Richard Dawkins · 688 pages
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“My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh volcanic ash. Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“A herp is simply the kind of animal studied by a herpetologist, and that is a pretty lame way to define an animal. The only other name that comes close is the biblical 'creeping thing”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“Look at life from our perspective, and you eukaryotes will soon cease giving yourselves such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria, replaying the same old tricks we bacteria discovered a billion years ago. We were here before you arrived, and we shall be here after you are gone.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“Natural selection is a beguiling counterfeiter of deliberate purpose.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“By far the largest single organisms that ever lived are plants, and an impressive percentage of the world’s biomass is locked up in plants. [...] The surface of the land is green because of plants, and the surface of the sea would be green too if its floating carpet of photosynthesisers were macroscopic plants instead of microorganisms too small to reflect noticeable quantities of green light. It is as though plants are going out of their way to cover every square centimetre with green, leaving none uncovered. And that is pretty much what they are doing […] From a plant’s point of view, a square centimetre of the Earth’s surface that is anything but green amounts to a negligently wasted opportunity to sweep up photons.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“Evolution, or its driving engine natural selection, has no foresight. In every generation within every species, the individuals best equipped to survive and reproduce contribute more than their fair share of genes to the next generation. The consequence, blind as it is, is the nearest approach to foresight that nature permits. [...] It is always tinkering: here shrinking a bit, there expanding a bit, constantly adjusting, putting on and taking off, optimising immediate reproductive success. Survival in future centuries doesn’t enter into the calculation, for the good reason that it isn’t really a calculation at all. It all happens automatically, as some genes survive in the gene pool and others don’t.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“decade after the first edition of this book was published, Yan Wong and I met in the fitting surroundings of the Oxford Museum of Natural History to discuss the possibility of producing a new, tenth anniversary edition. Yan, once my undergraduate pupil, had been employed as my research assistant during the writing of the original edition, before he left for his lecturing position in Leeds and his career as a television presenter. He played an enormously important part in the conception and execution of the first edition, and he was credited as joint author of several of the chapters. During the course of our discussion ten years on, we realised that much new information had come in, especially from the molecular genetics laboratories of the world. Yan undertook the bulk of the revision and I proposed to the publisher that this time he should be properly credited as joint author of the whole book.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“Evolution is a trajectory through multidimensional space, in which every step of the way has to represent a body capable of surviving and reproducing about as well as the parental type reached by the preceding step of the trajectory.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“History is usually a random, messy affair’,”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“Evolution, or its driving engine natural selection, has no foresight. In every generation within every species, the individuals best equipped to survive and reproduce contribute more than their fair share of genes to the next generation. The consequence, blind as it is, is the nearest approach to foresight that nature permits. [...] That’s the kind of thing natural selection does all the time. It is always tinkering: here shrinking a bit, there expanding a bit, constantly adjusting, putting on and taking off, optimising immediate reproductive success. Survival in future centuries doesn’t enter into the calculation, for the good reason that it isn’t really a calculation at all. It all happens automatically, as some genes survive in the gene pool and others don’t.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“Earlier than about 10,000 years ago, all human populations were hunter gatherers. Soon, probably none will be. Those not extinct will be 'civilised' — or corrupted, depending on your point of view.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
Richard Dawkins
Born place: in Nairobi, Kenya
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"You are, even now.”
― Sarah Diemer, quote from The Dark Wife
“If you help someone in need you might also receive unexpected aid.”
― Malala Yousafzai, quote from I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World (Young Readers Edition)
“I refuse to let you talk me into a make-out session in a dodgy, underground tunnel. I have standards, you know.”
― Rachel Morgan, quote from The Faerie Guardian
“I too have been badly deceived in myself," he said, shaking his head. "Would you believe it?—I had no notion that I was such a monster of inhumanity as I have proved myself to be”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“The best way to get a handle on the subject would be to ask the experts, but one does not simply walk into a church or synagogue and ask to speak with a demonologist. There are not that many of them; their names are confidential, and they are obliged to report their experiences only to their superiors. Even Ed Warren will not tell all about these horrendous black spirits that come in the night bearing messages and proclamations of blasphemy. When pressed on the matter, in fact, Ed’s reply is: “There are things known to priests and myself that are best left unsaid.” Upon what, then, does Ed Warren base his opinions? Is there proper evidence or corroboration to substantiate his claims? “People who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon sometimes ask me if I’m not involved in a sort of ultrarealistic hallucination, like Don Quixote jousting with windmills. Well, hallucinations are visionary experiences. This, on the other hand, is a phenomenon that hits back. My knowledge of the subject is no different than that of learned clergymen, and they’ll tell you as plainly as I will that this isn’t something to be easily checked off as a bad dream. “I can support everything I say with bona fide evidence,” Ed goes on, “and testimony by credible witnesses and blue-ribbon professionals. There is no conjecture involved here. My statements about the nature of the demonic spirit are based on my own firsthand experiences over thirty years in this work, backed up by the experiences of other recognized demonologists, plus the experiences of the exorcist clergy, plus the testimony of hundreds of witnesses who’ve been these spirits’ victims, plus the full weight of hard physical evidence. Theological dogma about the demonic simply proves consistent with my own findings about these spirits in real life. But let me be more specific. “The inhuman spirit often identifies itself as the devil and then—through physical or psychological means—proves itself to be just that. Again speaking from my own personal experiences, I have been burned by these invisible forces of pandemonium. I have been slashed and cut; these spirits have gouged marks and symbols on my body. I’ve been thrown around the room like a toy. My arms have been twisted up behind me until they’ve ached for a week. I’ve incurred sudden illnesses to knock me out of an investigation. Physicalized monstrosities have manifested before me, threatening death,”
― quote from The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren
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