Human Evolution Quotes

Thirty years later he could not come to any other conclusion: women were indisputably better than men. They were gentler, more affectionate, more loving and more compassionate, they were rarely violent, selfish, cruel or self-centred. Moreover, they were more rational, more intelligent and more hardworking.
What on earth were men for? Michael wondered as he watched sunlight play across the closed curtains. In earlier times, when bears were more common, perhaps masculinity served a particular function, but for centuries now, men served no useful purpose. For the most part, they assuaged their boredom playing squash, which was a lesser evil; but from time to time they felt the need to change history - which expressed itself in leading a revolution or starting a war somewhere. Aside from the senseless suffering they caused, revolutions and war destroyed the achievements of the past, forcing societies to build again. Without the notion of continuous progress, human evolution took random, irregular and violent turns for which men (with their predilection for risk and danger, their repulsive egotism, their volatile nature and their violent tendencies) were directly to blame. A society of women would be immeasurably superior, tracing a slow, unwavering progression, with no U-turns and no chaotic insecurity, towards a general happiness. ~ Michel Houellebecq

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

Over the course of human evolution, as each group of people became gradually aware of the enormity of its isolation in the cosmos and of the precariousness of its hold on survival, it developed myths and beliefs to transform the random, crushing forces of the universe into manageable, or at least understandable, patterns. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

My own spirituality serves the human evolution.
I learned to walk in the dark.
I bring a new light.
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
The Religion Of The Blue Circle
November 11, 2016 ~ Petra Hermans

Dartmouth College employs computer learning techniques in a very broad array of courses. For example, a student can gain a deep insight into the statistics of Mendelian genetics in an hour with the computer rather than spend a year crossing fruit flies
in the laboratory. ~ Carl Sagan

And despite the insignificance of the instant we have so far occupied in cosmic time, it is clear that what happens on and near Earth at the beginning of the second cosmic year will depend very much on the scientific wisdom and the distinctly human sensitivity of mankind. ~ Carl Sagan

By being discontented, the spirit searches for ways to improve its condition and for a better channel for expressing itself. This sense of discontent is the engine that drives all creativity and innovation ... Our blue moments are a necessary part of our human evolution. ~ Chin-Ning Chu

The Tale of Human Evolution

The subject most often brought up by advocates of the
theory of evolution is the subject of the origin of man.

The Darwinist claim holds that modern man evolved from ape-like
creatures. During this alleged evolutionary process, which is
supposed to have started 4-5 million years ago, some "transitional
forms" between modern man and his ancestors are
supposed to have existed. According to this completely
imaginary scenario, four basic "categories" are listed:

1. Australopithecus
2. Homo habilis
3. Homo erectus
4. Homo sapiens

Evolutionists call man's so-called first ape-like ancestors
Australopithecus, which means "South African ape."

These living beings are actually nothing but an old ape
species that has become extinct.

Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world famous anatomists from England and the USA, namely,
Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, shows
that these apes belonged to an ordinary ape species that
became extinct and bore no resemblance to humans.

Evolutionists classify the next stage of human evolution
as "homo," that is "man." According to their claim, the living
beings in the Homo series are more developed than
Australopithecus. Evolutionists devise a fanciful evolution
scheme by arranging different fossils of these creature ~ Harun Yahya

When all is said and done, the invention of writing must be reckoned not only as a brilliant innovation but as a surpassing good for humanity. And assuming that we survive long enough to use their inventions wisely, I believe the same will be said of the modern Thoths and Prometheuses who are today devising
computers and programs at the edge of machine intelligence. ~ Carl Sagan

Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. ~ Rustin Cohle

What we usually call human evolution is the awakening of the divine nature within us. ~ Peace Pilgrim

We are at a turning point of revolution species. Evolution has blindly felt its way forward , now, we, the product of evolution are taking the wheel. We soon will have the ability to design and create the new human, evolution still, but guided evolution ... of course, only on computer simulation. ~ Michael Grant

Most of the infections linked to human cancers are common in human populations; they are ubiquitous. They were present during the whole human evolution process. ~ Harald Zur Hausen

