Charles Darwin

“Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things. As far as I can conjecture the art consists in habitually searching for the causes and meaning of everything which occurs.” ~ Charles Darwin

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” ~ Charles Darwin

“As the sense of smell is so intimately connected with that of taste, it is not surprising that an excessively bad odour should excite wretching or vomitting in some persons.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” ~ Charles Darwin

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” ~ Charles Darwin

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

“Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.” ~ Charles Darwin

“There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.” ~ Charles Darwin

“To my deep mortification my father once said to me, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” ~ Charles Darwin”

“If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.” ~ Charles Darwin

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.” ~ Charles Darwin

“If every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I agree with Agassiz that dogs possess something very like conscience.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Wherever the European had trod, death seemed to pursue the aboriginal.” ~ Charles Darwin

“A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.” ~ Charles Darwin

“My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.” ~ Charles Darwin

“A novel according to my taste, does not come into the moderately good class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love – and if a pretty woman, all the better.” ~ Charles Darwin

“A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Some call it evolution, And others call it God.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“It’s not the strongest, but the most adaptable that survive.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.” ~ Charles Darwin

“A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.” ~ Charles Darwin

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

“I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.” ~ Charles Darwin

“In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.” ~ Charles Darwin

“At no time am I a quick thinker or writer: whatever I have done in science has solely been by long pondering, patience and industry.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I conclude that the musical notes and rhythms were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.” ~ Charles Darwin

“To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.” ~ Charles Darwin

“It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.” ~ Charles Darwin

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

“We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us – of their imagined approbation or disapprobation.” ~ Charles Darwin

“On your life, underestimating the proclivities of finches is likely to lead to great internal hemorrhaging.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult – at least I have found it so – than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Daily it is forced home on the mind of the biologist that nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the level of the crust of this earth.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The noble science of Geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection of the record. The crust of the earth with its embedded remains must not be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made at hazard and at rare intervals.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than humans would at first suppose.” ~ Charles Darwin

“You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love.” ~ Charles Darwin

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

“I am not the least afraid to die.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Our faculties are more fitted to recognize the wonderful structure of a beetle than a Universe.” ~ Charles Darwin

“If I had life to live over again, I would give my life to poetry, to music, to literature, and to art to make life richer and happier. In my youth I steeled myself against them and thought them so much waste.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.” ~ Charles Darwin

“With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.” ~ Charles Darwin

“It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.” ~ Charles Darwin

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The normal food of man is vegetable.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Only the fittest will survive.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Man himself cannot express love and humility by external signs, so plainly as does a dog, when with drooping ears, hanging lips, flexuous body, and wagging tail, he meets his beloved master.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change.” ~ Charles Darwin

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

“I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley.” ~ Charles Darwin

“It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the plan of creation or unity of design, etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Music was known and understood before words were spoken.” ~ 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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care.” ~ Charles Darwin

“We have happy days, remember good dinners.” ~ Charles Darwin

“I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.” ~ Charles Darwin

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

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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.” ~ Charles Darwin

“It is like confessing to a murder.” ~ Charles Darwin

“The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.” ~ Charles Darwin

“A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die – which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.” ~ Charles Darwin

“A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.” ~ Charles Darwin

“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?” ~ Charles Darwin

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

“The willing horse is always overworked.” ~ Charles Darwin