“Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study.”

—  John Maynard Smith, book The Theory of Evolution

Source: The Theory of Evolution (1958), p. xvi.

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John Maynard Smith9
British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist 1920–2004

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