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Quite recently the human descent theory has been stigmatized as the 'gorilla theory of human ancestry.' All this despite the fact that Darwin himself, in the days when not a single bit of evidence regarding the fossil ancestors of man was recognized, distinctly stated that none of the known anthropoid apes, much less any of the known monkeys, should be considered in any way as ancestral to the human stock. ~ Henry Fairfield Osborn

I'm afraid Dr. Mondrick chose an unfortunate publicity device. After all, the theory of human evolution is no longer front page news. Every known detail of the origin of mankind is extremely important to such a specialist as Dr. Mondrick, but it doesn't interest the man in the street - not unless it's dramatized. ~ Jack Williamson

Psychedelics are probably responsible for every aspect of human evolution apart from the decline in bodyhair. ~ Terence McKenna

Considering the timespan of human evolution and the vast potential of humankind -- as evidenced by great genius and leadership, inventions and discoveries, works of art and literature -- it is lamentable that the economic and political systems of 'advanced' cultures are still based on the unenlightened rationales that 'more is better' and 'might makes right.' In the name of 'survival of the fittest' and ensuring 'vital interests,' our economic system creates an ever-widening gap between rich and poor as it dismantles the environment upon which we all depend. Even 'lower' animals generally do not foul their own nests. ~ Alex Gerber Jr.

It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptance
betokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of skepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires. ~ Carl Sagan

Be game
take a chance
don't hide behind veils and veils of discretion ... Go forward with what you have to say, expressing things as you see them. You are new evidence, fresh and young. Your work, the spirit of youth, you are the progress of human evolution. If age dulls you it will be time enough then to be ponderous and heavy
or quit. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be young, to continue growing
not to settle and accept. ~ Robert Henri

Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in the human evolution. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There can be no doubt that the chief fault we have developed, through the long course of human evolution, is a certain basic passivity. When provoked by challenges, human beings are magnificent. When life is quiet and even, we take the path of least resistance, and then wonder why we feel bored. A man who is determined and active doesn't pay much attention to 'luck'. If things go badly, he takes a deep breath and redoubles his effort. And he quickly discovers that his moments of deepest happiness often come after such efforts. The man who has become accustomed to a passive existence becomes preoccupied with 'luck'; it may become an obsession. When things go well, he is delighted and good humored; when they go badly, he becomes gloomy and petulant. He is unhappy - or dissatisfied - most of the time, for even when he has no cause for complaint, he feels that gratitude would be premature; things might go wrong at any moment; you can't really trust the world... Gambling is one basic response to this passivity, revealing the obsession with luck, the desire to make things happen.

The absurdity about this attitude is that we fail to recognize the active part we play in making life a pleasure. When my will is active, my whole mental and physical being works better, just as my digestion works better if I take exercise between meals. I gain an increasing feeling of control over my life, instead of the feeling of helplessness (what Sartre calls 'contingency') that comes from ~ Colin Wilson

civilization is the very root cause of the woes of civilization ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

The "question" is the source of human evolution and revolution. ~ Ted Agon

Where we are going as a species is a big question. Human evolution certainly hasn't stopped. Every time individuals produce a new zygote, there's a reshuffling and recombination of genes. And we don't know where all of that is going to take us. ~ Donald Johanson

In addition, human beings have, in the most recent few tenths of a percent of our existence, invented not only extra-genetic but also extrasomatic knowledge: information stored outside our bodies, of which writing is the most notable example. ~ Carl Sagan

A teenager boy is a monstrous cyborg, an unfeeling, beastly machine, not fully human, and not housebroken. Rumbustious teenage boys are an infernal organism disdainful of everything, yet intent of contributing to human evolution. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Our time has been distinguished, more than by anything else, by a mastery, a control, of the external world, and by an almost total forgetfulness of the internal world. If one estimates human evolution from the point of view of knowledge of the external world, then we are in many respects progressing. If our estimate is from the point of view of the internal world, and of oneness of internal and external, then the judgment must be very different. ~ R.D. Laing

For every human illness, somewhere in the world there exists a plant which is the cure. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Every nursing mother, in the midst of her little dependent brood, has far more right to whine, sulk or scold, as temperament dictates, because beefsteak and coffee are not prepared for her and exactly to her taste, than any man ever had or ever can have during the present stage of human evolution. ~ Antoinette Brown Blackwell

