Evolution Of The Mind Quotes & Sayings

The legend of the jungle heritage and the evolution of man as a hunting carnivore has taken root in man's mind ... He may even believe that equal pay will do something terrible to his gonads. — Elaine Morgan

A person's genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest. — B.F. Skinner

Evolution is a tinkerer, an ad-hocker, and a jury-rigger. It works with what it has on hand, not with what it has in mind. Some of its inventions prove elegant, while in others you can see the seams and dried glue. — Natalie Angier

What disconcerts the modern world at its very roots is not being sure, and not seeing how it ever could be sure, that there is an outcome-a suitable outcome to evolution. Half our present uneasiness would be turned to happiness if we could once make up our minds to accept the facts and place the essence and the measure of our modern cosmogonies within a noogenesis. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Dawkins asserts that final causes and design don't really exist. Unguided evolution explains it all. Francis Crick thought the same thing but was afraid people would be misled by what they actually saw. So he issued this warning: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." What? A warning to ignore the obvious? Absolutely. Because if we don't ignore the obvious, we might be tempted to follow common sense and attribute the "appearance" of design to actual design. — Frank Turek

But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that 'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence. — Richard Dawkins

Moreover, like eyes and arms, the fundamental structures of the mind (and the informational capacities they support) aren't acquired through experience: the pioneering ethologists realized that behavior in general must be understood in the light of evolution, and this same conviction is held by the new wave of cognitive ethologists. Whatever else may be said, we expect to find that many (if not all) of the critical properties of animal minds are - like motor patterns - intrinsic traits of an organism that are adaptive consequences of evolution. — Raymond Coppinger

Our evolution depends on our memory. If we keep forgetting the mistakes of the past, only to keep repeating them, then we will never change. And if we keep recycling through the exact same kind of leaders - the kind who do not propel us forward, but only hold us back - then perhaps what we really need now is a completely different style of leadership altogether. We need heart-driven leaders, not strictly mind-driven ones. We need compassionate humanitarians, not greedy businessmen. Peacemakers, not war instigators. We need unity, not division. Angels, not devils. — Suzy Kassem

In spite of all these disquieting triumphs in the field of natural science, it's astonishing how little man has learned about himself, and how much there is to learn. How little we know about this brain which made social evolution possible, and of the mind. How little we know of the nature and spirit of man and God. We stand now before this inner frontier of ignorance. If we could pass it, we might well discover the meaning of life and understand man's destiny. — Wilder Penfield

Like many other natural wonders, the human mind is something of a bag of tricks, cobbled together over the eons by the foresightless process of evolution by natural selection. — Daniel C. Dennett

judgment is the most important faculty we have. An animal, or a man, may get on very well without 'abstract attitude' but will speedily perish if deprived of judgment. Judgment must be the first faculty of higher life or mind - yet it is ignored, or misinterpreted, by classical (computational) neurology. And if we wonder how such an absurdity can arise, we find it in the assumptions, or the evolution, of neurology itself. — Oliver Sacks

The measure of a mind's evolution is it's acceptance of the unacceptable — Thea Alexander

I think that the theory of evolution is the most unscientific, faith-based, fundamentally brainless idea that ever had the misfortune to come out of a human mind. To compare it to true science is a joke. There is nothing even slightly scientific about it. — Ray Comfort

Being human trespass the conditionings of the laws of the worlds that have been created by the conditioned society - these reflective of a conditioned mind reflect the facets of the self, to discipline and educate indirectly; restrict evolution for pardon, and affliction — AainaA-Ridtz

The daily grinding of evolution, as accelerated by technology, churns out more and more complex organisms, with higher rates of energy use, and with increasing specialization. Minds are the ideal way to express complexity, energy density, increasing specialization, expanding diversity
all in one system. Mindedness is what evolution produces. Mindedness is what technology wants, too. — Kevin Kelly

I believe in rendering to science the things that belong to science. I have no problem with evolution or discussions of the age of the Earth, for I don't believe that we come anywhere near comprehending the mind of God or the workings of the universe. Science can explain a lot, but it cannot give us faith, and I think we need both. — Brandon Sanderson

The green prehuman earth is the mystery we were chosen to solve, a guide to the birthplace of our spirit, but it is slipping away. The way back seems harder every year. If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding, through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. And thus humanity closes the door on its past. — E. O. Wilson

