Descended Quotes (2 quotes)
Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and discreditable episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a piece or pieces of unorganised jelly into the living progenitors of humanity, science indeed, as yet, knows nothing.
In 'The Religion of Humanity', Essays and Addresses by the Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour (1893), 307.
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
In a collection of his own work, which he selected, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949, 1956), 618. He specifies the epigrams are his work, on p. 615. First appeared as a page-bottom filler, without attribution (there), in George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken (eds.), The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness (1916), 48, No. 1, 200.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
