Monday Quotations

2/9/08.

Owing to the struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relationships to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to make its relation to man's power of selection.

I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design or indeed of design of any kind, in the details.

---Chares Darwin (1809 - 1882)


We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.

Richard Dawkins (1941 - )


The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.

G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)