Motivational Quotes

Evolution

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.

- Camus, Albert

Best Quotes about Evolution

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.

Russell, Bertrand

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.

Inge, Dean William R.

The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous. Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead.

Rosenberg, Harold

I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Castro, Fidel

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement -- but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

Conrad, Joseph

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.

Conrad, Joseph

All revolutions devour their own children.

Rohm, Ernst

Clemency is also a revolutionary measure.

Desmoulins, Camille

10.

Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system but we still carry its genes.

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

11.

The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.

Conklin, Edward

12.

One revolution is like one cocktail, it just gets you organized for the next.

Rogers, Will

13.

When people contend for their liberty they seldom get anything for their victory, but new masters.

Halifax, Edward F.

14.

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.

Herzen, Alexander

15.

The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.

Rich, Adrienne

16.

History teaches us that the great revolutions aren't started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better -- and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

17.

Evolution has developed man to such a high degree that he builds zoos to keep his ancestors in cages.

18.

Two million years from now the scientists can start a row by claming that the creatures of that period descended from us.

19.

In this Revolution no plans have been written for retreat.

King Jr. Martin Luther

20.

The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.

Hoffer, Eric

21.

The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is -- a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.

Spencer, Herbert

22.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

Diderot, Denis

23.

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

24.

Revolutions are notorious for allowing even non-participants -- even women! -- new scope for telling the truth since they are themselves such massive moments of truth, moments of such massive participation.

James, Selma

25.

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

26.

Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Bierce, Ambrose

27.

To be a revolutionary you have to be human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

Fonda, Jane

28.

Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts -- it's what you do with what you have left.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

29.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

Adams, John

30.

A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.

Hugo, Victor

32.

It is easier to run a revolution than a government.

Marcos, Ferdinand E.

33.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

Wald, George

34.

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.

Guizot, Francois (Pierre Guillaume)

35.

Men are made uneasy; they flinch; they cannot bear the sudden light; a general restlessness supervenes; the face of society is disturbed, or perhaps convulsed; old interests and old beliefs have been destroyed before new ones have been created. These symptoms are the precursors of revolution; they have preceded all the great changes through which the world has passed.

Buckle, Henry Thomas

36.

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

Peirce, Charles Sanders

37.

It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.

Skinner, Cornelia Otis

38.

Revolution today is taken for granted, and in consequence becomes rather dull.

Lewis, Wyndham

39.

On the first day of a revolution he is a treasure; on the second he ought to be shot.

40.

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

Genet, Jean

41.

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.

Bambara, Toni Cade

42.

Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.

Nkrumah, Kwame

43.

Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world...life, being and ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth. The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence, of that very doubling back upon himself becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere.

Chardin, Pierre Teilhard De

44.

The more there are riots, the more repressive actin will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.

King Jr. Martin Luther

45.

If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag, wash it.

Thomas, Norman

46.

Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.

Gilbert, W. S.

47.

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.

Adams, John

48.

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

Plato

49.

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

Twain, Mark

50.

A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y