Natural Selection Quotes

142 quotes by 85 authors

When environments change, they usually do so pretty rapidly, at rates with which adaptation by natural selection would be hard put to keep up. When… — Ian Tattersall
It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and… — Maurice Wilkins
The theory of natural selection is the centerpiece of The Origin of Species and of evolutionary theory. It is this theory that accounts for the… — Douglas J. Futuyma
We live in a cultural milieu ... The idea that culture is our ecological niche is still applicable. The impact and force of natural selection… — Unknown Author
Natural selection is not the only process that changes organisms over time. But is the only process that seemingly designs organisms over time. — Steven Pinker
Nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature....Ultimately, the Darwinian theory of… — Michael Denton
Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve… — Stephen Jay Gould
The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It… — H.G. Wells
There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to everything in life,… — Richard Dawkins
Artificial selection turned the wolf into the shepherd, and the wild grasses into wheat and corn. In fact, almost every plant and animal that we… — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of… — David Eagleman
But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.One day a tortoise… — Terry Pratchett
Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home,… — Ted Rall
Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. Soon we must look deep within ourselves… — E. O. Wilson
The theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory-founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists. It has been adopted… — Unknown Author
We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal… — Pierre-Paul Grasse
This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection", or… — Herbert Spencer
I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not… — Charles Darwin
In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes… — Richard Dawkins
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad,… — Charles Darwin

Who Wrote These Natural Selection Quotes

85 authors contributed a total of 142 Natural Selection Quotes, led by these top contributors: