60 Quotes by Ernst Mayr

I did not claim that every genetic change in a founder population is a genetic revolution. Evidently it requires a special constellation for the occurrence of a more drastic genetic reorganization.

I agree with Gould that the frequency of stasis in fossil species revealed by the recent analysis was unexpected by most evolutionary biologists.

Most modern authors failed to distinguish between two very different phenomena: the production of a new taxon, and the production of a new phenotype.

No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.

Evolution is no longer necessarily progressive; it no longer strives toward perfection or any other goal. It is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.

In neither his definition nor the examples illustrating what memes are does Dawkins mention anything that would distinguish memes from concepts.

I feel that one species, mankind, doesn't have the right to exterminate

On Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me believe its utter improbablity.

There are a number of attributes of species and populations that are not of any particular selective advantage to any single individual in a population but that are of great advantage to the population as a whole.