Animals are locked in a perpetual present. They can learn from recent events, but they are easily distracted by what is in front of their eyes. Slowly, over a great period of time, our ancestors overcame this basic animal weakness. By looking long enough at any object and refusing to be distracted - even for a few seconds - they could momentarily detach themselves from their immediate surroundings. In this way they could notice patterns, make generalizations, and think ahead. They had the mental distance to think and reflect, even on the smallest scale.
These early humans evolved the ability to detach and think as their primary advantage in the struggle to avoid predators and find food. It connected them to a reality other animals could not access. Thinking on this level was the single greatest turning point in all of evolution - the emergence of the conscious, reasoning mind. — Robert Greene

What is required is faith. Man has body, life and mind but that is not all that constitutes man. He has risen to the mind as a result of evolution. Now a higher consciousness will be evolved - this I call Supermind. It is the instrument of the Divine Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness. — Sri Aurobindo

Who would talk about the evolutionary mind? Who cares about the good and evil in the evolution of species, and so on? This must be interesting only to the degree to which it informs us in this very present moment regarding our choices that we will make in the creation of our future. — Ralph Abraham

It is essential for evolution to become the central core of any educational system, because it is evolution, in the broad sense, that links inorganic nature with life, and the stars with the earth, and matter with mind, and animals with man. Human history is a continuation of biological evolution in a different form. — Julian Huxley

The nature of mind: much of its power seems to stem from just the messy ways its agents cross-connect ... it's only what we must expect from evolution's countless tricks. — Marvin Minsky

I am the end product of thousands of years of evolution; therefore, I am better equipped in both mind and body than all the emperors and wise men who preceded me. — Og Mandino

The next stage of evolution is the evolution of perception, the evolution of the mind. — Vironika Tugaleva

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence - legitimately - our choice of basic values in the first place. Some Darwinians insist that such influence can never be legitimate. What they have in mind is the naturalistic fallacy, whose past violation has so tainted their line of work. But what we're doing here doesn't violate the naturalistic fallacy. Quite the opposite. By studying nature - by seeing the origins of the retributive impulse - we see how we have been conned into committing the naturalistic fallacy without knowing it; we discover that the aura of divine truth surrounding retribution is nothing more than a tool with which nature - natural selection - gets us to uncritically accept its "values." Once this revelation hits norm, we are less likely to obey this aura, and thus less likely to commit the fallacy. — Robert Wright

MONAD, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter (see Molecule). The monad has body without bulk, and mind without manifestation - containing all the powers and possibilities needful to his evolution into a German philosopher . — Ambrose Bierce

The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars; it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness. — Friedrich Durrenmatt

Real Evolution is a state of consciousness. To really and truly evolve, means to align with the truth; to align with something other than the illusion and delusion of the ego mind and lower states of consciousness. — Arielle Hecht

One way to think about what psychedelics are is as catalysts for language development. They literally force the evolution of language. You cannot evolve faster than your language because the language defines the culture of meaning. So if there's a way to accelerate the evolution of language then this is real consciousness expansion and it's a permanent thing. The great legacies of the 60's are in attitudes and language. It boils down to doing your own thing, feeling the vibe, ego-trip, blowing your mind ... — Terence McKenna

If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. — Edward O. Wilson

The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution. — E. O. Wilson

Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code? — David Pearce

Patience is the food of understanding. — Idries Shah

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? — Charles Darwin

For the first time Rincewind saw the troll.
It wasn't half so bad as he had imagined.
Umm, said his imagination after a while.
It wasn't that the troll was horrifying. Instead of the rotting, betentacled monstrosity he had been expecting Rincewind found himself looking at a rather squat but not particularly ugly old man who would quite easily have passed for normal on any city street, always provided that other people on the street were used to seeing old men who were apparently composed of water and very little else. It was as if the ocean had decided to create life without going through all that tedious business of evolution, and had simply formed a part of itself into a biped and sent it walking squishily up the beach.
( ... ) How does he hold himself together, his mind screamed at him. Why doesn't he spill? — Terry Pratchett

But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? — Charles Darwin

Yoga is an interior penetration leading to integration of being, senses, breath, mind, intelligence, consciousness, and Self. It is definitely an inward journey, evolution through involution, toward the Soul, which in turn desires to emerge and embrace you in its glory. — B.K.S. Iyengar

