lizard mind lies below the mammalian mind, which lies below a primate mind, which is modified by a mind adapted to language, and since these layers have developed in response to differing evolutionary pressures, they often do not function efficiently together. Human civility tries to control ape dominance, human rationality tries to control mammalian sexuality, human social conscience tries to ameliorate reptilian greed, never with total success.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Sheri S. Tepper", "slug": "sheri-s-tepper", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper" }, "book": { "title": "Six Moon Dance", "slug": "six-moon-dance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/six-moon-dance" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 98, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper#Six_Moon_Dance_(1998)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:25" }, { "id": "4eddf0dd-b942-4913-9816-03e7722eac42", "slug": "females-who-agree", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/six-moon-dance/females-who-agree", "text": "“Females who agree to be property are the survivors. Belonging to a mature, powerful male guarantees his protection for her and her children and raises the female’s rank in the primate society. The higher the rank, the less she is harassed and the more she gets to eat. Over millions of years, therefore, it has become instinctive for females to mate with the most dangerous, most dominant male they can attract.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Sheri S. Tepper", "slug": "sheri-s-tepper", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper" }, "book": { "title": "Six Moon Dance", "slug": "six-moon-dance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/six-moon-dance" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 100, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "women", "slug": "women", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "instinct", "slug": "instinct", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/instinct" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper#Six_Moon_Dance_(1998)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:25" }, { "id": "af0fdd2f-ffa5-4dcd-a3b0-59447b15aebd", "slug": "its-exactly-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/sideshow/its-exactly-the", "text": "“It’s exactly the way we thought and acted. Men didn’t have to be better! At least, not in terms of western thought, he didn’t. He strutted and crowed and told himself just as he was, he was made in the image of God! It was easier to depend on heaven than be responsible on earth, but humans were divinely created so why worry.” “And you don’t believe he was? Human?” “He wasn’t what I thought of as sapiens. In my opinion, very few of us were sapiens. Maybe none of us were. Maybe we’d had a chance of becoming sapiens, but we threw it away.” “When did mankind do that?” “In Nela’s time, I think. It was then that pitiful people who saw no reality and knew no science declared the holiness of reproduction. And while the liberals were preserving the right to beget, the reactionaries were preserving the faults in our gene pool. We could corrupt and destroy all the rest of creation, but our own germ plasm was sacred. It didn’t matter that there were billions of us, but anything sapiens about us was far more threatened by our numbers than by any change we might make in ourselves.…”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Sheri S. Tepper", "slug": "sheri-s-tepper", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper" }, "book": { "title": "Sideshow", "slug": "sideshow", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/sideshow" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 324, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper#Sideshow_(1992)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:23" }, { "id": "b6ba4c88-0ae9-483e-84e0-a75d45271003", "slug": "intelligence-is-ongoing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-sower/intelligence-is-ongoing", "text": "Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Octavia E. Butler", "slug": "octavia-e-butler", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler" }, "book": { "title": "Parable of the Sower", "slug": "parable-of-the-sower", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-sower" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 29, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intelligence", "slug": "intelligence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intelligence" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Octavia_Butler#Parable_of_the_Sower_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:10" }, { "id": "9eb43922-9d0c-40f7-af67-979eec25b1f6", "slug": "yori-human-purpose", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/adulthood-rites/yori-human-purpose", "text": "“Yori, Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is—what your genes say it is.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Octavia E. Butler", "slug": "octavia-e-butler", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler" }, "book": { "title": "Adulthood Rites", "slug": "adulthood-rites", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/adulthood-rites" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 501, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "meaning of life", "slug": "meaning-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/meaning-of-life" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Octavia_Butler#Adulthood_Rites_(1988)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:10" }, { "id": "552c55c8-0e2e-4384-a6cb-81bbf5389b08", "slug": "broadly-speaking-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-crichton/jurassic-park/broadly-speaking-the", "text": "\"Broadly speaking, the ability of the park is to control the spread of life forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.\" Malcolm shook his head. \"I don't mean to be philosophical, but there it is.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Crichton", "slug": "michael-crichton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-crichton" }, "book": { "title": "Jurassic Park", "slug": "jurassic-park", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-crichton/jurassic-park" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 178, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(novel)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:52" }, { "id": "45231387-cfb7-496d-a845-7631fd5b706d", "slug": "evolution-doesnt-happen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/kiln-people/evolution-doesnt-happen", "text": "Evolution doesn’t happen without pain or loss. A lot of fish died, in order for a few to stand. The price may be worthwhile…", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Brin", "slug": "david-brin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin" }, "book": { "title": "Kil’n People", "slug": "kiln-people", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/kiln-people" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 469, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "suffering", "slug": "suffering", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brin#Kiln_People_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:46" }, { "id": "d546894d-1fa3-4f24-a438-b86ce8ef6867", "slug": "one-great-mystery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/glory-season/one-great-mystery", "text": "One great mystery is why sexual reproduction became dominant for higher life-forms. Optimization theory says it should be otherwise. Take a fish or lizard, ideally suited to her environment, with just the right internal chemistry, agility, camouflage—whatever it takes to be healthy, fecund, and successful in her world. Despite all this, she cannot pass on her perfect characteristics. After sex, her offspring will be jumbles, getting only half of their program from her and half their re-sorted genes somewhere else. Sex inevitably ruins perfection. Parthenogenesis would seem to work better—at least theoretically. In simple, static environments, well-adapted lizards who produce duplicate daughters are known to have advantages over those using sex. Yet, few complex animals are known to perform self-cloning. And those species exist in ancient, stable deserts, always in close company with a related sexual species. Sex has flourished because environments are seldom static. Climate, competition, parasites—all make for shifting conditions. What was ideal in one generation may be fatal the next. With variability, your offspring get a fighting chance. Even in desperate times, one or more of them may have what it takes to meet new challenges and thrive. Each style has its advantages, then. Cloning offers stability and preservation of excellence. Sex gives adaptability to changing times. In nature it is usually one or the other. Only lowly creatures such as aphids have the option of switching back and forth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Brin", "slug": "david-brin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin" }, "book": { "title": "Glory Season", "slug": "glory-season", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/glory-season" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 123, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "sex", "slug": "sex", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/sex" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brin#Glory_Season_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:45" }, { "id": "49326a07-59cc-49c4-a3ed-ab8e91572a0d", "slug": "we-are-programmed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/glory-season/we-are-programmed", "text": "We are programmed to find sex pleasurable for one simple reason—because animals who mate have offspring. Those who do not mate have none. Traits that result in successful reproduction get reinforced and passed on. Evolution is that simple. It is therefore useless to bemoan as evil the fact that men tend toward aggression. Among our ancestors, aggression often helped males have more offspring than their competitors. “Good” and “evil” had little to do with it. That is, until we reached consciousness, at which point, good and evil became pertinent indeed! Behaviors which might be excusable in dumb beasts can seem perverted, criminal, when performed by thinking beings. Just because a trait is “natural” does not oblige us to keep it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Brin", "slug": "david-brin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin" }, "book": { "title": "Glory Season", "slug": "glory-season", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/glory-season" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 105, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brin#Glory_Season_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:44" }, { "id": "64cb4648-a0d3-45b0-afa3-fe21e1bd8f9d", "slug": "some-researchers-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sam-harris/letter-to-a-christian-nation/some-researchers-have", "text": "Some researchers have speculated that religion itself may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, we can say that religion has served an important purpose. This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now. There is, after all, nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Sam Harris", "slug": "sam-harris", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sam-harris" }, "book": { "title": "Letter to a Christian Nation", "slug": "letter-to-a-christian-nation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sam-harris/letter-to-a-christian-nation" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 90, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "religion", "slug": "religion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sam_Harris#Letter_to_a_Christian_Nation_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:32" }, { "id": "84d5df2d-f512-40d2-9e82-8b427f192a73", "slug": "everything-that-exists", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/reaper-man/everything-that-exists", "text": "Everything that exists, yearns to live. That's what the cycle of life is all about. That's the engine that drives the great biological pumps of evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up the tree, clawing or tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it gets to the very top—which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth all that effort. (p. 81)", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Terry Pratchett", "slug": "terry-pratchett", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett" }, "book": { "title": "Reaper Man", "slug": "reaper-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/reaper-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Reaper_Man#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:56" }, { "id": "f2c79a78-7c6a-48c2-bc16-9e9205462d59", "slug": "relentless-pleistocene-selection", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution/relentless-pleistocene-selection", "text": "Relentless Pleistocene selection was shaping everything that would make up humanity. Even love was a by-product of evolution. Love, and the pain of loss.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Baxter", "slug": "stephen-baxter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter" }, "book": { "title": "Evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 308, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "love", "slug": "love", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "loss", "slug": "loss", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/loss" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter#Evolution_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:24" }, { "id": "902511c4-a731-4b60-9b22-7caa25743323", "slug": "a-growing-belief", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution/a-growing-belief", "text": "A growing belief that behind every event lay intention—be it an evil thought in the mind of another, or the benevolent whim of a god in the sky—was perhaps inevitable in creatures with an innate understanding of causality. If you were smart enough to make multicomponent tools, you eventually came to believe in gods, the end of all causal chains. There would be costs, of course. In the future, to serve their new gods and shamans, the people would have to sacrifice much: time, wealth, even the right to have children. Sometimes they would even have to lay down their lives. But the payback was that they no longer had to be afraid of dying.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Baxter", "slug": "stephen-baxter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter" }, "book": { "title": "Evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 370, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "religion", "slug": "religion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion" }, { "name": "god", "slug": "god", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/god" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter#Evolution_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:24" }, { "id": "6f9e446f-680a-4b53-8e58-b13c7e949b76", "slug": "but-even-if", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution/but-even-if", "text": "But even if it is true, even if we are governed by the legacy of an animal past, then it is up to us to behave as if it were not so.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Baxter", "slug": "stephen-baxter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter" }, "book": { "title": "Evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 501, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter#Evolution_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:24" }, { "id": "2502813e-e29c-4a27-bf67-f22bc7d423d8", "slug": "the-emergent-humans", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution/the-emergent-humans", "text": "The emergent humans were still animals, still bound by natural law. No innovation in the way they lived would have taken root if it had not given them an adaptive advantage in the endless struggle to survive. An ability to believe in things that weren’t true was a powerful tool.