Quotes By Charles Darwin

Wherever the European had trod, death seemed to pursue the aboriginal.

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.

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.

We are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps.

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

I am not the least afraid to die.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science.

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

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.

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.

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.

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

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

But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.

Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.

Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.

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