The failure of the reformation to capture France had left for the Frenchmen no half-way house between infallibility and infidelity; and while the intellect of Germany and England moved leisurely in the lines of religious evolution, the mind of France leaped from the hot faith which had massacred the Huguenots to cold hostility with which La Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach, and Diderot turned upon the religion of the fathers. — Will Durant

No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution. — Alice Hegan Rice

We tried some experiments in mind reading which were not very successful. Think mind reading contrary to common sense, wise provision of the Bon Dieu that we cannot read each others minds, twould stop civilization and everybody would take to the woods. In fifty or hundred thousand centuries when mankind have become perfect by evolution then perhaps this sense could be developed with safety to the state. — Thomas A. Edison

The moment a mind closes is the moment it can no longer evolve. Intellectual inertia soon follows. I suppose that in many ways this is one of my main objections to theism; it assumes that all questions are already firmly answered. There is no room for curiosity. A closed question does not lead to other questions. Thus, there is no progression, no evolution, no molting. This is no good for me. I want to evolve. I want to progress. I want to molt. And I want to keep learning about the real mysteries of this Universe. — Michael Vito Tosto

version of Kurt Wise's manifesto: 'If all the evidence in the universe turned in favour of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favours evolution. It is for this reason and this reason alone that I argue for evolution with a passion that matches the passion of those who argue against it. My passion is based on evidence. Theirs, flying in the face of evidence as it does, is truly fundamentalist.' I'm an atheist myself, but religion is here to stay. Live with it. 'You want to get rid of religion? Good luck to you! You think — Richard Dawkins

This sort of information gathering is precisely what we call play. And the important function of play is thus revealed: it permits us to gain, without any particular future application in mind, a holistic understanding of the world, which is both a complement of and a preparation for later analytical activities. — Carl Sagan

Reason, intellect, and logic are historical phenomena. There is a history of logic as there is a history of technology. Nothing suggests that logic as we know it is the last and final stage of intellectual evolution. Human logic is a historical phase between prehuman nonlogic on the one hand and superhuman logic on the other hand. Reason and mind, the human beings' most efficacious equipment in their struggle for survival, are embedded in the continuous flow of zoological events. They are neither eternal nor unchangeable. They are transitory. — Ludwig Von Mises

Some believe that we will eventually sink back to the more simple-minded creatures which we evolved out of and the planet will bring another mind forward." "Isn't that the opposite of evolution?" "Only from a single-species perspective. A planet's life is paramount. It is such a fragile rare event, it should be treasured and nurtured for the potential it brings forth. If that means abdicating our physical dominance for our successors, then that is what we will accept. Such a time is a long way in our future. In terms of evolution, we have only just begun such a journey. — Peter F. Hamilton

This was borne out again in October 1996 when Pope John Paul II, standing in the context of a train of Catholic thought which stretched back to the Church Fathers said, in essence, "Looks like there's some good evidence for some sort of biological evolution."[22] That is, he said, as so many Catholics have already said, that there is nothing in divine revelation that particularly forbids you to believe that God made Adam from the dust of the earth r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y rather than instantaneously (and used other creatures to somehow assist in the process) so long as you bear in mind that God did, in fact, create man and woman (particularly the soul, which is made directly by God and is not a result of the collision of atoms).

--Making Senses of Scripture — Mark Shea

The evolution of mind requires a diet of knowledge. — Susan Waterwyk

Perhaps the most significant event in the evolution of the liberated mind arrives with the realization that most people, even in their deepest convictions, are blind to most truths. — Nathaniel Dean

Peace is a condition of the heart. It's a state of mind, of tranquility, of calmness, and of centeredness. It's an understanding of the reciprocal nature of love, a presence, a journey. It's all of our aspirations. Peace is not a luxury or merely the absence of war, it's a kind of grace - which we're all entitled to as people who are alive. Peace is an active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness. — Dennis Kucinich

So my eyes spotted it and my brain processed it and rejected it instantly, on a purely preprogrammed basis. And then it hung up on it. Out of pure animal instinct. Because it looked like a snake. The lizard part of my brain whispered snake and I got that little primeval jolt of fright that had kept my ancestors alive and well way back in evolution. It was all over in a split second. It was smothered immediately. The modern educated part of my mind stepped in and said, No snakes here in January, bud. Way too cold. I breathed out and moved on a step and then paused to look back, purely out of curiosity. — Lee Child

