“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 unbudgeable, 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 hundreds of thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other field of 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.”— Daniel C. Dennett
“To understand Darwin’s work, you have to distinguish between his theory of descent and his theory of natural selection. THe full name of the first is the theory of descent with modification. Some call it the fact of evolution, and some call it the doctrine of evolution.”— Lee Spetner
“The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness. And if physical science, whatever it may have to say about the origin of life, leaves us necessarily in the dark about consciousness, that shows that it cannot provide the basic form of intelligibility for this world. There must be a very different way in which t hings as they are make sense, and that includes the physical world, since the problem cannot be quarantined in the mind.”— Thomas Nagel
“If Charles Darwin reappeared today, he might be surprised to learn that humans are descended from viruses as well as from apes.”— Robin A. Weiss
“Readers of Darwin’s life, for instance, and particularly of the published correspondence of Darwin, are henceforth naturalists in the making. Ever afterwards they are Darwins on a small scale, seeing animals and plants in an entirely different light and with a correspondingly keener interest.”— John Steeksma
“Evolution is no longer just a theory; it has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt. The problem is, even people who believe evolution is true disassociate themselves from the process. They somehow skipped all the lower forms of animal life and just started out at the top of the evolutionary ladder.The evidence says we evolved as life evolved.Human beings did not just appear at the top of the evolutionary ladder to reap the benefits of those millions of years of evolution without having to live through it.In other words, you were those other animals. Someone had to be them.You had to be lower animals to be a human now. You lived as all the different animals in your evolutionary line. You lived through millions of years, and millions of lives and deaths to get to where you are now. That’s what Darwin’s book means.”— Michael Smith
“Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark.”— Aldo Leopold
“Darwinism is dynamic. It is about change, not stasis; about process, not pattern; about tales, not tableaux; about becoming, not being.”— Henry Gee
“Prison is the only place, where Darwin’s Theory of Evolution may seem to work. Survival of the fittest does only work, where the fittest is defined as the most loving.”— Raphael Zernoff
“Darwin got it all wrong, you see. Fitness has nothing to do with it. It’s survival of the sickest. That’s all.”— Philip Ridley
“Elgin himself looked ten years younger, now that he’d cast the die, but I thought exuberance had got the better of him when he strode into the saloon later, threw The Origin of Species on the table and announced:”It’s very original, no doubt, but not for a hot evening. What I need is some trollop.”I couldn’t believe my ears, and him a church-goer, too. “Well, my lord, I dunno,” says I. “Tientsin ain’t much of a place, but I’ll see what I can drum up —””Michel’s been reading Doctor Thorne since Taku,” cried he. “He must have finished it by now, surely! Ask him, Flashman, will you?” So I did, and had my ignorance, enlightened.”— George MacDonald Fraser
“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.’ That’s a rather broad idea,’ I remarked. One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,’ he answered.”— Arthur Conan Doyle
“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism… neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the worlds greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.”— Richard Weikart
“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!’ ‘Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical…There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”— Ursula K. Le Guin
“Mere lack of evidence, of course, is no reason to denounce a theory. Look at intelligent design. The fact that it is bollocks hasn’t stopped a good many people from believing in it. Darwinism itself is only supported by tons of evidence, which is a clear indication that Darwin didn’t write his books himself.”— Eric Idle
“One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.”— Charles Darwin
“If happiness were the means to measure the evolutionary level of a species, I bet Darwin would’ve changed his mind and places humans at the very bottom.”— Charbel Tadros