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Baxter", "slug": "stephen-baxter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter" }, "book": { "title": "Evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 367, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "faith", "slug": "faith", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/faith" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter#Evolution_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:24" }, { "id": "170be67f-0a77-4954-9e65-2b02e71f2428", "slug": "there-was-no-design", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution/there-was-no-design", "text": "There was no design in this: no sense of improvement, of purpose. All that was happening was that each organism was struggling to preserve itself, its offspring, and its kin. But as the environment slowly changed, so through relentless selection did the species that inhabited it. It was not a process fueled by life, but by death: the elimination of the less well adapted, the endless culling of inappropriate possibilities. But the potential of an unseen future was no consolation to those who lived through the relentless culling.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Baxter", "slug": "stephen-baxter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter" }, "book": { "title": "Evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 120, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "death", "slug": "death", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter#Evolution_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:24" }, { "id": "00a0ec6d-6893-43ee-bffd-ef56e29fbf63", "slug": "if-you-were", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution/if-you-were", "text": "If you were part of a group there was always the chance that the predator would take the next guy, not you. It was a cold-blooded lottery that paid off often enough to be worthwhile adapting for. But there were disadvantages to group living: mainly, if there were large numbers of you, there was increased competition for food. As that competition resolved itself, the inevitable result was social complexity—and the size of the adapids’ brains had increased so that they were capable of handling that complexity. Then, of course, they were forced to become even more efficient at searching for food to fuel those big brains. It was the way of the future. As primate societies became ever more complex, a kind of cognitive arms race would continue, increasing smartness fueled by increasing social complications.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Baxter", "slug": "stephen-baxter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter" }, "book": { "title": "Evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 113, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter#Evolution_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:24" }, { "id": "7095d2a3-97b3-43e6-8117-a17c266d3437", "slug": "the-species-is", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-roberts/the-individual-and-the-nature-of-mass-events/the-species-is", "text": "The species is in a state of transition, one of many. This one began, generally speaking, when the species tried to step apart from nature in order to develop the unique kind of consciousness that is presently your own. That consciousness is not a finished product, however, but one meant to change, [to] evolve and develop. Certain artificial divisions were made along the way that must now be dispensed with. You must return, wiser creatures, to the nature that spawned you - not only as loving caretakers but as partners with the other species of the earth. You must discover once again the spirituality of your biological heritage.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jane Roberts", "slug": "jane-roberts", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-roberts" }, "book": { "title": "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events", "slug": "the-individual-and-the-nature-of-mass-events", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jane-roberts/the-individual-and-the-nature-of-mass-events" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 45, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Roberts#The_Individual_and_the_Nature_of_Mass_Events,_(1981)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:14" }, { "id": "a4cb69c2-02d7-49bb-bd60-10f2cf402b59", "slug": "they-were-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/time-is-the-simplest-thing/they-were-the", "text": "They were the misfits of the world, the outcasts, for they deviated from the norm of humanity as established through all of history. Yet it was this very deviation which made them the hope of all mankind. Ordinary human beings—the kind of human beings who had brought the race this far—were not enough today. The ordinary humans had pushed the culture forward as far as they could push it. It had served its purpose; it had brought the ordinary human as far as he could go. Now the race evolved. Now new abilities had awoke and grown—exactly as the creatures of the Earth had evolved and specialized and then evolved again from that first moment when the first feeble spark of life had come into being in the seething chemical bath of a new and madcap planet. Twisted brains, the normal people called them; magic people, dwellers of the darkness—and could anyone say no to this? For each people set its standards for each generation and these standards and these norms were not set by any universal rule, by no all-encompassing yardstick, but by what amounted to majority agreement, with the choice arrived at through all the prejudice and bias, all the faulty thinking and the unstable logic to which all intelligence is prone.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Clifford D. Simak", "slug": "clifford-d-simak", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak" }, "book": { "title": "Time is the Simplest Thing", "slug": "time-is-the-simplest-thing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/time-is-the-simplest-thing" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 233, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intelligence", "slug": "intelligence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intelligence" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak#Time_is_the_Simplest_Thing_(1961)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:00" }, { "id": "0869cb12-1cfb-4d06-aa04-2346c706858f", "slug": "he-knew-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/time-is-the-simplest-thing/he-knew-that", "text": "He knew that there was death—that there must be death if there were evolution, that death was one of the mechanisms that biologically spelled progress and advancement for evolutionary species.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Clifford D. Simak", "slug": "clifford-d-simak", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak" }, "book": { "title": "Time is the Simplest Thing", "slug": "time-is-the-simplest-thing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/time-is-the-simplest-thing" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 75, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "death", "slug": "death", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak#Time_is_the_Simplest_Thing_(1961)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:59" }, { "id": "bdfaf7c6-1723-422d-83ba-4c270386fa07", "slug": "darwinism-as-its", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fowles/the-french-lieutenants-woman/darwinism-as-its", "text": "Darwinism, as its shrewder opponents realized, let open the floodgates to something far more serious than the undermining of the Biblical account of the origins of man; its deepest implications lay in the direction of determinism and behaviourism, that is, towards philosophies that reduce morality to a hypocrisy and duty to a straw hut in a hurricane.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Fowles", "slug": "john-fowles", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fowles" }, "book": { "title": "The French Lieutenant's Woman", "slug": "the-french-lieutenants-woman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fowles/the-french-lieutenants-woman" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 119, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Fowles#The_French_Lieutenant's_Woman_(1969)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:30" }, { "id": "81d95e9b-65d1-4c7e-8ce9-bb1e80ad75f2", "slug": "love-was-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/children-of-the-mind/love-was-the", "text": "Love was the genes of all creatures demanding that they be replicated, replicated, replicated.