Charles Darwin quotes page 1

1809-1882, English naturalist

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one
most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin

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

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

The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely, that man is descended from some lowly
organized form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a
doubt that we are descended from barbarians.
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 a week.
Charles Darwin

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

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.
Charles Darwin

Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he
now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to
complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the
immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.
Charles Darwin

Each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio... each at some period of its
life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle
for life and to suffer great destruction... The vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive
and multiply.
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

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

In the long history of humankind, and animalkind too, those who learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have prevailed.
Charles Darwin

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.
Charles Darwin

I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A 
dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he
can.
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

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

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

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

I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain
language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include
my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a
damnable doctrine.
Charles Darwin

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely: Multiply, vary, let
the strongest live and the weakest die.
Charles Darwin

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

I have rarely read anything which has interested me more, though I have not read as yet
more than a quarter of the book proper. From quotations which I had seen, I had a high
notion of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man he
was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they
were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.
Charles Darwin

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