EVOLUTION

Quote: Man has lost the basic skill of the ape, the ability to scratch its back. Which gave it extraordinary independence, and the liberty to associate for reasons other than the need for mutual back-scratching. Author: Jean Baudrillard French Postmodern Philosopher, Writer

Quote: Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world... life, being and ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth. The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence, of that very doubling back upon himself becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere. Author: Pierre Teilhard De Chardin 1881-1955, French Christian Mystic, Author

Quote: The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop. Author: Edward Conklin

Quote: The question is this -- Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories. Author: Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister

Quote: Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous. Author: Barbara Ehrenreich 1941-, American Author, Columnist

Quote: It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution. Author: Havelock Ellis 1859-1939, British Psychologist

Quote: Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved. Author: W. S. Gilbert 1836-1911, British Librettist

Quote: God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed -- that is the meaning of evolution. Author: Graham Greene 1904-1991, British Novelist

Quote: The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival. Author: Eric Hoffer 1902-1983, American Author, Philosopher

Quote: Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species. Author: Konrad Lorenz 1903-1989, Austrian Zoologist, Ethnologist

Quote: It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man. Author: H. L. Mencken 1880-1956, American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist

Quote: Evolution is not a force but a process. Not a cause but a law. Author: John Morley 1838-1923, British Journalist, Biographer, Statesman

Quote: One of the stupidest theories of Western life. Author: Malcolm Muggeridge 1903-1990, British Broadcaster

Quote: All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite. Author: Charles Sanders Peirce 1839-1914, American Philosopher, Logician, Mathematician

Quote: We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act. Author: W. Winwood Reade 1838-1875, American Writer

Quote: An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet. Author: Bertrand Russell 1872-1970, British Philosopher, Mathematician, Essayist

Quote: Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. Author: Bertrand Russell 1872-1970, British Philosopher, Mathematician, Essayist

Quote: It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far. Author: Cornelia Otis Skinner

Quote: The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is -- a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter. Author: Herbert Spencer 1820-1903, British Philosopher

Quote: The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces -- in nature, in society, in man himself. Author: Leon Trotsky 1879-1940, Russian Revolutionary

Quote: Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on ''The Survival of the Fittest.'' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution. Author: Mark Twain 1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer

Quote: I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey. Author: Mark Twain 1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer

Quote: After listening to a lecture on evolution by a science professor, a student wrote a poem and titled it ''The Amazing Professor.'' The poem read: Once I was a tadpole when I began to begin. Then I was a frog with my tail tucked in. Next I was a monkey on a coconut tree. Now I am a doctor with a Ph.D. Author: Source Unknown

Quote: Evolution has developed man to such a high degree that he builds zoos to keep his ancestors in cages. Author: Source Unknown

Quote: Two million years from now the scientists can start a row by claming that the creatures of that period descended from us. Author: Source Unknown

Quote: We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship. Author: George Wald 1906-, American Biochemist

Quote: Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning. Author: H.G. Wells 1866-1946, British-born American Author