Biologist Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

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

— Ernst Mayr

Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how…

— Phillip E. Johnson

Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expression this only means that he has changed his manner of thinking,…

— Pablo Picasso

The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw…

— Stephen Jay Gould

“Only a minority of biologists today hold that the variation of evolution cannot be random. In this point the minority are on more solid…

— Lee Spetner

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

— Charles Darwin

“There is another kind of variation that does not involve the genome at all, and is therefore not heritable. Yet it can produce what…

— Lee Spetner

But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.

— Carl Sagan

Nature is as it is because this is the only possible nature consistent with itself.

— Geoffrey Chew

Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation...

— Seneca the Younger

At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it…

— Charles Darwin

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