Ernst Haeckel

We are compelled by reflection to recognize that God is not to be placed against the material world [as in Christianity], but…

— Ernst Haeckel

Civilization and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life.

— Ernst Haeckel

An irrefutable proof that such single-celled primaeval animals really existed as the direct ancestors of Man, is furnished according to the fundamental…

— Ernst Haeckel

The succession of individuals, connected by reproduction and belonging to a species, makes it possible for the specific form itself to last…

— Ernst Haeckel

The cell never acts; it reacts.

— Ernst Haeckel

There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European war'... will become the first world war in the…

— Ernst Haeckel

Man is not distinguished from [the animals] by a special kind of soul, or by any peculiar and exclusive psychic function, but…

— Ernst Haeckel

Where faith commences, science ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly kept apart from each other. Faith has…

— Ernst Haeckel

The nucleus has to take care of the inheritance of the heritable characters, while the surrounding cytoplasm is concerned with accommodation or…

— Ernst Haeckel

The whole of organic nature on our planet exists only by a relentless war of all against all. ... The raging war…

— Ernst Haeckel

By ecology we understand the total science of the connections of the organism to the surrounding external world.

— Ernst Haeckel

Both of these branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action…

— Ernst Haeckel

In the course of individual development, inherited characters appear, in general, earlier than adaptive ones, and the earlier a certain character appears…

— Ernst Haeckel

Phylogeny and ontogeny are, therefore, the two coordinated branches of morphology. Phylogeny is the developmental history [Entwickelungsgeschichte] of the abstract, genealogical individual;…

— Ernst Haeckel

“Thus for Haeckel, to know is not to conceptualize but to see. What nature is, is visible on its surface.”

— Ernst Haeckel

As our mother earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny…

— Ernst Haeckel

The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents.

— Ernst Haeckel

Among the Spartans all newly born children were subject to a careful examination or selection. All those that were weak, sickly, or…

— Ernst Haeckel

Mental differences between the lowest men and the animals are less than those between the lowest and the highest man.

— Ernst Haeckel

I established the opposite view, that this history of the embryo (ontogeny) must be completed by a second, equally valuable, and closely…

— Ernst Haeckel

Ontogeny re-capitulates phylogeny.

— Ernst Haeckel

“In consequence of Darwin 's reformed Theory of Descent, we are now in a position to establish scientifically the groundwork of a…

— Ernst Haeckel

“The ancestors of the higher animals must be regarded as one-celled beings, similar to the Amoebae which at the present day occur…

— Ernst Haeckel

“Civilisation and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life.”

— Ernst Haeckel

It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part…

— Ernst Haeckel