Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

January 8, 1823 – November 7, 1913

Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS (January 8 1823 – November 7 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He independently proposed a theory of natural selection ("On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type") which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own more developed and researched theory sooner than he had intended. Wallace is sometimes called the "father of biogeography".

In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.

Human Selection, Popular Science Monthly, volume 38 (November 1890) page 93
— (Misquoted in the article Evolution and You, in Awake! magazine, 8 August 1995.)

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I think I have fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides, and I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths [...] I can see much to admire in all religions [...] But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth.

Alfred Russel Wallace
— Letter to a relative, (1861)

Tags: think, fairly, heard, weighed, evidence, both, sides, utter, you

Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.

Alfred Russel Wallace
— "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species" (1855)

Tags: species, existence, coincident, both, space, time, preexisting, closely, allied

Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

January 8, 1823 – November 7, 1913

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