"There are living systems; there is no living 'matter'. No substance, no single molecule, extracted and isolated from a living being possess, of its own, the aforementioned paradoxical properties. They are present in living systems only; that is to say, nowhere below the level of the cell." (Jacques Monod, "From Biology to Ethics", 1969)
"A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself." (Jacques Monod, "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", 1970)
"Among all the occurrences possible in the universe the a priori probability of any particular one of them verges upon zero. Yet the universe exists; particular events must take place in it, the probability of which (before the event) was infinitesimal. At the present time we have no legitimate grounds for either asserting or denying that life got off to but a single start on earth, and that, as a consequence, before it appeared its chances of occurring were next to nil. [...] Destiny is written concurrently with the event, not prior to it." (Jacques Monod, "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", 1970)
"Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere. In effect natural selection operates upon the products of chance and can feed nowhere else; but it operates in a domain of very demanding conditions, and from this domain chance is barred. It is not to chance but to these conditions that evolution owes its generally progressive course, its successive conquests, and the impression it gives of a smooth and steady unfolding." (Jacques Monod, "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", 1970)
"Every living being is also a fossil. Within it, all the way down to the microscopic structure of its proteins, it bears the traces if not the stigmata of its ancestry." (Jacques Monod, "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", 1970)
"Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere." (Jacques Monod, "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", 1970)
"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." (Jacques Monod, "On the Molecular Theory of Evolution", 1974)
"One of the great problems of philosophy, is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and the realm of values. Knowledge is what is; values are what ought to be. I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tried to derive the “ought” from the “is.” My point of view is that this is impossible, this is a farce." (Jacques Monod)
"The scientific attitude implies the postulate of objectivity - that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan; that there is no intention in the universe." (Jacques Monod)
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