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened. ~ Franz Kafka

There are a couple of watersheds in human evolution. Most people are comfortable thinking about tool use and language use as watersheds. But the ability to play non-zero-sum games was another watershed. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Who are you? Consciousness that has become conscious of itself. ~ Eckhart Tolle

We are at a point in human evolution when human solidarity on a global scale is absolutely vital for the survival of the human species. That means understanding that ... we are all co-inhabitants of this planet. ~ Petra Kelly

That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart. ~ E. O. Wilson

I think quite spiritually of myself. I feel like I'm here to support the human evolution. ~ Alanis Morissette

listen.
it wouldn't have hurt so much if she wasn't the girl i always wanted to be.

in high school i carved the word ugly into my skin
so that even if i once reached
that pivotal point of high self esteem
i would always be reminded of who i was
underneath it all
and i wanted so badly to be
the athletic girl
who put makeup on effortlessly
who knew a thing or two about fashion
whose laughter sounded like flowers blooming
who knew what it meant to be sad,
and anxious,
but in the beautiful way
in the mysterious way
in the way that could be cured by true love's kiss
whose skin was always soft
and hair always brushed
- sometimes styled -
long, and long, and dark, and wavy
a fine contrast against her light eyes
and pale skin that never led anyone to question
just where she was from
whose body hair was fine,
or at least taken care of so frequently and expertly,
that no one ever questioned just where she fell
in human evolution
whose body curved in all the right places
whose skin was taut with muscle
and soft with and inviting where it should be
who ate right
who never smoked
and never tried to end her life;
once, twice, seventeen times
who liked art but didn't really understand it
who studied hard even though she hated it
who cared about injustice but not to the point
that too much thought ~ Kara Petrovic

The nature of emergent technology is, as Kevin Kelly once said, right out of control. It's an element of human evolution that's completely out of control. It's sort of driving itself, and I don't see it ceasing to do that. ~ William Gibson

For National Socialism saw itself as the final realization of human evolution in the most unfeelingly raw and Darwinian form. "Everything in life is struggle," said Himmler. "Everything is selection. That which survives in the final analysis through the centuries is always the better and the stronger. ~ Danny S. Parker

Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution. ~ James D. Watson

Considering the 'Tomorrow People' are supposed to be the next step in human evolution, I think it's a fascinating idea that they can't kill. They've evolved in all these other ways, and they have these special abilities, but they can't kill. It's a very interesting concept. I really like it. I like the idea of it. ~ Luke Mitchell

Those mothers with hereditary large pelvises were able to bear large-brained babies who because of their superior intelligence were able to compete successfully in adulthood with the smaller-brained offspring of mothers with smaller pelvises. ~ Carl Sagan

Human evolution is essentially the progression of information gathering (knowledge) and consciousness, or the advancement in wisdom. A wise person is willing to learn at all stages of life by using their cognitive abilities open-mindedly to examine contradictory beliefs, and rationally meld various schools of thought into a living philosophy, developing over time a logical and systematic method to maintain and evaluate oneself in order to assist a person not merely survive but thrive. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

human evolution has been determined mainly by social competition.29 ~ Stephen K. Sanderson

Human nature, as manifested in tribalism and nationalism, provides the momentum of the machinery of human evolution. ~ Arthur Keith

Literacy, written language is a very late acquisition in terms of human evolution. ~ Jean Berko Gleason

What is happening, I think, it's really bigger than psychedelics, it's bigger than human evolution. We are not making the waves in this ocean. We are corks, riding the waves of the ocean. But we are privileged, by perhaps chance alone, to occupy a unique moment in the history of the universe. A moment when the universe goes through some kind of self-transforming, evolutionary, inflationary expansion. That's what's happening. ~ Terence McKenna

Only an artist as preternaturally acute and copacetic, as oddly visionary and just odd as Richard Artschwager, would be able to lay out the whole course of human evolution and have it make some kind of sense while also seeming like a dazzling insight. ~ Jerry Saltz

Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture. ~ Peter Singer

Human beings are very skilled at pretending they are not what they are, and ignoring what is inside them. This includes ignoring their natural instincts, their primal instincts, because they have this notion that they are evolving faster than other life, have evolved further, and are therefore superior. Take racism for example. As abhorrent as people may consider it, human beings are essentially tribal, and racism is simply a survival instinct embedded deep inside us, born from thousands of years of survival and experience. ~ Robert Black

The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness. ~ Robert E. Ornstein

One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly - maybe - and it will become a language like Latin that learned people learn. And scholars will write studies of Larry Sanders and Friends and Will & Grace and Ellen and Designing Women and Mary Tyler Moore, and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form. American poetry will perish with the language; the sitcoms, on the other hand, are new to human evolution and therefore will be less perishable. ~ Nicholson Baker

Fears of creating new kinds of plagues or of altering human evolution or of irreversibly altering the environment were only some of the concerns that were rampant. ~ Paul Berg

We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and "history" took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists. ~ Robert Neelly Bellah

No existing form of anthropoid ape is even remotely related to the stock which has given rise to man. ~ Henry Fairfield Osborn

Money is the apogee of human tolerance. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

There is no doubt that right-hemisphere intuitive thinking may perceive patterns and connections too difficult for the left hemisphere; but it may also detect patterns where none exist. Skeptical and
critical thinking is not a hallmark of the right hemisphere. And unalloyed right-hemisphere doctrines, particularly when they are invented during new and trying circumstances, may be erroneous or paranoid. ~ Carl Sagan

Meditation is interacting with truth inside and scientific research is interacting with truth outside. Both are required for human evolution, emancipation and empowerment. ~ Amit Ray

On the other hand, mere critical thinking, without creative and intuitive insights, without the search for new patterns, is sterile and doomed. To solve complex problems in changing circumstances requires the activity of both cerebral hemispheres: the path to the future lies through the corpus callosum. ~ Carl Sagan

The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man: in other terms, of human evolution We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Most of what we know about human evolution comes from these: the fossilized bones of our ancestors. With their help, we've traced our evolution from small furry creatures to the big-brained beings we've become today. But bones can't tell us everything. ~ Ziya Tong

It takes a tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favoured those capable of forming strong social ties. In ~ Yuval Noah Harari

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

Because of the hegemony of fundamentalist religion in the United States, this country has been among the most resistant to the fact of human evolution. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Many cultural stories worldwide present the domination system as the only human alternative. Fairy tales romanticize the rule of kings and queens over "common people." Classics such as Homers Illiad and Shakespeare's kings trilogy romanticize "Heroic violence." Many religious stories present men's control, even ownership, of women as normal and moral.

These stories came out of the times that oriented much more closely to a "pure" domination system. Along with newer stories that perpetuate these limited beliefs about human nature, they play a major role in how we view our world and how we live in it. But precisely because stories are so important in shaping values, new narratives can help change unhealthy values.

Of particular importance are new stories about human nature. We need new narratives that give us a more complete and accurate picture of who we are and who we can be - stories that show that our enormous capacities for consciousness, creativity and caring are integral to human evolution, that these capacities are what make us distinctively human. ~ Riane Eisler

Modern human evolution has reached the point of reporting corruption to the corrupt. ~ Steven Magee

The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought. ~ Eckhart Tolle

We can, following the exemple of Kant, consider the moral development and improvement of men, as the supreme goal of human evolution. ~ African Spir

Some evidence suggests the left-handers are more likely to have problems with such left-hemisphere functions as reading, writing, speaking and arithmetic; and to be more adept at such right -hemisphere functions as imagination, pattern recognition and general creativity. ~ Carl Sagan

In very ancient times of human evolution upon earth, humanity's revelation in word and sound was not differentiated in song and speech, but they were one. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Evolution is adventitious and not foresighted. Only through the deaths of an immense number of slightly maladapted organisms are we, brains and all, here today. ~ Carl Sagan

Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune. ~ Patti Smith

For the first time in human evolution, the individual life is long enough, and the cultural transformation swift enough, that the individual mind is now a constituent player in the global transformation of human culture. ~ William Irwin Thompson

I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history - sparked by books on human evolution - then vertebrate evolution. Studying with palaeontologists kindled my interest in fieldwork. ~ Greg Graffin

