Rudolf Steiner Quotes

Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

Appealing to his [Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.

The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.

Progress is not accomplished in one stage.

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

Today's game is always different from yesterday's game.

I'm not trying to do something different, I'm trying to do the same thing but in a different way

Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order....I believe that it's the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Evolution works through indirection: each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.

When discussing organic evolution the only point of agreement seems to be: ‘It happened.’ Thereafter, there is little consensus, which at first sight must seem rather odd.

You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation.

It is hard to believe that something that seems so permanent was once so different. Change. I guess that really is one thing you can count on.

The history of life is more adequately represented by a picture of 'punctuated equilibria' than by the notion of phyletic gradualism. The history of evolution is not one of stately unfolding, but a story of homeostatic equilibria, disturbed only 'rarely' (i.e. rather often in the fullness of time) by rapid and episodic events of speciation.

I'm different in the sense that every minute of every day, I change. I'm thinking. But the basic principles that have powered me forward are still there. They're not different.

This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.

You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.

No, My son, the evolutionists are not right. I created all of this-all of this-in the blink of an eye; in one holy instant-just as the creationists have said. And...it came about through a process of evolution taking billions and billions of what you call years, just as the evolutionists claim. They are both "right." As the cosmonauts discovered, it all depends on how you look at it.

If you take a look at our natural history, there's always a moment where the young lion wants to challenge the older lion and, inherently, that's going to be problematic, and I don't think we're any different.

If evolution almost always occurs by rapid speciation in small, peripheral isolates, then what should the fossil record look like? We are not likely to detect the event of speciation itself. It happens too fast, in too small a group, isolated too far from the ancestral range.

We cannot continue doing the same thing and expect different results

Evolution is not a genetically controlled distortion of one adult form into another; it is a genetically controlled alteration in a developmental program.

In the final analysis the hierarchic pattern is nothing like the straightforward witness for organic evolution that is commonly assumed. There are facets of the hierarchy which do not flow naturally from any sort of random undirected evolutionary process. If the hierarchy suggests any model of nature it is typology and not evolution. How much easier it would be to argue the case for evolution if all nature's divisions were blurred and indistinct, if the systema naturalae was largely made up of overlapping classes indicative of sequence and continuity.

Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved

Some of the most wonderful aspects and consequences of evolution have been discovered only recently. This is in stark contrast to creationism, which offers a static view of the world, one that cannot be challenged or tested with reason. And because it cannot make predictions, it cannot lead to new discoveries, new medicines, or new ways to feed all of us.

There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved

You shouldn't do things differently just because they're different. They need to be... better.