“This is the contrary of the Darwin that we mainly receive from the Darwinists. The survival of the fittest is supposed to represent the conflict of sovereign individuals, among which the strongest wins and so gets to go on to the next round of the conflict. But in Darwin's day--at least when he was writing 'The Voyage of the Beagle'--'fittest' did not mean strongest. It meant the one that fit best into the network of mutual need”

“He [William Jennings Bryan] recognized that what Darwin proposed on the biological level, when applied on the societal level, might legitimize an ideology that supports the survival of the fittest, with all of its dire complications. Byran was able to envision the kind of society that Social Darwinism would create- the kind of exploitation that comes from unbridled capitalism, for instance- and chose to war against it.”

“It is meant to be survival of the fittest, not survival of the most floral.”

“The fittest of the fittest shall survive !”

“And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. ”

“It felt to me as if we were all involved in some kind of twisted, South-of-the-Border, Darwinian, "Survival of The Fittest" experiment. And I wanted to win.”