Evolution Of Morals Quotes

The practice of that which is ethically best - what we call goodness or virtue - involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows ... It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence ... Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

The Bible, of course, gives us good and right teaching on everything from sex to parenting to money to morals. All good things. Wonderful things. God's design and desire for all of life. But our ability to walk in these truths with freedom and joy - and our church's ability to lead people into this ongoing, abundant-life experience for themselves - is dependent on something else: an accurate and deep understanding of the gospel. That is our Mississippi. Without a proper understanding of the gospel, people will miss the big biblical picture and all the joyful freedom that comes from living it. They will run from God in shame at their failures instead of running toward Him because of His mercy and grace. ~ Matt Chandler

Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces. ~ Marvin Harris

Instead of explaining everything by the supposed supremacy of a law of evolution, which compels collective phenomena to reproduce and repeat themselves indefinitely in a certain order, - instead of thus explaining lesser facts by greater, and the part by the whole, - I explain collective resemblances of the whole by the massing together of minute elementary acts - the greater by the lesser and the whole by the part. ~ G. Tarde

Your gift to the world is your purpose, you must find it, not for them, but for you.
They will live on regardless of who you are, but you will remember who you felt short of, trying to please them. The only gift that the world needs is more, awakened beings, ready to be themselves, to unite a community to do the same; everywhere & that is the gift, to rise to your greatness & help others do the same. ~ Nikki Rowe

So, if someone like Richard Dawkins indignantly protests that his passion about these sorts of things -- the passion that drives the "God Delusion" -- should not be taken as a religious passion, I am happy to accept that. I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious. This comes across particularly in what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences, the hatred of those who are close to them but not quite close enough. Just as evangelicals can differ bitterly over the true meaning of the host, so the New Atheists loathe people like me who (like them) have no religious belief but who think that science as such does not refute religion.
[Is Darwinism a Religion? - Michael Ruse] ~ Michael Ruse

Just think about it.
Procreation. You give to the
next one down the line.
That's really all we've got.
Society, government,
money, religion,
careers, nuclear families,
monogamy.
These are all just highly creative
socially accepted delusions
that we impose on reality to try and gain
some semblance of control over our lives.
It gives us the illusion of choice.
It makes us feel a little
less like animals.
Animals. What do you mean?
Like evolution?
Yeah, evolution, exactly.
I do not believe
in evolution.
There's 400 billion stars
in the Milky Way alone,
making the amount of stars
in the entire universe
completely mind-boggling.
We are nothing.
If an asteroid hadn't hit Earth
and wiped out all the dinosaurs,
we wouldn't be here. ~ Samantha Borgens Stuck In Love

Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

An evolutionary perspective of our place in the history of the earth reminds us that Homo sapiens sapiens has occupied the planet for the tiniest fraction of that planet's four and a half thousand million years of existence. In many ways we are a biological accident, the product of countless propitious circumstances. As we peer back through the fossil record, through layer upon layer of long-extinct species, many of which thrived far longer than the human species is ever likely to do, we are reminded of our mortality as a species. There is no law that declares the human animal to be different, as seen in this broad biological perspective, from any other animal. There is no law that declares the human species to be immortal. ~ Richard E. Leakey

Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see. ~ Frank Herbert

If what she is saying is true, then the rest of the world is numb, and we who suffer from ailments of the psyche are the ones who are more advanced in nature. We see the decaying of society, the neglect of morals and human decency: the school shootings, the crimes humans commit against one another, the crimes we commit against ourselves; and we react to them in a way that is more intense than everyone else. Yes, I think. Yes, this is the truth. ~ Tarryn Fisher

A selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

By eliminating choice there is in turn an elimination of growth. You must have a choice and in experiencing both the light and the dark you are given a wonderful opportunity to choose. ~ Timothy Moran

No evolution is accomplished in nature without revolution. Periods of very slow changes are succeeded by periods of violent changes. Revolutions are as necessary for evolution as the slow changes which prepare them and succeed them. ~ Peter Kropotkin

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. ~ Jeremy Bentham

I have blogged previously about the dangerous and deadly effects of science denialism, from the innocent babies unnecessarily exposed to deadly diseases by other kids whose parents are anti-vaxxers, to the frequent examples of how acceptance of evolution helps us stop diseases and pests (and in the case of Baby Fae, rejection of evolution was fatal), to the long-term effects of climate denial to the future of the planet we all depend upon. But one of the strangest forms of denialism is the weird coalition of people who refuse to accept the medical fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS. What the heck? Didn't we resolve this issue in the 1980s when the AIDS condition first became epidemic and the HIV virus was discovered and linked to AIDS? Yes, we did - but for people who want to deny scientific reality, it doesn't matter how many studies have been done, or how strong the scientific consensus is. There are a significant number of people out there (especially among countries and communities with high rates of AIDS infections) that refuse to accept medical reality. I described all of these at greater length in my new book Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future. ~ Donald R. Prothero

