Apes, Angels and Victorians Quotes

“Life blindly breeds, battles, and slaughters its way up to mind and rationality”
― William Irvine, Apes, Angels and Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution

“Science and religion...have been perennially at war. The one studies nature and produces progress. The other explores supernature and produces confusion and darkness. In fact, progress is directly proportionate to the victory of naturalism over supernaturalism.”
― William Irvine, Apes, Angels and Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution

“Hypotheses were constantly reaching out into the darkness – slowly, almost inevitably refining and rectifying themselves through empirical contact with reality”
― William Irvine, Apes, Angels and Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution

“To think wishfully, to rest in comforting illusion when scientific truth is conceivably within reach, is to desecrate both one’s self and the universe.”
― William Irvine, Apes, Angels and Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution

“Nature breeds a vast oversupply of experiments and then sterilizes the failures by murdering them.”
― William Irvine, Apes, Angels and Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution