Top 395 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Darwin
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English scientist Charles Darwin.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.
Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.
It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.
The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.
I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.
The normal food of man is vegetable.
The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change.
It's not the strongest, but the most adaptable that survive.
Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love.
An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.
There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.
The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance.
It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.
I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.
The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.
It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.
Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.
The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.
Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life
Building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.
I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.
It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.
The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats.
Some call it evolution, And others call it God.
The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.
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