Charles Darwin Quotes

369 Sourced Quotes

It strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching.

Charles Darwin
Nobody but a person fond of Natural History can imagine the pleasure of strolling under cocoa-nuts in a thicket of bananas and coffee-plants, and an endless number of wildflowers.

Charles Darwin
It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards.

Charles Darwin
Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.

Charles Darwin
A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.

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
The progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits; for morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a modified swim-bladder, which once served as a float.

Charles Darwin
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.

Charles Darwin
The passion for collecting which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brothers ever had this taste.

Charles Darwin
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Nature tells us, in the most emphatic manner, that she abhors perpetual self-fertilisation.

Charles Darwin
There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank; it becomes a picture full of the most varied and animated figures.

Charles Darwin
I have an old belief that a good observer really means a good theorist.

Charles Darwin
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].

Charles Darwin
I have heard, by roundabout channel, that Herschel says my book [The Origin of the Species] "is the law of higgledy-piggledy." What this exactly means I do not know, but it is evidently very contemptuous. If true this is a great blow and discouragement.

Charles Darwin
No one has a right to speculate without distinct facts.

Charles Darwin
If a person asked my advice, before undertaking a long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced. No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils.

Charles Darwin
I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity.... and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society.

Charles Darwin
The love of a dog for his master is notorious; in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.

Charles Darwin
The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

Charles Darwin
Accuracy is the soul of Natural History. It is hard to become accurate; he who modifies a hair's breadth will never be accurate... Absolute accuracy is the hardest merit to attain, and the highest merit.

Charles Darwin
One great source of perplexity to me is an utter ignorance whether I note the right facts, and whether they are of sufficient importance to interest others.

Charles Darwin
How dreadfully difficult it is to name plants.

Charles Darwin
All young geologists have a great turn for speculation; I have burned my fingers pretty sharply in that way, and am now inclined to cavil at speculation when the direct and immediate effect of a cause in question cannot be shown.

Charles Darwin
Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.

Charles Darwin
This wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from it, than any other class of facts.

Charles Darwin
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.

Charles Darwin
If variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being perserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offsping similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.

Charles Darwin
So great is the economy of Nature, that most flowers which are fertilized by crepuscular or nocturnal insects emit their odor chiefly or exculsively in the evening.

Charles Darwin
A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.

Charles Darwin
It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the plan of
creation or unity of design, etc., and to think that we give an explanation
when we only restate a fact.

Charles Darwin