Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

A stronger race will drive out the weaker ones, for the vital urge in its ultimate form will break down the absurd barriers of the so called humanity of individuals to make way for the humanity of nature which destroys the weak to give their place to the strong.

The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

When most of us hear the phrase, 'survival of the fittest,' we assume it originated with Charles Darwin. It did not. The phrase doesn't exist anywhere in Darwin's first edition of 'Origin of the Species.'

I should premise that I use the term “Struggle for Existence” in a large and Metaphorical Sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) success in leaving progeny.

Natural selection is anything but random.

Radiation is one of the important factors in evolution. It causes mutation, and some level of mutation is actually good for evolution.

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

Your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.

Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course.

In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.

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.

It cannot but happen?that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces? This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

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.

Natural selection is just three factors - over-production, variation, and inheritance combined to produce adaptation to changing local environments. It's not a principle or progress; it's just a principle of local adaptation. You don't make better creatures in any cosmic sense; you make creatures that are better suited to the changing climates of their local habitats.

The goal of evolution is self - conquest

Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate.

I thoroughly believe in evolution, and how we evolve and how our physical being is affected by time and use and by the environment... it's more than just challenging, it can be terrifying. We all struggle, but I think it's important to be there for one another.

There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

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

I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection, which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being.

It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.

This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection", or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.