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Orson Scott Card", "slug": "orson-scott-card", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card" }, "book": { "title": "Children Of The Mind", "slug": "children-of-the-mind", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/children-of-the-mind" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "love", "slug": "love", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Mind#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:45" }, { "id": "c095825f-bd4e-440e-87c5-4a0f75d6efe0", "slug": "i-came-fortunately", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrew-carnegie/the-autobiography-of-andrew-carnegie/i-came-fortunately", "text": "... I came fortunately upon Darwin’s and Spencer’s works “The Data of Ethics,” “First Principles,” “Social Statics,” “The Descent of Man.” Reaching the pages which explain how man has absorbed such mental foods as were favorable to him, retaining what was salutary, rejecting what was deleterious, I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. \"All is well since all grows better” became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Andrew Carnegie", "slug": "andrew-carnegie", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrew-carnegie" }, "book": { "title": "The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie", "slug": "the-autobiography-of-andrew-carnegie", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/andrew-carnegie/the-autobiography-of-andrew-carnegie" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 339, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "religion", "slug": "religion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#Autobiography_of_Andrew_Carnegie,_1920", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:32" }, { "id": "6802332a-4cc6-43ae-bea7-523fc19588fa", "slug": "it-is-a-century", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac/it-is-a-century", "text": "It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aldo Leopold", "slug": "aldo-leopold", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold" }, "book": { "title": "A Sand County Almanac", "slug": "a-sand-county-almanac", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 109, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold#%22Wisconsin:_Marshland_Elegy,%22_%22Wisconsin:_The_Sand_Counties%22_%22Wisconsin:_On_a_Monument_to_the_Pigeon,%22_and_%22Wisconsin:_Flambeau%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:20" }, { "id": "0e9a44dc-c94e-46a7-9f93-7323facc5c12", "slug": "when-we-hear", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac/when-we-hear", "text": "When we hear [the crane’s] call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aldo Leopold", "slug": "aldo-leopold", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold" }, "book": { "title": "A Sand County Almanac", "slug": "a-sand-county-almanac", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 96, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold#%22Wisconsin:_Marshland_Elegy,%22_%22Wisconsin:_The_Sand_Counties%22_%22Wisconsin:_On_a_Monument_to_the_Pigeon,%22_and_%22Wisconsin:_Flambeau%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:20" }, { "id": "dea807bf-2375-47a7-89d6-8d0265c8efe0", "slug": "evolution-discloses-a-meaning", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch/evolution-discloses-a-meaning", "text": "Evolution discloses a meaning in death, although the meaning is like some of the berries that Darwin tasted in the Galapagos, “acid & Austere.” There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. Even Drought bears fruit. Even death is a seed.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Weiner", "slug": "jonathan-weiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner" }, "book": { "title": "The Beak of the Finch", "slug": "the-beak-of-the-finch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 82, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "death", "slug": "death", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner#The_Beak_of_the_Finch:_A_Story_of_Evolution_in_Our_Time_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:40" }, { "id": "c0813562-607f-4933-83fa-880f3f9daf38", "slug": "geneticists-will-tell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch/geneticists-will-tell", "text": "Geneticists will tell you that. Evolution is always happening. What they mean is that the genes of this generation are not precisely what they were the preceding generation. Nor will they be precisely the same in the next. And evolution is that change.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Weiner", "slug": "jonathan-weiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner" }, "book": { "title": "The Beak of the Finch", "slug": "the-beak-of-the-finch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 126, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner#The_Beak_of_the_Finch:_A_Story_of_Evolution_in_Our_Time_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:40" }, { "id": "bfaaf7d4-cfc5-4c07-ba56-44a5e1c957cb", "slug": "we-do-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/time-love-memory/we-do-not", "text": "We do not lift a finger without three kinds of information: the information we are getting from our senses at that moment; the information we have gotten from our senses in the past; and the information our ancestors have acquired since life began on Earth—that is, the information that is represented by genes themselves. Evolution is learning. Species store learning in chromosomes the way individuals store learning in their brains and societies store learning in books.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Weiner", "slug": "jonathan-weiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner" }, "book": { "title": "Time, Love, Memory", "slug": "time-love-memory", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/time-love-memory" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 132, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "knowledge", "slug": "knowledge", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/knowledge" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner#Time,_Love,_Memory:_A_Great_Biologist_and_His_Quest_for_the_Origins_of_Behavior_(1999)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:40" }, { "id": "6c284f30-4036-4224-8597-561d77b25b02", "slug": "whether-or-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch/whether-or-not", "text": "Whether or not we choose to watch, evolution is shaping us all.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Weiner", "slug": "jonathan-weiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner" }, "book": { "title": "The Beak of the Finch", "slug": "the-beak-of-the-finch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 16, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner#The_Beak_of_the_Finch:_A_Story_of_Evolution_in_Our_Time_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:40" }, { "id": "5bf20a72-f013-410b-a5f2-aeb81a23ed1f", "slug": "what-we-dont", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch/what-we-dont", "text": "What we don’t understand on either front is that the more pressure we put on our pests, the more we cause them to evolve around the pressure. The pressure is evolutionary pressure; what we fail to understand is evolution itself.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Weiner", "slug": "jonathan-weiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner" }, "book": { "title": "The Beak of the Finch", "slug": "the-beak-of-the-finch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 265, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner#The_Beak_of_the_Finch:_A_Story_of_Evolution_in_Our_Time_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:40" }, { "id": "5420a9f4-506a-43d8-8a7e-1982c085769a", "slug": "taken-together-these", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch/taken-together-these", "text": "Taken together, these new studies suggest that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. He vastly underestimated the power of natural selection. Its action is neither rare nor slow. It leads to evolution daily and hourly, all around us, and we can watch.