This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them." - Maria Montessori
"Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction." -
"Judaism can be viewed as the evolution of a people in the grip of two toweringly great ideas. The first is the idea of One God - imageless, primordially creative, and utterly transcendent - who, nevertheless, cares for the creation. The second is the idea of human dignity: men and women become fully human only by responding to the moral intuitions divinely etched in their hearts." - Philip Novak
"Evolution begins and ends with the purposes of God." - Henry Fairfield Osborn
"The meaning of evolution is that man is the result of a purposeless, and natural process that did not have us in mind." - George Gaylord Simpson
"If there is any purpose or direction in the evolution of culture, it has to do with bringing people under the control of more and more of the consequences of behavior." - B. F. Skinner, fully Burrhus Frederic "B.F." Skinner
"Evolution progresses toward greater cooperation by discovering ways to build cooperative organization out of components that are self-interested… Evolution’s ultimate goal is an intelligence-filled, life-filled, cooperative universe." - John Stewart
"Evolution is not necessarily a reductive theory: it does not explain away or reduce meaningfulness and value, any more than it explains away or reduces mathematics, economics, or even sociobiology itself. It aims to provide a naturalistic explanation of biological characteristics, including the capacities that enable us to recognize value and meaning. Giving a causal explanation of the origin of capacities is not the same as giving an account of the relevant meaning or content." - Garrett Thomson
"While the theory of evolution spells out how the changes take place, any concept of a cosmic plan would specify why." - Garrett Thomson
"The brain constantly searches for meaning, for connections between objects and qualities that cross-cut the senses and provide information about external existence… In order to grasp the human condition, both the genes and culture must be understood, not separately in the traditional manner of science and the humanities, but together, in recognition of the realities of human evolution." -
"What is human nature? It is not the genes, which prescribe it, or culture, its ultimate product. Rather, human nature is something else for which we have only begun to find expression. It is the epigenetic rules, the hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction as opposed to another, and thus connect the genes to culture." -
"The realm of love, reason, and justice exists only because, and inasmuch as, man has been able to develop these powers in himself throughout the process of his evolution. In this view there is no meaning to life except the meaning man himself gives to it; man is utterly alone except inasmuch as he helps another." -
"Humans have the ability to act consciously, and collectively, [exercising foresight to] choose their own evolutionary path. In our crucial epoch we cannot leave the selection of the next step in the evolution of human society and culture to chance. We must plan for it, consciously and purposefully." -
"I believe that one of the characteristics of the human race, possibly the one that is primarily responsible for its course of evolution, is that it has grown by creatively responding to failure." - Glen Therodorei Seaborg
"Reality is a perpetual process of evolution, propelled by the fertile impact of antagonisms which are resolved each time into a superior synthesis which, itself, creates its opposite and again causes history to advance." - Albert Camus
"The ultimate objective of social futurism [is] not merely the transcendence of technocracy and the substitution of more humane, more far-sighted, more democratic planning, but the subjection of the process of evolution itself to conscious human guidance. For this is the supreme instant, the turning point in history at which man either vanquishes the processes of change or vanishes, at which, from being the unconscious puppet of evolution he becomes either its victim or its master." - Alvin Toffler
"All the art of analysis consists in saying a truth only when the other person is ready for it, has been prepared for it by an organic process of gradation and evolution." - Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
"If causality has broken down and events are not rigidly governed by the pushes and pressures of the past, may they not be influenced in some manner by the pull of the future - which is a manner of saying that “purpose” may be a concrete physical factor in the evolution of the universe." - Arthur Koestler
"Believe it or not, every fool you meet is the end result of millions of years of evolution." - Author Unknown NULL
"We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands." - Carl Sagan
"The purpose of human life is to achieve our own spiritual evolution, to get rid of negativity, to establish harmony among our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual quadrants, to learn to live in harmony within the family, community, nation, the whole world and all living things, treating all of mankind as brothers and sisters - thus making it finally possible to have peace on earth." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"Man, the individual, has always been and, necessarily is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress." - Emma Goldman
"Evolution needs synthesis, the ecological perspective, and the holistic outlook so that life continues to be possible. That change from the old viewpoint, dividing up the world into smaller parts, towards a holistic attitude is biologically conditioned." - Fritjof Capra
"Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth that in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?" - Garry Wills
"What I mean by a religious person is one who conceives himself or herself to be the instrument of some purpose in the universe which is a high purpose, and is the motive of evolution - that is, of a continual ascent in organization and power and life, and extension of life." - George Bernard Shaw
