Charles Darwin quotes - page 4

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)
...for the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.
Charles Darwin
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.
Charles Darwin
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.
Charles Darwin
Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.
Charles Darwin
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
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
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
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
Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.
Charles Darwin
I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions. (Charles Darwin)
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act ... Our faculties are more fitted to recognize the wonderful structure of a beetle than a Universe.
Charles Darwin
Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.
Charles Darwin
Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters that he cannot answer them all. He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.
Charles Darwin
Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.
Charles Darwin
But some degree of intelligence appears, as we shall see in the next chapter, to be exhibited in this work,-a result which has surprised me more than anything else in regard to worms.
Charles Darwin
After a time the minute colourless particles which are imbedded in the flowing protoplasm are drawn towards and unite with the aggregated masses; so that the protoplasm on the walls being now rendered quite transparent is no longer visible, though some is still present, and still flows, as may be inferred from the occasional transport of particles in the cell-sap.
Charles Darwin
Through the means just specified, aided perhaps by others as yet undiscovered, man has been raised to his present state. But since he attained to the rank of manhood, he has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more appropriately called sub-species. Some of these, for instance the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species. Nevertheless all the races agree in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities, that these can be accounted for only through inheritance from a common progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterised would probably have deserved to rank as man.
Charles Darwin
Owen says my book will be forgotten in 10 years; perhaps so, but, with such a list [of prestigious scientific supporters], I feel convinced that the subject will not.
Charles Darwin
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.
Charles Darwin
When the pots containing two worms which had remained quite indifferent to the sound of the piano, were placed on this instrument, and the note C in the bass clef was struck, both instantly retreated into their burrows. (Charles Darwin)
Through the principle of associated habit, the same movements of the face and eyes are practised, and can, indeed, hardly be avoided, whenever we know or believe that others are blaming, or too strongly praising, our moral conduct.
Charles Darwin
Man differs from woman in size, bodily strength, hairyness, &c., as well as in mind, in the same manner as do the two sexes of many mammals.
Charles Darwin
I also attended on two occasions the operating theatre in the hospital at Edinburgh, and saw two very bad operations, one on a child, but I rushed away before they were completed. Nor did I ever attend again, for hardly any inducement would have been strong enough to make me do so; this being long before the blessed days of chloroform. The two cases fairly haunted me for many a long year.
Charles Darwin
It is a curious little world within itself.
Charles Darwin