Charles Darwin
Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!Collection: Ignorance
Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.Collection: Men
The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion.Collection: Men
After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject.Collection: Animal
Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to versemaking, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject.Collection: Teaching
People complain of the unequal distribution of wealth [but it is a far greater] injustice that any one man should have the power to write so many brilliant essays... There is no one who writes like [Thomas Huxley].Collection: Writing
My books have sold largely in England, have been translated into many languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy; but judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years.Collection: Country
You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.Collection: Children
It is like confessing to a murder.Collection: Atheism
Mr. J.S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, "Utilitarianism," of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality," but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man?Collection: Powerful
Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new beings on this earth.Collection: Believe
The traveler may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence.Collection: Views
The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.Collection: Education
Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.Collection: Math
Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.Collection: Pain
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us.Collection: Nature
I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.Collection: Principles
We have happy days, remember good dinners.Collection: Dinner
In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.Collection: Powerful
Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.Collection: Origin Of Species
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.Collection: Men
To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degreeCollection: Eye
The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?Collection: Theory Of Evolution
Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.Collection: Form
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.Collection: Music
The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.Collection: Atheism
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.Collection: Inspirational
Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love.Collection: Love Life
Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.Collection: Thinking
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.Collection: Reason
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.Collection: Honesty
The normal food of man is vegetable.Collection: Men
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.Collection: Animal
If every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty.Collection: Science
An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.Collection: Mind
I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.Collection: Years
Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.Collection: Law
Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.Collection: Science
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other menCollection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Humble
Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.Collection: Beautiful
The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.Collection: Intuition
I have long discovered that geologists never read each other’s works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness.Collection: Book
I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one – And alas there yet remains the worst part of all correcting the press.Collection: Book
It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the “race is for the strong” and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.Collection: Strong
What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!Collection: Book
Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation, but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.Collection: Real