“Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.”

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

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Robert A. Heinlein 557
American science fiction author 1907–1988

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“The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind. The door they opened leads to the hope that H. sapiens will survive indefinitely long, even longer than this solid planet on which we stand tonight. As a direct result of what they did, it is now possible that the human race will never die.
Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

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“We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

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Context: What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities.

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“Speaking of the agriculture, we should at least stop selling grain but instead we should process it, for example, into meat or meat products.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

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“Evolution is all about processes that almost never happen.”

Every birth in every lineage is a potential speciation event, but speciation almost never happens, not once in a million births. Mutation in DNA almost never happens — not once in a trillion copings — but evolution depends on it. Take the set of infrequent accidents — things that almost never happen — and sort them into the happy accidents, the neutral accidents, and the fatal accidents; amplify the effects of the happy accidents — which happens automatically when you have replication and competition — and you get evolution.
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“Our morality itself is the result of a process of cultural selection. Those things survive which enable the species to multiply.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, Knowledge, Evolution and Society (1983), "Coping with Ignorance", "Our Moral Heritage"

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“If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 5

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“You never fail until you stop trying.”

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“In business you wind up trying a lot of things, most of which won’t work. The way you become a good business person is to fail, fail, fail and fail.”

Bob Parsons (1950) United States Marine

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“I have failed at times, but I never stopped trying.”

Rahul Dravid (1973) Indian cricketer

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