The internal conflict in conscience caused by competing levels of natural selection is more than just an arcane subject for theoretical biologists to ponder. It is not the presence of good and evil tearing at one another in our breasts. It is a biological trait fundamental to understanding the human condition, and necessary for survival of the species. The opposed selection pressures during the genetic evolution of prehumans produced an unstable mix of innate emotional response. They created a mind that is continuously and kaleidoscopically shifting in mood - variously proud, aggressive, competitive, angry, vengeful, venal, treacherous, curious, adventurous, tribal, brave, humble, patriotic, empathetic, and loving. All normal humans are both ignoble and noble, often in close alternation, sometimes simultaneously. — Edward O. Wilson

Evolution is fundamentally creative, and when we align ourselves with the evolutionary movements of consciousness, the universe itself puts wind in our sails. Quantum thinking goes beyond the thoughts we're aware of; it includes unconscious processing, which doesn't just expand our boundaries, but can also free us from the suffering that conscious processing (sometimes known as 'the monkey mind') creates. — Amit Goswami

The American psychologist Julian Jaynes, in a controversial study on the origin of consciousness, argued that the bicameral mind - in which one of the hemispheres becomes specialized in silent reading - is a late development in humankind's evolution, and that the process by which this function develops is still changing. — Alberto Manguel

Nothing can better express the feelings of the scientist towards the great unity of the laws of nature than in Immanuel Kant's words: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe: the stars above me and the moral law within me." ... Would he, who did not yet know of the evolution of the world of organisms, be shocked that we consider the moral law within us not as something given, a priori, but as something which has arisen by natural evolution, just like the laws of the heavens? — Konrad Lorenz

Two chemicals called actin and myosin evolved eons ago to allow the muscles in insect wings to contract and relax. Thus, insects learned to fly. When one of those paired molecules are absent, wings will grow but they cannot flap and are therefore useless. Today, the same two proteins are responsible for the beating of the human heart, and when one is absent, the person's heartbeat is inefficient and weak, ultimately leading to heart failure.
Again, science marvels at the way molecules adapt over millions of years, but isn't there a deeper intent? In our hearts, we feel the impulse to fly, to break free of boundaries. Isn't that the same impulse nature expressed when insects began to take flight? The prolactin that generates milk in a mother's breast is unchanged from the prolactin that sends salmon upstream to breed, enabling them to cross from saltwater to fresh. — Deepak Chopra

Meditation is the study of making the mind still. As your mind becomes still, a power enters you. This power transmogrifies your mind, it escalates your evolution and you begin to cycle through many incarnations in one lifetime. — Frederick Lenz

We perceive after a careful consideration of the evolution of the chess mind that such evolution has gone on, in general, in a way quite similar to that in which it goes on with the individual chess player, only with the latter more rapidly. — Richard Reti

There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons. — Idries Shah

Chromosomes. Sex. Grasshoppers. "Pick me up, Mommy."
This is an odd list, except in the eye of evolution. For in the major developments in the history of life, the ability to say, "Pick me up, Mommy" features prominently along with the emergence of genes, sexual reproduction, and multicellular organisms. On a smaller but no less wondrous scale, the ability to speak opens one mind to another. Babies announce their arrival with a loud cry, but it is their first words that launch the journey of a lifetime. — Charles Yang

The core of the evolution controversy can thus be phrased in simple terms: Did mind create matter? Or did matter give rise to mind? According to a theistic worldview, mind is primary. It is the fundamental creative force in the universe (whether God created the world quickly by fiat or slowly by a gradual process). Darwin reversed things. According to his theory, matter is the primary creative force, and mind emerged only very late in evolutionary history.10 — Nancy Pearcey

I don't mind if, according to the Law of Evolution, my grand grand grand etc. father is a monkey,but I do mind if he is a hyena or a jackal! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

My father might be right. If I lost Noah, I might just lose my mind. — Michelle Hodkin

Evolution seems to close the heart to some of the plainest spiritual truths while it opens the mind to the wildest guesses advanced in the name of science. — William Jennings Bryan

Internal and external world is interdependent. Your experiences and impressions of the outside world shape your thoughts and imagination, while making the choice and decisions, from your internal thought process, creates your physical reality. — Roshan Sharma

