Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
Charles DarwinRead
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the interdependent nature of life and evolution.
Charles Darwin's quote uses the metaphor of a tree to describe the process of evolution, illustrating how new life forms arise and thrive while others fade away. It highlights the continuity and complexity of life on Earth, emphasizing that every new generation takes its place within the grand hierarchy of existence.
In practice
In a lecture on evolution, I quoted Darwin to illustrate the complexity of life's development.
Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science....It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] & holes as sound parts.
We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps
We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'
I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.
The human being is an unequal creature. That is a fact. And we start off with the proposition. All the great religions, all the great movements, all the great political ideology, say let us make the human being as equal as possible. In fact, he is not equal, never will be.
I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.
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