- Larry Ellison: "Charles Darwin cautiously postponed publishing On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man for more than twenty years, but that judicious delay did not save him from vicious personal attacks coming from all ranks of contemporary society." source ↗
Charles Darwin's 1859 masterwork that introduced the theory of evolution by natural selection, reshaping humanity's understanding of biology and the natural world. Drawing on years of research including his voyage on the HMS Beagle, Darwin presents the evidence for common descent and the mechanism of natural selection as the driving force of life's diversity across millennia.
Ellison referenced Darwin in his own footnotes to Softwar, using Darwin's experience as an example of challenging orthodoxy and withstanding vicious personal attacks — a theme central to Ellison's worldview. Darwin postponed publishing his theory for over twenty years, accumulating evidence precisely because he understood how radical his idea would be. Yet even that caution did not protect him from being vilified.
For founders, the Darwin example Ellison chose is a useful frame: working on something genuinely novel means you will be attacked regardless of how carefully you prepare — resistance is to the idea itself, not to how you present it. The twenty-year delay is also instructive: Darwin knew his theory was unfinished until the evidence was overwhelming, a reminder that prematurely exposing a half-formed vision can invite hostility that patience could have avoided.