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Weiner", "slug": "jonathan-weiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner" }, "book": { "title": "The Beak of the Finch", "slug": "the-beak-of-the-finch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 9, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner#The_Beak_of_the_Finch:_A_Story_of_Evolution_in_Our_Time_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:40" }, { "id": "024f94a4-2049-46ca-b249-cc3e1721327a", "slug": "why-are-there", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch/why-are-there", "text": "Why are there so many kinds of animals? Adaptive radiations like Darwin’s finches are the essence of the answer.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Weiner", "slug": "jonathan-weiner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner" }, "book": { "title": "The Beak of the Finch", "slug": "the-beak-of-the-finch", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-weiner/the-beak-of-the-finch" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 207, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner#The_Beak_of_the_Finch:_A_Story_of_Evolution_in_Our_Time_(1994)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:40" }, { "id": "d23ffe83-7776-4692-b615-db6a15481a0d", "slug": "in-the-animal", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid/in-the-animal", "text": "In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense — not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Peter Kropotkin", "slug": "peter-kropotkin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin" }, "book": { "title": "Mutual Aid", "slug": "mutual-aid", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "solidarity", "slug": "solidarity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/solidarity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin#Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution_(1902)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:38" }, { "id": "bcbfd72e-4cc0-48c0-b0ba-de9715cc77b9", "slug": "it-is-natural", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/it-is-natural", "text": "It is natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity — in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes — an interesting side branch.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Bill Bryson", "slug": "bill-bryson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson" }, "book": { "title": "A Short History of Nearly Everything", "slug": "a-short-history-of-nearly-everything", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 311, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "pride", "slug": "pride", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/pride" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Bryson#A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:36" }, { "id": "47e8e418-efc4-4e1e-a99a-6eb02bb0c508", "slug": "evolution-made-civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach/one/evolution-made-civilization", "text": "Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to Love.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard Bach", "slug": "richard-bach", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach" }, "book": { "title": "One", "slug": "one", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach/one" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Bach#One_(1988)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:19" }, { "id": "ee73c48b-673d-4fa1-9229-8b5b5be50570", "slug": "humans-entered-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/humans-entered-the", "text": "Humans . . . entered the 'cognitive niche.' Remember the definition of intelligence from Chapter 2: using knowledge of how things work to attain goals in the face of obstacles. By learning which manipulations achieve which goals, humans have mastered the art of the surprise attack. They use novel, goal-oriented courses of action to overcome the Maginot Line defenses of other organisms, which can respond only over evolutionary time. The manipulations can be novel because human knowledge is not just couched in concrete instructions like 'how to catch a rabbit.' Humans analyze the world using intuitive theories of objects, forces, paths, places, manners, states, substances, hidden biochemical essences, and, for other animals and people, beliefs and desires. . . . People compose new knowledge and plans by mentally playing out combinatorial interactions among these laws in their mind's eye.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steven Pinker", "slug": "steven-pinker", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker" }, "book": { "title": "How the Mind Works", "slug": "how-the-mind-works", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 188, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intelligence", "slug": "intelligence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intelligence" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#How_the_Mind_Works_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:49" }, { "id": "add00300-b5a8-4354-9204-a45eed96a9e7", "slug": "the-human-brain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/the-human-brain", "text": "The human brain is an exquisitely complex organ that evolved only once. The elephant's trunk, which can stack logs, uproot trees, pick up a dime, remove thorns, powder the elephant with dust, siphon water, serve as a snorkel, and scribble with a pencil, is another complex organ that evolved only once.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steven Pinker", "slug": "steven-pinker", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker" }, "book": { "title": "How the Mind Works", "slug": "how-the-mind-works", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 152, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#How_the_Mind_Works_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:49" }, { "id": "ab811cd1-02d7-42e8-a640-af3c029beacd", "slug": "some-people-think", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/some-people-think", "text": "Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steven Pinker", "slug": "steven-pinker", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker" }, "book": { "title": "How the Mind Works", "slug": "how-the-mind-works", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 517, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#How_the_Mind_Works_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:49" }, { "id": "25b863f7-ae52-4c14-a6ee-5d6a984450b1", "slug": "genes-are-a-play", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/genes-are-a-play", "text": "Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steven Pinker", "slug": "steven-pinker", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker" }, "book": { "title": "How the Mind Works", "slug": "how-the-mind-works", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 44, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#How_the_Mind_Works_(1997)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:49" }, { "id": "e6fbcce2-fd03-421a-9cad-d6e388dc05f6", "slug": "being-on-mars", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/red-mars/being-on-mars", "text": "“Being on Mars will change us in an evolutionary way.” Arkady shook his head vehemently, causing him to spin a little in the air over the table. “No, no, no, no! History is not evolution! It is a false analogy! Evolution is a matter of environment and chance, acting over millions of years. But history is a matter of environment and choice, acting within lifetimes, and sometimes within years, or months, or days! History is Lamarckian! So that if we choose to establish certain institutions on Mars, there they will be! And if we choose others, there they will be!”