The meaning that we are seeking in evolution is its meaning to us, to man. The ethics of evolution must be human ethics. It is one of the many unique qualities of man, the new sort of animal, that he is the only ethical animal. The ethical need and its fulfillment are also products of evolution, but they have been produced in man alone.

It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science.

The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.

...the argument from absence of transitional types boils down to the striking fact that such types are always lacking unless they have been found.

Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely.

Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind

Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconscious, impersonal, material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but is his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny.