The opposition to teaching evolution is, of course, almost always given a religious reason. That may usually be its real basis, but I think it is often a mask, perhaps unconscious, for underlying anti-intellectualism or antiscientism.
George Gaylord SimpsonSpecies evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal.
George Gaylord SimpsonThe 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.
George Gaylord SimpsonThe science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.
George Gaylord Simpson