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kim Stanley Robinson", "slug": "kim-stanley-robinson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson" }, "book": { "title": "Red Mars", "slug": "red-mars", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/red-mars" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 88, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson#Red_Mars_(1992)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:44" }, { "id": "8e33b843-1f0b-4095-9152-328fae90dbd5", "slug": "complex-organisms-cannot", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/i-have-landed/complex-organisms-cannot", "text": "Complex organisms cannot be construed as the sum of their genes, nor do genes alone build particular items of anatomy or behavior by themselves. Most genes influence several aspects of anatomy and behavior—as they operate through complex interactions with other genes and their products, and with environmental factors both within and outside the developing organism. We fall into a deep error, not just a harmful oversimplification, when we speak of genes “for” particular items of anatomy or behavior.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Jay Gould", "slug": "stephen-jay-gould", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould" }, "book": { "title": "I Have Landed", "slug": "i-have-landed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/i-have-landed" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 234, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#I_Have_Landed_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:35" }, { "id": "13bd8dee-e3c7-40ab-9cd5-f60f273c0237", "slug": "the-vigorous-branching", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/i-have-landed/the-vigorous-branching", "text": "The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Jay Gould", "slug": "stephen-jay-gould", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould" }, "book": { "title": "I Have Landed", "slug": "i-have-landed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/i-have-landed" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 331, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#I_Have_Landed_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:35" }, { "id": "cd3d0207-22de-4b43-8bd0-7f64d3abc33e", "slug": "evolution-is-an-obstacle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/eight-little-piggies/evolution-is-an-obstacle", "text": "Evolution is an obstacle course not a freeway; the correct analogue for long-term success is a distant punt receiver evading legions of would-be tacklers in an oddly zigzagged path toward a goal, not a horse thundering down the flat.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Jay Gould", "slug": "stephen-jay-gould", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould" }, "book": { "title": "Eight Little Piggies", "slug": "eight-little-piggies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/eight-little-piggies" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 318, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#Eight_Little_Piggies_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:34" }, { "id": "b8391da4-e33a-4cb7-8a7d-b101131a01dd", "slug": "the-animals-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/the-animals-of-the", "text": "The animals of the Burgess Shale are holy objects—in the unconventional sense that this word conveys in some cultures. We do not place them on pedestals and worship from afar. We climb mountains and dynamite hillsides to find them. We quarry them, split them, carve them, draw them, and dissect them, struggling to wrest their secrets. We vilify and curse them for their damnable intransigence. They are grubby little creatures of a sea floor 530 million years old, but we greet them with awe because they are the Old Ones, and they are trying to tell us something.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Jay Gould", "slug": "stephen-jay-gould", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould" }, "book": { "title": "Wonderful Life", "slug": "wonderful-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 52, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#Wonderful_Life_(1989)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:34" }, { "id": "8c4b890e-c4f5-406f-a01a-8b10c385bcba", "slug": "each-worldview-was", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/eight-little-piggies/each-worldview-was", "text": "Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. […] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Jay Gould", "slug": "stephen-jay-gould", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould" }, "book": { "title": "Eight Little Piggies", "slug": "eight-little-piggies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/eight-little-piggies" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 425, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#Eight_Little_Piggies_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:34" }, { "id": "1eb5857a-407a-4c4f-b83f-b536ffb73006", "slug": "bacteria-represent-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/eight-little-piggies/bacteria-represent-the", "text": "Bacteria represent the world's greatest success story. They are today and have always been the modal organisms on earth; they cannot be nuked to oblivion and will outlive us all. This time is their time, not the “age of mammals” as our textbooks chauvinistically proclaim. But their price for such success is permanent relegation to a microworld, and they cannot know the joy and pain of consciousness. We live in a universe of trade-offs; complexity and persistence do not work well as partners.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Jay Gould", "slug": "stephen-jay-gould", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould" }, "book": { "title": "Eight Little Piggies", "slug": "eight-little-piggies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/eight-little-piggies" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 98, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#Eight_Little_Piggies_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:34" }, { "id": "8b4f823c-0ee6-4fcc-a883-8051e9a4d5d5", "slug": "evolution-is-so-creative", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/a-man-without-a-country/evolution-is-so-creative", "text": "Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "A Man Without a Country", "slug": "a-man-without-a-country", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/a-man-without-a-country" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#A_Man_Without_a_Country_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:46" }, { "id": "17d21df8-25e8-4f38-9934-46030ff9404d", "slug": "the-british-astronomer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake/the-british-astronomer", "text": "The British astronomer Fred Hoyle said something to this effect: The believing in Darwin’s theoretical mechanisms of evolution was like believing that a hurricane could blow through a junkyard and build a Boeing 747. No matter what is doing the creating. I have to say that the giraffe and the rhinoceros are ridiculous. And so is the human brain, capable, in cahoots with the more sensitive parts of the body, such as the ding-dong, of hating life while pretending to love it, and behaving accordingly: \"Somebody shoot me while I’m happy!\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Timequake", "slug": "timequake", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 188, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Timequake#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:44" }, { "id": "cd619826-1e5b-4ac6-b27a-13e63b91977e", "slug": "evolution-is-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/breaking-the-spell/evolution-is-all", "text": "Evolution is all about processes that almost never happen. Every birth in every lineage is a potential speciation event, but speciation almost never happens, not once in a million births. Mutation in DNA almost never happens — not once in a trillion copings — but evolution depends on it. Take the set of infrequent accidents — things that almost never happen — and sort them into the happy accidents, the neutral accidents, and the fatal accidents; amplify the effects of the happy accidents — which happens automatically when you have replication and competition — and you get evolution.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Daniel Dennett", "slug": "daniel-dennett", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett" }, "book": { "title": "Breaking the Spell", "slug": "breaking-the-spell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/breaking-the-spell" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "chance", "slug": "chance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/chance" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett#Breaking_the_Spell_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:30" }, { "id": "cbd798e3-b17a-4271-a44c-f9cf91fe0f24", "slug": "the-evidence-of-evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/the-evidence-of-evolution", "text": "The evidence of evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwin's chief sources), but from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write. Doubts about the power of Darwin's idea of natural selection to explain this evolutionary process are still intellectually respectable, however, although the burden of proof for such skepticism has become immense...", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Daniel Dennett", "slug": "daniel-dennett", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett" }, "book": { "title": "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", "slug": "darwins-dangerous-idea", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett#Darwin's_Dangerous_Idea_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:28" }, { "id": "5328179e-4678-4bca-ab1b-6c8a820fbf91", "slug": "the-fundamental-core", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/the-fundamental-core", "text": "The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might — hope against hope — have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other area of human knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even \"revolutionary\" shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be \"refuted\" by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Daniel Dennett", "slug": "daniel-dennett", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett" }, "book": { "title": "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", "slug": "darwins-dangerous-idea", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett#Darwin's_Dangerous_Idea_(1995)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:28" }, { "id": "bbc1a310-cc25-4c52-833b-6ef195183bba", "slug": "to-produce-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/dune/to-produce-the", "text": "To produce the genetic alteration of an organism, place it in an environment which is dangerous but not lethal.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Frank Herbert", "slug": "frank-herbert", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert" }, "book": { "title": "Dune", "slug": "dune", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/dune" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune#Dune:_House_Corrino_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:49" }, { "id": "f187949d-7572-4dae-a023-2d6317249e01", "slug": "lets-say-theres", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience/lets-say-theres", "text": "Let's say there's a molecule that produces a religious experience... a natural molecule that the body produces whose function it is to produce religious experiences, at least on occasion? ...So let's call it \"theophorin\"...What could the selective advantage of theophorin be? ...to suit us for the quest that was, according to Dostoyevsky, to strive for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship and obey.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "The Varieties of Scientific Experience", "slug": "the-varieties-of-scientific-experience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "religion", "slug": "religion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "the brain", "slug": "the-brain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-brain" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Varieties_of_Scientific_Experience:_A_Personal_View_of_the_Search_for_God_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:30" }, { "id": "c8315cb6-45cc-4988-a2a9-a68520d80cbb", "slug": "the-origin-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience/the-origin-of-life", "text": "The origin of life happened in significantly less than 500 million years. ...Six days was once a popular hypothesis. ...A process that happens quickly is a process that is in some sense likely... this evidence suggests that the origin of life was in some sense easy, in some sense sitting in the laws of physics and chemistry.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "The Varieties of Scientific Experience", "slug": "the-varieties-of-scientific-experience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Varieties_of_Scientific_Experience:_A_Personal_View_of_the_Search_for_God_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:30" }, { "id": "14ee73ff-d00e-4fe5-8d8d-296490505d6c", "slug": "because-it-is-clear", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience/because-it-is-clear", "text": "Because it is clear from the fossil record that almost every species that has ever existed is extinct; extinction is the rule, survival is the exception.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "The Varieties of Scientific Experience", "slug": "the-varieties-of-scientific-experience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "survival", "slug": "survival", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/survival" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Varieties_of_Scientific_Experience:_A_Personal_View_of_the_Search_for_God_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:30" }, { "id": "ff41c0d4-6855-4ee0-a397-51fb0732a99b", "slug": "suppose-your-father", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience/suppose-your-father", "text": "Suppose your father... walked into this room at the ordinary human pace of walking. And suppose just behind him was his father. How long would we have to wait before the ancestor who enters the now-open door is a creature who normally walked on all fours? The answer is a week.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "The Varieties of Scientific Experience", "slug": "the-varieties-of-scientific-experience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Varieties_of_Scientific_Experience:_A_Personal_View_of_the_Search_for_God_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:29" }, { "id": "02f6211a-b9bb-4d3d-99f5-76a701b809aa", "slug": "when-you-look", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience/when-you-look", "text": "When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. ...It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules. ...with trivial exceptions, all organisms on Earth use... an enzyme, to control the rate and direction of the chemistry of life. ...a nucleic acid to encode the hereditary information ...the identical code book for translating nucleic acid language into protein language. ...At the molecular level, we are all virtually identical.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "The Varieties of Scientific Experience", "slug": "the-varieties-of-scientific-experience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Varieties_of_Scientific_Experience:_A_Personal_View_of_the_Search_for_God_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:29" }, { "id": "3c8fd69c-d950-44b5-b568-af91b3175de3", "slug": "the-fossil-record", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/cosmos/the-fossil-record", "text": "The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Cosmos", "slug": "cosmos", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/cosmos" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 29, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "god", "slug": "god", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/god" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Cosmos_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:27" }, { "id": "406b9507-65ab-458d-b54d-9a2f1a329add", "slug": "broca-was-quoted", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/brocas-brain/broca-was-quoted", "text": "Broca was quoted as saying, “I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Broca's Brain", "slug": "brocas-brain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/brocas-brain" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 7, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Broca's_Brain_(1979)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:26" }, { "id": "e25856e2-8c57-4151-a9c3-60a4c66036cd", "slug": "there-is-a-popular", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/there-is-a-popular", "text": "There is a popular contention that half or more of the brain is unused. From an evolutionary point of view this would be quite extraordinary: why should it have evolved if it had no function? But actually the statement is made on very little evidence.