I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. ~ Richard Dawkins

The Golden Bough captured the imagination of many artists in the early twentieth century. Eliot, certainly, was immersed in it, discussing it familiarly in his graduate school papers and book reviews and constantly alluding to it in his art. The most straightforward advice he offers to readers of The Waste Land (given in the notes to the poem) is, in paraphrase, that any serious reader of the poem must take into consideration modern scholarship in myth and anthropology, especially Frazer Golden Bough and Jessie Weston From Ritual to Romance. The poet says that he is indebted to this scholarship for his title, his plan, his symbolism, and many of his references to ancient religion and society. His claim about the title, taken from the monomyth of Frazer and Weston, his claim about the symbolism, associated with the birth-death-rebirth cycles of the myths, and his claim about the miscellaneous undergirding references have been discussed by Grover Smith and other scholars. We wish to focus more on Eliot's claim about being indebted to Frazer for the plan of the poem. We believe it refers, at least in part, to Frazer's use of the comparative method and to his practice of assembling many perspectives and allowing these perspectives to make his point.

It must be noted at once that Eliot was quite selective in his admiration of Frazer. For example, he did not admire Frazer's positivism. Frazer put his faith in science and celebrated what he called the evolution from magic ~ Jewel Spears Brooker

Just imagine, among 8.7 million species, only one has become smart enough to ponder over the meaning of life. This simple evolutionary fact itself implies the gravitas of human life. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Our evolution could have gone in different directions a lot of times. We could have gone extinct at some points. We might not have gotten our big brains, or Neanderthals might have made it while we did not. ~ Sam Kean

For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own. ~ Richard Dawkins

History will show that patient boys with a sense of humor, who can dance, tend to have more opportunities to participate in the evolution of the species than boys who give up and mope quietly on the sidelines ~ Andrew Smith

I wish I was Bill Murray. I hope everything I've read about evolution is wrong, and I eventually evolve into him. It's one of only three plans I have. ~ Caitlin Moran

Pain is just a feeling, and feelings aren't real. ~ Michelle Hodkin

I remain 'torn' (between a 'hyberbolic' ethical vision of forgiveness, pure forgiveness, and the reality of a society at work in pragmatic processes of reconciliation). But without power, desire, or need to decide. The two poles are irreducible to one another, certainly, but they remain indissociable. In order to inflect politics, or what you just called the 'pragmatic processes', in order to change the law (which, thus, finds itself between the two poles, the 'ideal' and the 'empirical' – and what is more important to me here is, between these two, this universalising mediation, this history of the law, the possibility of this progress of the law), it is necessary to refer to a '"hyperbolic" ethical vision of forgiveness'. Even if I were not sure of the words 'vision' or 'ethics' in this case, let us say that only this inflexible exigence can orient a history of laws, and evolution of the law. It alone can inspire here, now, in the urgency, without waiting, response and responsibilities. ~ Jacques Derrida

In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains. ~ Edward Tatum

In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion. ~ John Dewey

If man is not ready to abdicate or to reconsider his case, it is because he has not yet drawn the final consequences of knowledge and of power. Convinced that his moment will come, that he will catch up with God and pass Him by, he clings - envious as he is - to the notion of evolution, as if the fact of advancing must necessarily bring him to the highest degree of perfection. Having sought to be other, he will end by being nothing; he is already nothing. Doubtless he is evolving, but against himself, to his cost, and toward a complexity which is ruining him. Becoming, progress: notions apparently tangential, actually divergent. True, everything changes, but rarely, if ever, for the better. Euphoric inflection of the original disease, of that false innocence which awakened in Adam a desire for the new, our faith in evolution, in the identity of becoming and progress, will collapse only when man, having reached the extremity of his distraction, having turned at last to the knowledge which leads to deliverance and not to power, will be in a position to offer an irrevocable no to his exploits and to his work. If he continues to clutch at them, he will doubtless enter upon the career of a ludicrous god or an obsolete animal, a solution as convenient as it is degrading, the ultimate stage of his infidelity to himself. Whatever choice he makes, and though he has not exhausted all the virtues of his failure, he has nonetheless fallen so low that it is hard to understand why he does ~ Emil M. Cioran

