Michael Crichton Quotes

Learned behaviors have replaced the biologically given ones.

I don't think human beings have changed in 2,000 years.

My fear is that in general terms the evolution of the political process proceeds at the same pace as the evolution of the species and I do not myself believe that that is quite fast enough

Because human nature evolved in an era before collective learning accelerated, we are all fitted to living in a world that does not change much after our formative years.

Since the very beginning of culture, what we seem to be are animals which take in raw material and excrete it imprinted with ideas.

Humans are more dependent on learning for survival than other species,We have no instincts that automatically find us food and shelter !

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended.

The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.

Beliefs. Once entrenched in a culture, they persist, evolve and diverge, in a manner reminiscent of biological evolution.

Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.

The environment does not determine man's culture; it merely sets the outer limits and at the same time offers opportunities.

Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.

Obviously it depends on how you define a word like "evolution," because of course we have been evolving - both biologically and culturally - in relation to the natural world for hundreds of thousands of years.

Social evolution may be the result of intention, but it rarely, if ever, produces the result intended.

Man not only survives and functions in his environment, he shapes it and he is shaped by it.

Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of memetic selection.

A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it.

As you kind of get over the anxiety about [science and evolution], it actually adds to your sense of awe about this amazing universe that we live in, it doesn't subtract from it at all.

Considering the way evolution works, it should not be surprising if every man has got a Don Giovanni somewhere inside him.

We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and "history" took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists.

Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.

That there is an evolution of one sort or another is now common ground among scientists. Whether or not that evolution is directed is another question.

To genetic evolution, the human lineage has added the parallel track of cultural evolution.

That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.

Evolution is the most popular way we have for dealing with change.