Despair Quote by Norman Macbeth

It's impossible by micro-mutation to form any new species.

— Richard Goldschmidt

“New mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.”

— Lynn Margulis

Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make…

— Lynn Margulis

“Fruit fly scientists, God bless ‘em, are the big exceptions. Morgan’s team always picked sensibly descriptive names for mutant genes, like ‘speck,’ ‘beaded,’ ‘rudimentary,’…

— Sam Kean

“While micro-evolution--change within species--has been observed in the laboratory, macro-evolution--change from one species to another has not, and never will be.”

— Bob Beasley

“In Darwin's time no serious attempt had been made to examine the manifestations of variability. A vast assemblage of miscellaneous facts could formerly be…

— William Bateson

I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change - led to new species. I believed…

— Lynn Margulis

No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.

— Pierre-Paul Grasse

“The old continued to have one resurgence of foolishness after another, until the organism gave out altogether.”

— Saul Bellow

Mutations are exciting, there aren't nearly enough of them.

— Doug Stanhope

The three of us have worked on the development of the small and totally harmless fruit fly, Drosophila. This animal has been extremely cooperative…

— Christiane Nusslein-Volhard

“This was the missing link in Darwin's Logic: reproductive incompatibility, ultimately derived from genetic incompatibility, drove the origin of novel species.”

— Siddharta Mukherjee