The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely distinguished from the group of animals most nearly allied to him, than they are from one another. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

This sort of information gathering is precisely what we call play. And the important function of play is thus revealed: it permits us to gain, without any particular future application in mind, a holistic understanding of the world, which is both a complement of and a preparation for later analytical activities. ~ Carl Sagan

The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution. ~ Annie Besant

I am appalled that the term we use to talk about aging is 'anti'. Aging is human evolution in its pure form. Death, taxes and aging ... We are ALL going to age and soften and mellow and transition. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis

When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man's awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong. ~ Arthur Koestler

Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change. ~ William Irwin Thompson

All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. ~ Gustave Le Bon

In a way, science might be described as paranoid thinking applied to Nature: we are looking for natural conspiracies, for connections among apparently disparate data. Our objective is to abstract patterns from Nature (right-hemisphere thinking), but many proposed patterns do not in fact correspond to the
data. Thus all proposed patterns must be subjected to the sieve of critical analysis (left-hemisphere thinking). ~ Carl Sagan

Technology is a liberation. I think the information age probably is the best thing to happen to the human race in human evolution. Now you have the equal opportunity to equip yourself through information and knowledge and express yourself as an independent mind. ~ Ai Weiwei

The time scale for evolutionary or genetic change is very long. A characteristic period for the emergence of one advanced species from another is perhaps a hundred thousand years; and very often the difference in behavior between closely related species -say, lions and tigers- do not seem very great... But today we do not have ten million years to wait for the next advance. We live in a time when our world is changing at an unprecedented rate. While the changes are largely of our own making, they cannot be ignored. We must adjust and adapt and control, or we perish. ~ Carl Sagan

A laboring woman, though, while she endured her labor, lay at the center of something truly radiant in four dimensions; every birth everywhere, all the vectors of human evolution and migration originating and terminating at the parting of her legs. ~ Michael Chabon

Over the course of human evolution, did men learn to be attracted to skinny women because they were not visibly pregnant? Did voluptuousness signal that a body was already ensuring the survival of another man's genetic material? ~ Leni Zumas

None of this represented the glorious next stage of human evolution, but I was learning things. I was moving up. ~ Robin Sloan

MacLean has shown that the R-complex plays an important role in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and the establishment of social hierarchies. Despite occasional welcome exceptions, this seems to me to characterize a great deal of modern human bureaucratic and political behavior. ~ Carl Sagan

I've always been fascinated with adrenaline; it's saved my life more than once, and it's caused me to need it to save my life more than once. One of the most fascinating responses in human evolution, adrenaline sharpens your brain; it sharpens your responses. ~ Craig Venter

You can graph human evolution, which is mostly a straight line, but we do get better and change over time, and you can graph technological evolution, which is a line that's going straight up. They are going to intersect each other at some point, and that's happening now. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

LSD is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be. ~ Albert Hofmann

Washburn has reported that infant baboons and other young primates appear to be born with only three inborn fears -of falling, snakes, and the dark-corresponding respectively to the dangers posed by
Newtonian gravitation to tree-dwellers, by our ancient enemies the reptiles, and by mammalian nocturnal predators, which must have been particularly terrifying for the visually oriented primates. ~ Carl Sagan

Now that he was navigating, his celestial mood was shattered. Wild, animal thirst for life, mixed with homesick longing for the free airs and the sights and smells of earth-for grass and meat and beer and tea and the human voice-awoke in him. ~ C.S. Lewis

Compassion is determining one's contribution should go to a needy human and not a greedy one. ~ Jeffrey G. Duarte

Managing the power of choice, with all its creative and spiritual implications, is the essence of the human experience. All spiritual teachings are directed toward inspiring us to recognize that the power to make choices is the dynamic that converts our spirits into matter, our words into flesh. Choice is the process of creation itself. ~ Caroline Myss

Read Frank's poem, "Advice to the Players." It talks about all of this, about the human need to create. ~ James Franco

The underbelly of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage. Birthed out of shame, fear, and denial, it misdirects our good intentions and drives us to unthinkable acts of self-destruction and not-so-unbelievable acts of self-sabotage. ~ Debbie Ford