quote · Legacy record
Evolution is central to the understanding of life, including human life. Like all living things, we are outcomes of natural selection; we got here because we inherited traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, find mates, and reproduce. This momentous fact explains our deepest strivings: why having a thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth, why it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, why we do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light
Evolution is central to the understanding of life, including human life. Like all living things, we are outcomes of natural selection; we got here because we inherited traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, find mates, and reproduce. This momentous fact explains our deepest strivings: why having a thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth, why it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, why we do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light
Approximate author period: c. 1954 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Steven Pinker
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1954 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1954; activity date not established; Wikidata Q212730, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q212730 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 154276; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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