Arthur Keith Quotes

Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.

The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life.

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but what takes place in our hearts.

In every man there is an instinctive and passionate reaction if his person or liberty is attacked.

Civilization, we shall find, like Universalism and Christianity, is anti evolutionary in its effects; it works against the laws and conditions which regulated the earlier stages of man's ascent.

Man is by nature competitive, combative, ambitious, jealous, envious, and vengeful.

Under no stretch of imagination can war be regarded as an ethical process; yet war, force, terror, and propaganda were the evolutionary means employed to weld the German people into a tribal whole.

Universalism as an ideal is as old as nay, is probably much more ancient than the Christian ideal.

It is just because civilization is ever evolving, changing, and becoming more complicated, that experts find it so difficult to define it in explicit terms.

The proper balance between individual liberty and central authority is a very ancient problem.

Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities.

Before the discovery of agriculture mankind was everywhere so divided, the size of each group being determined by the natural fertility of its locality.

Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.

As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs.

Nowhere is Universalism welcomed and encouraged by a people; everywhere governments have forced and are forcing Universalism upon unwilling and resistant subjects.

Reason has not tamed desire: it is as strong as ever.

My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.

Human nature, as manifested in tribalism and nationalism, provides the momentum of the machinery of human evolution.

Tribal life comes automatically to an end when a primitive people begins to live in a town or a city, for sooner or later a tribal organization is found to be incompatible with life in a city.

Tolerance is held to be a condition of mind which is encouraged by, and is necessary for, civilization.

No tempting form of error is without some latent charm derived from truth.

The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consistently sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.

No tribe unites with another of its own free will.

A drunkard is one thing, and a temperate man is quite another.

This world of ours has been constructed like a superbly written novel: we pursue the tale with avidity, hoping to discover the plot.

I am a rank individualist.

The main force used in the evolving world of humanity has hitherto been applied in the form of war.

...the student of prehistoric man...cannot reject [the Castenedolo skull] as false without doing injury to his sense of truth, and he cannot accept it as fact without shattering his accepted beliefs.