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Every boat is copied from another boat... Let’s reason as follows in the manner of Darwin. It is clear that a very badly made boat will end up at the bottom after one or two voyages, and thus never be copied... One could then say, with complete rigor, that it is the sea herself who fashions the boats, choosing those which function and destroying the others.

— Émile Chartier Propos d’un Normand (1908)

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Source: Propos d’un Normand (1908); reported in D. S. Rogers and P. R. Ehrlich, "Natural selection and cultural rates of change", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (2008) pp. 3416–3420
Work: Propos d’un Normand, 1908
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Émile Chartier (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.