Evolution Trial Quotes

I furnished the body that was needed to sit in the defendant's chair.
[Explaining his role in the Scopes Monkey Trial.] ~ John T. Scopes

Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It's an evolution - doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk. Anyone would be up for a little bit of a change. It is so rewarding to do a movie, and so enjoyable. It's hard work, but really wonderful. ~ Agyness Deyn

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements, and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world," - all this is a vision to dizzy and appall; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution. ~ John Henry Newman

Every bet of evolution in history came with its built in bet of madness. ~ Sameh Elsayed

I figured if evolution did its job, spinach salad would taste like pumpkin pie and pumpkin pie would taste like spinach salad. Sadly, it ain't so; so evolution must have dropped the ball somehow. (If you don't buy Darwin, then you'd have to agree this whole set up speaks volumes about God's sense of humor.) I ~ George Del Prado

China today has the economy of a twenty-first-century economic superpower with a political regime little changed since the 1950s. Is this slow evolution in political institutions down to the concentration or the dispersion of power? ~ Matt Ridley

It seems to me that doubt is worse than trial. I had sooner suffer any affliction than be left to question the gospel or my own interest in it. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Loyalty is that for the lack of which your gang will shoot you without benefit of trial by jury. ~ Robert Frost

Our self-awareness impresses itself on us so cogently, as individuals and as a species, that we cannot imagine ourselves out of existence, even though for hundreds of millions of years humans played no part in the flow of life on the planet. When Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "The phenomenon of Man was essentially foreordained from the beginning," he was speaking from the depth of individual experience, which we all share, as much as from religious philosophy. Our inability to imagine a world without Homo sapiens has a profound impact on our view of ourselves; it becomes seductively easy to imagine that our evolution was inevitable. And inevitability gives meaning to life, because there is a deep security in believing that the way things are is the way they were meant to be. ~ Richard E. Leakey

Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

The drop excavates the stone, not with force but by falling often. ~ Ovid

Free will was not created for fun; there was a reason that evolution handed our ancestors the ability to take initiatives (...) eventually to be in a better position to reproduce and rear children than human beings who do not reproduce. ~ Matt Ridley

the eight warrior cops and their chief are terminated before the civil trial, they would likely become hostile witnesses against the City. ~ John Grisham

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

They were blind to a cold fact of evolution ... that progress stems from the clashing merger of antagonistic extremes, out of the marriage of pinnacle freaks. ~ Alfred Bester

Only flies have true halteres. In fact, the scientific term for flies, 'diptera,' means 'two wings.' Most insects, including bees, have two pairs of wings for a total of four. In flies, the hindwing pairs have been transformed through evolution into the halteres. ~ Michael Dickinson

Natural selection is not evolution. ~ Ronald Fisher

Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices. ~ Jared Diamond

Parents have a right to insist that godless evolution not be taught to their children. ~ Pat Buchanan

This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.
[It had formerly been held that there were no genetic connections among species.] ~ Asa Gray

No one has ever been able to stop the process and evolution of technology, not even I.B.M. That is going to continue. Those who grab it and move ahead with it will determine the future in this industry. ~ Eckhard Pfeiffer

When we change and grow into new versions of ourselves, we have to tolerate a lot of uncertainty. ~ Nancy Levin

The theory that the biosphere was created without evolution, a few thousand years ago, is ruled out by overwhelming scientific evidence. To claim that there are 'alternative (always better) Biblical explanations of the same data', which make creationism a reasonable alternative to our best theories of biology and physics, is appalling intellectual dishonesty. ~ David Deutsch

It is not true that the unconscious goal in the evolution of every conscious being (animal, man, mankind, etc) is its 'highest happiness': the case, on the contrary, is that every stage of evolution possesses a special and incomparable happiness neither higher nor lower but simply its own. Evolution does not have happiness in view, but evolution and nothing else. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Like so many, this trial is not about the truth; it's about winning. ~ John Grisham

The scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity - that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product - predictable if not indispensable - of the evolution of the universe. ~ Jacques Monod

To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there. ~ Francis Crick

God is a God of purpose. He doesn't wake-up and start dabbling into things; He doesn't practice trial and error. His ways are sure, they may be low but they are always sure. ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

In the so-called civilized world, children are physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused; they are the leaders of our future. When children are raised in such a hostile and violent environment, how can we hope for a harmonious future for all people of this world? In this light, the purpose of human life is to achieve our own spiritual evolution, to get rid of negativity, to establish harmony among our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual quadrants, to learn to live in harmony within the family, community, nation, ..treating all of mankind as brothers and sisters. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

Life on earth survives thanks to diversity, says Sekunda, because changing circumstances means today's winners can suddenly become tomorrow's losers. When the meteor hits, when the Green Revolution fails, when the bees unexpectedly die, the kind of anomalous diversity found in the Galapagos Islands - or in the technology of Japan - is exactly what will save us from the most dangerous failure of all: global success. ~ Momus

It is good for the soul to be in solitude for a great part of the time. But if it should seek solitude for its own comfort and consolation, it will have to endure more darkness and more anguish and more trial. Pure prayer only takes possession of our hearts for good when we no longer desire any special light or grace or consolation for ourselves, and pray without any thought of our own satisfaction. ~ Thomas Merton

Man came first through evolution. God came second through man's imagination. ~ Joey Lawsin

The trial organized with U.N. participation of some kind will be for crimes committed by Khmer Rouge leaders from 1975 to 1979. That's it. ~ Hun Sen

Failure doesn't Teach us!
Learning from it, is our Choice. ~ Vineet Raj Kapoor

I do not plan any painting, but begin with layers of textures and colors. As I layer the colors, something is suggested to me from within, and that is how it evolves. ~ Katherine Dunn

The disastrous history of our species indicates the futility of all attempts at a diagnosis which do not take into account the possibility that homo sapiens is a victim of one of evolution's countless mistakes. ~ Arthur Koestler

I don't know why so many of my fans assume I'm a better person than them. They're not alone in their challenges. I think the more I know, the harder it gets to handle human beings. With every challenge I overcome, comes a new one that throws me back to the ground again. Every time I start thinking I'm invincible, I'm defeated. And I don't trust anyone that isn't living inside the same cycle, because that's what evolution is. Whatever my books truthfully promote, they also hide in the depths of your emotional response to whatever happens to you. ~ Robin Sacredfire

I'm my own boss, my own editor, my own shooter, my own writer, everything. This is all stuff I learned through trial and error ... failing at a lot of things has taught me how to succeed at them eventually ... you roll with the punches. ~ Lilly Singh

Linda continued stubbornly, "Evolution can't be true, because if humans evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?"

"Frankly, Linda, it is exactly that kind of bone-headed statement that demonstrates a complete ignorance of evolutionary processes by the staggeringly misinformed. Humans did not descend from apes, humans and apes shared a common ancestor millions of years ago. Humans and apes are distant cousins, with chimpanzees as our closest cousins sharing roughly ninety-eight percent of our genome, who together share an even earlier common ancestor with gorillas."

"I am not descended from a monkey," Linda stated hotly. "Humans are created in the image of God and appeared on Earth in our present form. We did not evolve from pond scum!"

"You are free to believe that and persist in your ignorance, but as the renowned evolutionary biologist and zoologist, Richard Dawkins, wrote in A Devil's Chaplain - "

"Aha!" Linda burst out, "there you go, admitting it's the work of the devil. ~ Diogenes Of Mayberry

Siebel, The Magazine has a man in a suit on the cover. He's not smiling, or frowning. He wears a beard that isn't a beard; it's a quotation from a film nobody can put their finger on. 'Customer satisfaction,' says the brochure. 'Seamless integration.' 'Comprehensive upgrade.' Of what? I want to scream. 'Solutions provider.' Siebel has solutions for questions that have not yet been asked, will never be asked.
A Sino-American businessman holds a tiny screen in his hand: 'You're always connected and always available. Some call it a revolution; others call it evolution.' Language is de-fanged, homogenised. Yellow E-tab faces leer at you. Ecstasy without frenzy. Satisfaction, whether you want it or not. ~ Iain Sinclair

How can I say, with a straight face, you can be anything you want in this world - when I struggled and studied and excelled and still wound up on trial for something I did not do? ~ Jodi Picoult

Mr. Darwin ... has failed to hold definitely before his mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and to evolution. ~ Antoinette Brown Blackwell

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. ~ Antonin Scalia

The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory -is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof. ~ L. Harrison Matthews

Men cooperate with one another. The totality of interhuman relations engendered by such cooperation is called society. Society is not an entity in itself. It is an aspect of human action. It does not exist or live outside of the conduct of people. It is an orientation of human action. Society neither thinks nor acts. Individuais in thinking and acting constitute a complex of relations and facts that are called social relations and facts.
The issue has been confused by an arithmetical metaphor. Is society, people asked, merely a sum of individuals or is it more than this and thereby an entity endowed with independent reality? The question is nonsensical. Society is neither the sum of individuais nor more nor less. Arithmetical concepts cannot be applied to the matter.
Another confusion arises from the no less empty question whether society is - in logic and in time - anterior to individuais or not. The evolution of society and that of civilization were not two distinct processes but one and the same process. The biological passing of a species of primates beyond the levei of a mere animal existence and their transformation into primitive men implied already the development of the first rudiments of social cooperation. Homo sapiens appeared on the stage of earthly events neither as a solitary foodseeker nor as a member of a gregarious flock, but as a being consciously cooperating with other beings of his own kind. Only in cooperation with his fellows could he develop ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution. ~ George Gaylord Simpson