Quotes by Asa Gray

“Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course.”

“We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.”

“This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz. [It had formerly been held that there were no genetic connections among species.]”