"Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly. To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles which do not occur."

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Source: Alfred Russel Wallace (1991). “Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings”, Oxford University Press, USA

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Alfred Russel Wallace

Naturalist

Alfred Russel Wallace was a naturalist and biologist known for independently developing the theory of natural selection alongside Charles Darwin.

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"In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes."

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