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...

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.