Quotes by Charles Darwin

About Charles Darwin:

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

Charles Darwin

How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.

Charles Darwin

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.

Charles Darwin

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

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

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 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

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

Charles Darwin

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.

Charles Darwin

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

Charles Darwin

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.

Charles Darwin

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

Charles Darwin

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

Charles Darwin

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.

Charles Darwin

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.

Charles Darwin

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

Charles Darwin

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

Charles Darwin

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.

Charles Darwin

Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.

Charles Darwin

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

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

Author Bio

  • NameCharles Darwin
  • DescriptionBritish naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"
  • AliasesCharles Robert Darwin; Darwin
  • BornFebruary 12, 1809
  • DiedApril 19, 1882
  • CountryUnited Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland
  • ProfessionNaturalist; Geologist; Evolutionary Biologist; Explorer; Politician; Travel Writer; Botanist; Carcinologist; Ethologist; Entomologist; Ecologist
  • WorksOn The Origin Of Species; The Voyage Of The Beagle; The Descent Of Man, And Selection In Relation To Sex; The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals; Insectivorous Plants; The Power Of Movement In Plants; The Formation Of Vegetable Mould Through The Action Of Worms
  • AwardsWollaston Medal; Royal Medal; Copley Medal; Order Of Merit For Arts And Science; Fellow Of The Royal Society