Noam Chomsky Quotes

We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.

Evolution is a tinkerer.

One can say with reasonable confidence that the likelihood of something analogous to a human evolving is really pretty high.

We're supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?

Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

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.

Evolution works by selection, not by instruction. There is no final cause, no teleology, no purpose guiding the overall process

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.

Our genomes are evolving and changing every single day.

What people don't realize is the human body and the brain are so well designed to do - by millions of years of evolution - what we do.

Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.

Modifying ourselves is a natural process because we are a product of nature and what we do is a product of nature. Therefore, if one day we have three time bigger brain and two hearts instead of one (because one is not enough) then this is all part of nature.

The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

Evolution usually occurs in response to a crisis situation, and we now are faced with such a crisis situation. This is why there is indeed an enormous acceleration in the awakening process of our species.

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.

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

You have to keep evolving.

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

As you work on something, whether it's a painting or a piece of music, it's going to evolve. A relationship is like that too.

Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.

Evolution is an obstacle course not a freeway; the correct analogue for long-term success is a distant punt receiver evading legions of would-be tacklers in an oddly zigzagged path toward a goal, not a horse thundering down the flat.

Evolution is the phenomenon of change and the challenge of the next time cycle will involve the creation of constructs that will provide the kind of dynamic knowledge base that can assist the challenges of tomorrow (involving both fundamental and extended information).

The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.

The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.