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Why are there so many kinds of animals? Adaptive radiations like Darwin’s finches are the essence of the answer.

— Jonathan Weiner The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994)

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More quotes by Jonathan Weiner

The rapid accumulation of change is not always progress, and forward motion is not always an advance.

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994)

All times seem special to those who live in them.

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994)

Whether or not we choose to watch, evolution is shaping us all.

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994)

We are doing what the dinosaurs did before us, only faster. We bring strangers together to make strange bedfellows, and we remake the beds they lie in, all at once.

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994)

The pamphlet teaches the skills that skills that Benzer’s former labmates would now need to learn, including propaganda, “that branch of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies.”

Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior (1999)

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