A phrase such as 'the idea derived from evolution that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis' for example, not impossibly intricate in itself but somehow resistant to effort, as though it triggered something obdurate and even delinquent in his mind. Or the promise to look at an argument from three points of view, each of which had five salient features, the first of which had four distinguishable aspects. It was like discovering that a supposedly sane person with whom one had been enjoying a perfect normal conversation was in fact quite mad. Or, if not mad, sadistic. — Howard Jacobson

In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night. And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And — Arthur C. Clarke

I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example). I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin's theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all. — Henry Lipson

Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth- and to be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals. (...) There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution.(...) Among humans, the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves: 'we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better'. A lover who promises eternal fidelity s more likely to be believed if he believes his promise himself; he is no more likely to keep his promise.(...) In a competition for mates, a well-developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage. — John Gray

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. — Pope John Paul II

The journey of a human is not only to expand its illusory personality of his mind, in the external world, but to realize himself beyond the identity of the mind and see the truth behind the formation of life within. — Roshan Sharma

Wetiko psychosis is at the very root of humanity's inhumanity to itself in all its various forms. As a species, we need to step into and participate in our own spiritual and psychological evolution, which means that we must focus our attention on and contemplate this most important topic before this virulent madness destroys us. — Paul Levy

Mr. Darwin ... has failed to hold definitely before his mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and to evolution. — Antoinette Brown Blackwell

We are here for the evolution of our soul. This evolution happens through the management of both the ups and downs of physical life. Evolution is halted by pretending to be happy all the time — Renae A. Sauter

Let not the wise disturb the mind of the unwise in their selfish work. Let him, working with devotion, show them the joy of good work. — Anonymous

do know that there are thousands of dollars in your mind and it is up to you whether you are going to materialize them or not. Technology has changed how we do business. Technology has given us new opportunities. The evolution of technology requires a new way of thinking! Today, people with an internet connection can have access to cutting edge knowledge in virtually any topic that concerns them. They are willing to pay for that knowledge and this is the reason why the online teaching businesses have been growing rapidly in the recent years. The question is how are you going — Vladimir Raykov

My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts. — Lily Tomlin

A ... difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare. — Lawrence Joseph Henderson

I want to put it back together now, this artistic expression that contains religious feeling. I want to investigate: What was the origin? What's happened in the human mind? Can we trace back the moment of the creation of human consciousness? And why did only humans gain consciousness, not other animals? So, evolution? I don't know whether or not I can believe evolution. Maybe we wait for another 100,000 years and then apes get consciousness. — Hiroshi Sugimoto

For the first time in human evolution, the individual life is long enough, and the cultural transformation swift enough, that the individual mind is now a constituent player in the global transformation of human culture. — William Irwin Thompson

Why do women spend so much time in talking to their female peers? The answer can again be found in the process of biological evolution of the human mind. Just like the evolutionary expression of aggression in men, gossiping is an evolutionary feature of the female psychology. Women trade various secrets from their personal experiences through gossiping in order to create connection and intimacy with their female peers. — Abhijit Naskar

All of us evolve everyday! The more we introspect and try to gather ourselves, the more rapid will be the pace of our evolution. The only thing to keep in mind is to be true to yourself. — Ackshat Deoli

Somebody said the prospect of eminent death has a wonderful clarifying effect on the mind. And I don't know if that's true, but I do think it probably causes some changes, some evolution in the way a person works. But on a day-by-day basis, I just still enjoy doing what I'm doing. — Stephen King

Clouding the exact evolution of El and Yahweh as concepts (and any other aspect of belief, for neither El nor Yahweh ever existed as anything except mind images of fervent believers) is the invariable propensity of associated religions to revise their history along the way according to subsequently popular interests. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

They are of the dream time. I don't understand it, I can't say it in words. Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes ... But when the mind becomes conscious, when the rate of evolution speeds up, then you have to be careful. Careful of the world. You must learn the way. You must learn the skills, the art, the limits. A conscious mind must be part of the whole, intentionally and carefully
as the rock is part of the whole unconsciously. Do you see? Does it mean anything to you? — Ursula K. Le Guin

You cannot control life, but you can change the way you see life.

Animals other than man are more fulfilled, because they have less mind blocking life, but they are stuck with the perspective and perception they are born with. We (human beings) can greatly improve our perception by learning the ultimate truth.

All the problems we have stem from people not knowing the truth of life. — Michael Smith

All life will die, all mind will cease, and it will all be as if it had never happened. That, to be honest, is the goal to which evolution is traveling, that is the "benevolent" end of the furious living and furious dying ... All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again. The final result ... is to deprive it completely of meaning. — David Eagleman

In pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learned to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered other than their number-and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought. — Friedrich Engels

The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness. And if physical science, whatever it may have to say about the origin of life, leaves us necessarily in the dark about consciousness, that shows that it cannot provide the basic form of intelligibility for this world. There must be a very different way in which t hings as they are make sense, and that includes the physical world, since the problem cannot be quarantined in the mind. — Thomas Nagel

Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that "animals try to spread their genes." That misstates the facts and it misstates the theory. Animals, including most people, know nothing about genetics and care even less. People love their children not because they want to spread their genes (consciously or unconsciously) but because they can't help it. That love makes them try to keep their children warm, fed, and safe. What is selfish is not the real motives of the person but the metaphorical motives of the genes that built the person. Genes "try" to spread themselves by wiring animals' brains so the animals love their kin and try to keep warm, fed, and safe. — Steven Pinker

To my mind, the theory of [evolution] does not stand up at all. If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation [i.e., time, chance, and chemistry], how has it come into being? I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. — Henry Lipson

It often happens that the mind of a person who is learning a new science has to pass through all the phases which the science itself has exhibited in its historical evolution. — Stanislao Cannizzaro

The complex organic device that creates and thereafter drives consciousness, is the human brain. Consciousness evolved hand in hand with the evolution of the human brain throughout a time span of six million years. — Abhijit Naskar

In modern neurotheology we examine the physical bases to spiritual, religious and mystical experiences and beliefs, that implicitly appear to reduce this rich phenomenology to only neuronal functions. So, the thing is, there was no divine intervention necessary in the evolution of spirituality and religiosity. "Human Brain is the true God of all beliefs". — Abhijit Naskar

The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself. — Thomas Nagel

Life must be lived forward but only makes sense by looking backward. Only in retrospect do the pieces of the puzzle connect, revealing an intelligently orchestrated evolution. Our journey through life is in a way like walking blindfolded. — Dorit Brauer

Modern science hasn't managed to come up with answers to any of the most basic questions. How did life first appear on earth? How does evolution work? Is it a series of random events, or does it have a set teleological direction? There are all kinds of theories, but we haven't been able to prove one of them. The structure of the atom is not a miniature of the solar system, it's something much more difficult to grasp, full of what you might call latent power. And when we try to observe the subatomic world, we find that the mind of the observer comes into play in subtle ways. The mind, my friend! The very same mind which, ever since Descartes, proponents of the mechanistic view of the universe considered subordinate to the body-machine. And now we find that the mind influences observed results. So I give up. Nothing surprises me. I'm prepared to accept anything that happens in this world. I actually kind of envy people who can still believe in the omnipotence of modern science. — Koji Suzuki

This earth is one of the rare spots in the cosmos where mind has flowered. Man is a product of nearly three billion years of evolution, in whose person the evolutionary process has at last become conscious of itself and its possibilities. Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible for the whole further evolution of our planet. — Julian Huxley

Let us accept the possibility that there is, at death, not an abrupt cessation of energy, rather a dispersal. This seems more than reasonable to me. Mind you, I've owned a series of old cars, and Im used to turning off the motor only to experience a series of rumblings and explosions that would shame many a volcano. This is the sort of thing I'm conceptualizing, a kind of clunky running-on. And just as some cars are more susceptible to this behavior, so people vary in the length of time, and the force with which, their energy sputters and gasps ... My example is overly dramatic, but it is not wholly unreasonable, and it serves to make this genetic mutation a player at the evolutionary table. You see what I'm getting at: a biologically and evolutionally sound model for the soul. (I didn't say I'd achieved it.) Let's conceive of the soul as an aura that human beings wear on their backs, cumberson as a tortoise's carapace. Some are larger than others. — Paul Quarrington

The bicameral mind with its controlling gods was evolved as a final stage of the evolution of language. And in this development lies the origin of civilization. — Julian Jaynes

We live through evolution ourselves, each of us, progressing through different apprehensions of the world, at each age forgetting the last age, every previous mind erased. We no longer see the same world at all. — David Vann