And, you know, the fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor, and we all have a common ancestry with the plant in the lobby. This is what evolution tells us. And, it's true. It's kind of unbelievable. ~ Jeff Hawkins

The evolution of culture is ultimately determined by the amount of love, understanding and freedom experienced by its children ... Every abandonment, every betrayal, every hateful act towards children returns tenfold a few decades later upon the historical stage, while every empathic act that helps a child become what he or she wants to become, every expression of love toward children heals society and moves it in unexpected, wondrous new directions. ~ Lloyd DeMause

A person's genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest. ~ B.F. Skinner

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
and it goes by the name of London.
At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo
turning beauty to filth and greed ...
I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders,
for the cruelty of men is as wonderous as Peru
but there's no place like London! ~ Stephen Sondheim

A St. Trinian's girl would be sadistic, cunning, dissolute, crooked, sordid, lacking morals of any sort and capable of any excess. She would also be well-spoken, even well-mannered and polite. Sardonic, witty and very amusing. She would be good company. In short: typically human and, despite everything, endearing. ~ Ronald Searle

Sound is of no use to human evolution. in fact, it gets in the way. ~ Haruki Murakami

When students of other sciences ask us what is now currently believed about the origin of species, we have no clear answer to give. Faith has given way to agnosticism. Meanwhile, though our faith in evolution stands unshaken we have no acceptable account of the origin of species. ~ William Bateson

The administrative and hierarchic aspects seem to be crucial in the evolution of belief systems. The truth is first revealed to all men, but very quickly individuals appear claiming sole authority and a duty to interpret, administer and, if need be, alter this truth in the name of the common good. To this end they establish a powerful and potentially repressive organisation. This phenomenon, which biology shows us is common to any social group, soon transforms the doctrine into a means of achieving control and political power. Divisions, wars and break-ups become inevitable. Sooner or later, the word becomes flesh and the flesh bleeds. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And then there was that stupid social networking system, how it had just seemed like the most convenient vessel for the average narcissist. How I'd despised those who couldn't eat a meal without prodding through their glowing portable Internet devices, searching for some tasty piece of gossip, or perhaps just something to complain about.
But that social network had become an overnight epidemic - I'd watched as the daily ways in which we'd lived our lives became molded to fit this shallow instrument. It was a vast change - whether it was social evolution or de- evolution, I wasn't quite sure; but before I knew it, by society's standards, it was I that had become the social leper. ~ Noah Fregger

There are so many highly esteemed ones who became miserable and humiliated just because of their bad temper and morals; and humble people who have attained eminence and the highest honors because of good temper and morals. ~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Play begins as a major feature of mammalian evolution and remains as a major method of becoming reconciled with our present universe. ~ Brian Sutton-Smith

A free-standing arch of rough-hewn stones and no mortar can be a stable structure, but it is irreducibly complex: it collapses if any one stone is removed. How, then, was it built in the first place? One way is to pile a solid heap of stones, then carefully remove stones one by one. More generally, there are many structures that are irreducible in the sense that they cannot survive the subtraction of any part, but which were built with the aid of scaffolding that was subsequently subtracted and is no longer visible. Once the structure is completed, the scaffolding can be removed safely and the structure remains standing. In evolution, too, the organ or structure you are looking at may have had scaffolding in an ancestor which has since been removed. 'Irreducible ~ Richard Dawkins

Know this, you can start over, every morning.
Know that every day you have an opportunity to respond.
Be educated, rather than angered.
Be wise in your walk, rather than wounded, or wicked.
Your intellect is the sharpest tool in your Goddess kit. Use it. Wisely.
Know your value. Know your worth. Know your contribution. Know this. ~ Emma Mildon

One of the greatest life lessons I've learned has been to dream new dreams. When a dream is fulfilled, it shouldn't become a straitjacket, constricting a person's evolution and progress. Instead, it should be a stepping-stone to the next thing. When a dream shatters, you should pick up the pieces and create a new one. It won't be the same as the broken one, but you can hope it will be as vibrant and as exciting. ~ Jai Pausch

One can rightly speak of an evolution in plastic art. It is of the greatest importance to note this fact, for it reveals the true way of art - the only path along which we can advance. ~ Piet Mondrian

In literature classes, you don't learn about genes; in physics classes you don't learn about human evolution. So you get a fragmented view of the world. That makes it hard to find meaning in education. ~ David Christian

It is really want, rather than need, that drives the process of technological evolution. ~ Henry Petroski

Unless one is a religious fundamentalist and believes that man was created in the image and likeness of God, it is foolish to believe that human beings are exempt from biological classification and the laws of evolution that apply to all other life forms. ~ J. Philippe Rushton