Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences. ~ Steve Allen

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire

There is a moral of metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. Tis  the crown & glory of organic science that it does thro’ final cause, link material to moral; & yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, & our classification of such laws whether we consider one side of nature of the other -- You have ignored this link; &, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which thank God it is not) to break it, humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it -- & sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history. ~ Adam Sedgwick

We cannot understand much of the history of late 19th and early 20th century anthropology, with its plethora of taxonomic names proposed for nearly every scrap of fossil bone, unless we appreciate its obsession with the identification and ranking of races. For many schemes of classification sought to tag the various fossils as ancestors of modern races and to use their relative age and apishness as a criterion for racial superiority. ~ Stephen Jay Gould 

Matthew Arnold put his hands on it when he spoke about the 'withdrawal of faith'. There is a connection between a society that has, at least, a minimal commitment to certain kinds of transcendental values and what human beings permit themselves to do one to the other. ~ David Berlinski

Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin  

Man in his wild condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country. ~ Charles Darwin

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes ... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now, between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla. ~ Charles Darwin  

It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing & clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.  ~ Charles Darwin  

Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. ~ Charles Darwin   see also: Fark

No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by bites. ~ Thomas Huxley 

The creed of Eugenics is founded upon the idea of evolution. ~ Francis Galton 

The feeble nations of the world are necessarily giving way before the nobler varieties of mankind. ~ Francis Galton 

The chief result of these Inquiries has been to elicit the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution. It suggests an alteration in our mental attitude, and imposes a new moral duty. The new mental attitude is one of a greater sense of moral freedom, responsibility, and opportunity; the new duty which is supposed to be exercised concurrently with, and not in opposition to the old ones upon which the social fabric depends, is an endeavor to further evolution, especially that of the human race.  ~ Francis Galton

In circumscribed communities especially, social approval and disapproval exert a potent force. Its presence is only too easily read by those who are the object of either, in the countenances, bearing, and manner of persons whom they meet and converse with. Is it, then, I ask, too much to expect that when a public opinion in favour of eugenics has once taken sure hold of such communities and has been accepted by them as a quasi-religion, the result will be manifested in sundry and very effective modes of action which are as yet untried, and many of them even unforeseen?  ~ Francis Galton

In considering whether any method of selecting the better types for multiplication, or the worse types for elimination, can from a practical basis for eugenic reform, those eugenists who, like myself, are hoping to be able to utilize the methods which have been effective in organic evolution, are inevitably led to consider what guidance can be obtained from a study of the action of natural selection. ~ Leonard Darwin 

Of all the problems which will have to be faced in the future, in my opinion, the most difficult will be those concerning the treatment of the inferior races of mankind. ~ Leonard Darwin 

These lower races (such as the Veddahs or Austrailan negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilised Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives. ~  Ernst Haeckel  see also: Illustrations

I began to speak of God, Joseph (Stalin) heard me out, and after a moment's silence, said:
'You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. . . .'
I was astonished at these words, I had never heard anything like it before.
'How can you say such things, Soso?' I exclaimed.
'I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,' Joseph said.
'What book is that?' I enquired.
'Darwin. You must read it,' Joseph impressed on me. ~ G. Glurdjidze

Before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for Birth Control. Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit. Both are seeking a single end but they lay emphasis upon different methods. ~ Margaret Sanger

Eugenics, Dean Inge writes in one of his essays, is capable of becoming the most sacred ideal of the human race, as a race; one of the supreme religious duties. In this I entirely agree with him. Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion.  ~  Julian Huxley 

The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution. ~ Arthur Keith 

The differences between the individual races, both in part externally and, of course, also in their inner natures, can be quite enormous and in fact are so. The gulf between the lowest creature which can still be styled man and our highest races is greater than that between the lowest type of man and the highest ape. ~ Adolf Hitler

If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile. ~ Adolf Hitler

National Socialism is nothing but applied biology. ~ Rudolph Hess

Hitler and many of the physicians that carried out this program were very fanatical Darwinists and particularly wanted to apply Darwinism to society. ~ Richard Weikart

Darwinism is not a sufficient condition for a phenomenon like Nazism but I think it, certainly, a necessary one. ~ David Berlinski  

Morality then is not something handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is something forged in the struggle for existence and reproduction, something fashioned by natural selection…Morality is just a matter of emotions, like liking ice cream and sex and hating toothaches and marking student papers…now that you know morality is an illusion put in place by your genes to make you a social cooperator, what’s to stop you from behaving like an ancient Roman? Well, nothing in an objective sense. ~ Michael Ruse 

If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then -- then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing ~ Jeffrey Dahmer    see also: Fark

Natural selection needs a boost, like me with a shotgun. ~ Eric Harris    see also: James Lee

What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question. ~ Richard Dawkins 

If we don’t play God, who will? ~ James Watson 

see also: Inbred Science

see also: Image Archive

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