The theory of phlogiston was an inversion of the true nature of combustion. Removing phlogiston was in reality adding oxygen, while adding phlogiston was actually removing oxygen. The theory was a total misrepresentation of reality....

It takes many sheep to satisfy one wolf.

Evolution is more about adaptivity than adaptability.

Recall the metaphor I used in chapter 4 relating the random movements of molecules in a gas to the random movements of evolutionary change. Molecules in a gas move randomly with no apparent sense of...

Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.

Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts — some of them interesting or curious but making...

Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among million; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us...

Breaking up is a natural evolution when you try to figure out what you want in life. If you’re with an individual who isn’t moving in the same direction and at the same rate that...

Today, and let us celebrate this fact, We can eat the light of our beloved, warmed by compassion or cooled by intellectual feeling. And if we are surprised, and some of us disappointed, that the...

The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.

I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to...

Are we not witnessing a strange tableau of survival whenever a bird alights on the head of a crocodile, bringing together the evolutionary offspring of Triassic and Jurassic?

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view...

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

It is a more rational belief that man may become a brute than that a brute may become a man; and it is an easier faith that plants and animals may dwindle down into an...

Till o’er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form: Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same.

It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably...

Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.

The Sufi is one who does what others do – when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do – when it is indicated.

Show me a person who really knows what ‘good’ is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.

But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.

Indeed, not all attacks—especially the bitter and ridiculing kind leveled at Darwin—are offered in good faith, but for practical purposes it is good policy to assume that they are.

Teachers seeking to ‘teach the controversy’ over Darwinian evolution in today’s climate will likely be met with false warnings that it is unconstitutional to say anything negative about Darwinian evolution. Students who attempt to raise...

I personally cannot discern a shred of evidence for ‘[intelligent] design.’ If 97% of all creatures have gone extinct, some plan isn’t working very well!

It is not always the magnitude of the differences observed between species that must determine specific distinctions, but the constant preservation of those differences in reproduction.

I think this is just a normal step going forward, … We’re kind of following a normal evolution in our industry. Consolidation is not only necessary, but inevitable.

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.

You are hierarchical. That’s the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It’s a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of...

Time is the evidence of evolution.

Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.

People always tell me, ‘Reinvent yourself, re-this, re-whatever.’ I haven’t reinvented myself. It’s an honest evolution. I’ve always been authentic.

You don’t have to solve it, only evolve it!

Our Universe is a multidimensional one; every individual life unit consciously functions in a particular vibratory level (dimension or density) but unconsciously/ subconsciously functions in and through all the other levels, and as the awareness...

Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their...

When challenged by a zealous Popperian to say how evolution could ever be falsified, J. B. S. Haldane famously growled: ‘Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.

Some people spend their whole lives seeking heaven, when all they needed to do was look about them, and embrace that which was already there.

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist … should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the...

Mithorden: ‘We become what we do, Zalos.

The activity of loving kindness is the bridge that allows you to slowly, slowly realise the wisdom and perfection of this moment.

One reason might be that if I hadn’t tripped, I’d have been hamburger.When this sort of thing occurs, people often say that there was some power greater than themselves at work. This sounds reasonable. I...

As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not...

The(re is no) End

The strategic initiatives we propose to undertake as part of our plan over the next few years position us well to lead this evolution.

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence....

As an anonymous wit is supposed to have put it: “Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas which, given enough time, changes into people.

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.

It wasn’t torpor that kept her – she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.

To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey—and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.

Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe