Biology Quote by E. O. Wilson

Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.

— Ernst Mayr

Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very…

— Charles Darwin

Evolution works by selection, not by instruction. There is no final cause, no teleology, no purpose guiding the overall process

— Gerald Edelman

“Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present…

— Henry Gee

“Natural selection is intolerant of idle verbosity.”

— John M. Marzluff

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…

— Anonymous

The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means…

— Charles Darwin

We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form: The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any…

— Ronald Fisher

“...natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up…

— Richard Dawkins

There are good reasons why natural selection has become widely accepted as an explanation of evolutionary development. When applied to mammals and other large…

— John Tyler Bonner

Natural selection is not evolution.

— Ronald Fisher