Charles Darwin Quotes

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change.

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.

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life

Building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.

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.

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!

The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance.

How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the minds of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.

There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.

When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

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.

It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

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.

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.

Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

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.

That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.

Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." Charles Darwin

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

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?

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman.

I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation

Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.