Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

35 quotes in 478 categories

• In less than eight years "The Origin of Species" has produced conviction in the minds of a majority of the most eminent living men of…
• In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in…
• It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to…
• Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly. To expect the world to receive a…
• I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions.
• To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach…
• There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds…
• What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?
• Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race
• On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are…
• Modification of form is admitted to be a matter of time
• What we need are not prohibitory marriage laws, but a reformed society, an educated public opinion which will teach individual duty in these matters
• To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity
• I hold with Henry George, that at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong
• As well might it be said that, because we are ignorant of the laws by which metals are produced and trees developed, we cannot know…
• If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to…
• I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman's family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and…
• I am decidedly of the opinion that in very many instances we can trace such a necessary connexion, especially among birds, and often with more…
• Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.
• But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of…

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