Richard Dawkins Quotes

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character.

All scientists agree that evolution has occurred - that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?

No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.

If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas.

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.

You know what, evolution is a myth. ... Why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?

Darwin recognized the fact that paleontology then seemed to provide evidence against rather for evolution in general or the gradual origin of taxonomic categories in particular.

According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another.

The tree of life was always there. Evolution just fills in the gaps.

What is evolution if not creative adaptation and the progression of our own souls?

Within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another one. It may be claimed that the theory of descent is lacking, therefore, in the most essential feature that it needs to place the theory on a scientific basis, this must be admitted.

Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening.

The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.

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

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.

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.

Evolution has never found a way to be any speed but very slow.

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

The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.

Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.

As some species die out, forms better adapted to utilize the obstacles against which they struggled in vain come into being.

One of the great breakthroughs of evolution theory is that you start with simple things and they will grow into complexity.

Evolution ... is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.

Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a substitute for the doctrine of transmutation; for 'independent creation,' as it is often termed, or the direct intervention of the Supreme Cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science.