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Dragons of Eden", "slug": "dragons-of-eden", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 31, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "the brain", "slug": "the-brain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-brain" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Dragons_of_Eden_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:25" }, { "id": "bc28fd2a-7314-48e7-b2b3-bfcb6809633a", "slug": "note-that-in-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/note-that-in-all", "text": "Note that in all this interaction between mutation and natural selection, no moth is making a conscious effort to adapt to a changed environment. The process is random and statistical.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Dragons of Eden", "slug": "dragons-of-eden", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 28, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Dragons_of_Eden_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:25" }, { "id": "9e00394b-81a8-430e-bd1a-f3e60d84e19d", "slug": "natural-selection-has", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/natural-selection-has", "text": "Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature. This resonance, extracted by natural selection, between our brains and the universe may help explain a quandary set by Einstein: The most incomprehensible property of the universe, he said, is that it is so comprehensible.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Dragons of Eden", "slug": "dragons-of-eden", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 242, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "the brain", "slug": "the-brain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-brain" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Dragons_of_Eden_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:25" }, { "id": "87fbc5b6-3a29-421b-bb3d-1e7846436829", "slug": "that-in-nonarithmetic", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/that-in-nonarithmetic", "text": "That in nonarithmetic operations the small and slow human brain can still do so much better than the large and fast electronic computer is an impressive tribute to how cleverly the brain is packaged and programmed—features brought about, of course, by natural selection. Those who possessed poorly programmed brains eventually did not live long enough to reproduce.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Dragons of Eden", "slug": "dragons-of-eden", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 224, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "the brain", "slug": "the-brain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-brain" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Dragons_of_Eden_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:25" }, { "id": "468c9d1a-02a7-49c8-b036-793090e1a213", "slug": "the-entire-evolutionary", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden/the-entire-evolutionary", "text": "The entire evolutionary record on our planet, particularly the record contained in fossil endocasts, illustrates a progressive tendency toward intelligence. There is nothing mysterious about this: smart organisms by and large survive better and leave more offspring than stupid ones.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl Sagan", "slug": "carl-sagan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan" }, "book": { "title": "Dragons of Eden", "slug": "dragons-of-eden", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/dragons-of-eden" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 240, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intelligence", "slug": "intelligence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intelligence" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#The_Dragons_of_Eden_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:25" }, { "id": "ab4dfb4c-c257-42f9-9c6e-a02cc7ea6ae3", "slug": "in-fact-for", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno/tragic-sense-of-life/in-fact-for", "text": "In fact, for a voluntarist like Schopenhauer, a theory so sanely and cautiously empirical and rational as that of Darwin, left out of account the inward force, the essential motive, of evolution. For what is, in effect, the hidden force, the ultimate agent, which impels organisms to perpetuate themselves and to fight for their persistence and propagation? Selection, adaptation, heredity, these are only external conditions. This inner, essential force has been called will on the supposition that there exists also in other beings that which we feel in ourselves as a feeling of will, the impulse to be everything, to be others as well as ourselves yet without ceasing to be what we are.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Miguel de Unamuno", "slug": "miguel-de-unamuno", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno" }, "book": { "title": "Tragic Sense of Life", "slug": "tragic-sense-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno/tragic-sense-of-life" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "free will", "slug": "free-will", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/free-will" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Unamuno#VII_:_Love,_Suffering,_Pity", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:22" }, { "id": "1dde2e46-47a7-46a1-ad11-027af63bf52b", "slug": "proceeding-from-ourselves", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno/tragic-sense-of-life/proceeding-from-ourselves", "text": "Proceeding from ourselves, from our own human consciousness, the only consciousness which we feel from within and in which feeling is identical with being, we attribute some sort of consciousness, more or less dim, to all living things, and even to the stones themselves, for they also live. And the evolution of organic beings is simply the struggle to realize fullness of consciousness through suffering, a continual aspiration to be others without ceasing to be themselves, to break and yet to preserve their proper limits.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Miguel de Unamuno", "slug": "miguel-de-unamuno", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno" }, "book": { "title": "Tragic Sense of Life", "slug": "tragic-sense-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno/tragic-sense-of-life" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "suffering", "slug": "suffering", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering" }, { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "consciousness", "slug": "consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consciousness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Unamuno#VII_:_Love,_Suffering,_Pity", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:22" }, { "id": "6a39998e-6e28-401f-88b4-3bda1a792c8b", "slug": "man-developed-in-africa", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/p-j-orourke/republican-party-reptile/man-developed-in-africa", "text": "Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "P. J. O'Rourke", "slug": "p-j-orourke", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/p-j-orourke" }, "book": { "title": "Republican Party Reptile", "slug": "republican-party-reptile", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/p-j-orourke/republican-party-reptile" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "dark humor", "slug": "dark-humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/dark-humor" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/P._J._O'Rourke#Republican_Party_Reptile_(1987)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:37:58" } ] }