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24 quotes
SortEditorial Year Length
Topic·Evolution✕clear
Scientific literature

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dread enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

Charles Darwin
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex · 1871
★ 2.1
Scientific literature

Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the comencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament which the Great First Cause endured with animality... And thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!

Erasmus Darwin
Zoonomia · 1794
★ 5.1

FIRST LAW: In every animal... A more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ... While the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears. SECOND LAW: All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature in individuals... Are preserved by reproductions to the new individuals which arise.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Philosophie Zoologique · 1809
★ 5.2
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