William Bateson

Memory is a mystery as deep as any that even psychology can propound.

the belief in transmission of acquired adaptations arose from preconception rather than from evidence

Our knowledge of the nature and properties of living things is far too meagre to justify any such attempts.

In the light of the new knowledge various plausible, but frequently unsatisfying, suggestions put forward, especially by Wallace, Weismann, and their followers, as probable accounts of evolutionary progress, must be finally abandoned.

That the variations are controlled by physiological law, we have now experimental proof; but that this control is guided ever so little in response to the needs of adaptation there is not the smallest sign.

The concept of evolution as proceeding through the gradual transformation of masses of individuals by the accumulation of impalpable changes is one that the study of genetics shows immediately to be false.