"The period of time covered by history is far too short to allow any perceptible progress in the popular sense of Evolution of the Human Species. The notion that there has been any such Progress since Caesar’s time (less than 20th centuries ago) is too absurd for discussion. All the savagery, barbarism, dark ages and the rest of it of which we have any record as existing in the past exists at the present moment." - George Bernard Shaw
"[Education of the individual shall] progress from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract, from the empirical to the rational… shall be as much as possible a process of self-evolution, and… shall be pleasurable." - Herbert Spencer
"Our drive toward novelty is a tool of evolution and transcendence." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction." - Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
"Directly stated, the evolution of the entire universe - stars, elements, life, man - is a process of drawing something out of nothing, out of the utter void of nonbeing. The creative element in the mind of man - the latency which can conceive gods, carve statues, move the heart with the symbols of great poetry, or devise the formulas of modern physics - emerge in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts." - Loren Eiseley
"It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes. This is the final paradox, which men call evolution." - Loren Eiseley
"The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"Physics has discovered the edge of infinity; the wisdom of the ages takes us across the border, which is nowhere but in us. When each person rejoins the stream of evolution that upholds the galaxies ands sweeps life forward on the wave of eternity, human existence will cease to contain any suffering, and our real purpose in living - to create heaven on earth - will be realized." - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma
"Moral codes have become necessary because evolution, in liberating humankind from complete dependence on instincts, has also made it possible for us to act with malice that no organism ruled by instincts alone could possess." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Evolution is the result of competition between organisms for the energy required for survival... If there is any meaning to the past, it is to be found in the increase in the complexity of material structures and information over time" - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder.)" - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"The yen to become wanderers among the stars involves more than the need to satisfy a cosmic curiosity. Basically, it flows out of an instinctive need to evolve. We belong to an unfinished species. We have limitless capacities for growth; indeed, our uniqueness lies in our ability to steer our own evolution. The destination becomes visible through an enlarged perspective. The greatest adventure within the reach of a sentient species is seeing itself in an expanding relationship." - Norman Cousins
"The purpose of life is the evolution, though self-effort, of man’s limited mortal consciousness into God Consciousness." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"We cannot leave behind us the sins of our past. We must not forget that nothing disappears. Everything is eternal. Everything that has been is still in existence. The whole history of humanity is the “history of crime”... Man must go back, seek for, and destroy the causes of evil however far back they lie. It is only in this idea that the hint of the possibilities of a general evolution can be found. It is only in this idea that the possibility of changing the karma of humanity lies, because changing the karma means changing the past... There will be no possibility of thinking of evolution of humanity, if the possibility did not exist for individually evolving man to go into the past and struggle against the causes of the present evil which lie there." - P.D. Ouspensky, fully Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, also Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also Uspenskii or Uspensky
"The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaption to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
"Change demands self-discipline... Change requires the substituting of new habits for old. You mold your character and your future by your thoughts... Change can be realized through conscious evolution. Moment by moment, day by day, concentrate on becoming the man you want to be." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution" - Deepak Chopra
"Ordinarily when we talk about the human as the advanced product of evolution and the mind as being the most advanced product of evolution, there is an implication that we are advanced out of and away from the structure of the exterior world in which we have evolved, as if a separate product had been packaged, wrapped up, and delivered from a production line. The view I am presenting proposes a mechanism more and more interlocked with the totality of the exterior. This mechanism has no separate existence at all, being in a thousand ways united with and continuously interacting with the whole exterior domain. In fact there is no exterior red object with a tremendous mind linked to it by only a ray of light. The red object is a composite product of matter and mechanism evolved in permanent association with a most elaborate interlock. There is no tremor in what we call the "outside world" that is not locked by a thousand chains and gossamers to inner structures that vibrate and move with it and are a part of it. The reason for the painfulness of all philosophy is that in the past, in its necessary ignorance of the unbelievable domains of partnership that have evolved in the relationship between ourselves and the world around us, it dealt with what indeed have been a tragic separation and isolation. Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Herbert Land