Charles Darwin quotes - page 2

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)
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure. View quote
Charles Darwin
Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science. View quote
Charles Darwin
It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter. View quote
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. View quote
Charles Darwin
I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. View quote
Charles Darwin
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die. View quote
Charles Darwin
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. View quote
Charles Darwin
It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind. View quote
Charles Darwin
Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species. View quote
Charles Darwin
The moral faculties are generally esteemed, and with justice, as of higher value than the intellectual powers. But we should always bear in mind that the activity of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental though secondary bases of conscience. This fact affords the strongest argument for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual faculties of every human being. (Charles Darwin)
It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant. View quote
Charles Darwin
Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends. View quote
Charles Darwin
As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. View quote
Charles Darwin
[T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements. View quote
Charles Darwin
A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus. View quote
Charles Darwin
It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo stillmore complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed. View quote
Charles Darwin
I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense. View quote
Charles Darwin
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient. View quote
Charles Darwin
A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour. View quote
Charles Darwin
The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. (Charles Darwin)
I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship. View quote
Charles Darwin
It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist. ... I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. View quote
Charles Darwin
But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record. View quote
Charles Darwin
I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection (the title of my book), which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being. View quote
Charles Darwin