Charles Darwin Quotes

369 Sourced Quotes

With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms.

Charles Darwin
Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.

Charles Darwin
I cannot think that the world as we see it is the result of chance; and yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of Design... I am, and shall ever remain, in a hopeless muddle.

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
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.

Charles Darwin
Some of my critics have said, "Oh, he is a good observer, but he has no power of reasoning!" I do not think that this can be true, for the "Origin of Species" is one long argument from the beginning to the end, and it has convinced not a few able men. No one could have written it without having some power of reasoning.

Charles Darwin
Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

Charles Darwin
When we look at the plants and bushes clothing an entangled bank, we are tempted to attribute their proportional numbers and kinds to what we call chance. But how false a view this is!

Charles Darwin
I must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of the other mental qualities of animals within the same class.

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
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
From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of stars in constellations.

Charles Darwin
I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.

Charles Darwin
It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter. —

Charles Darwin
I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child.

Charles Darwin
I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things. As far as I can conjecture the art consists in habitually searching for the causes and meaning of everything which occurs.

Charles Darwin
The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, 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
What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern?

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

Charles Darwin
I am inclined to give up the attempt as hopeless. Those who do not understand, it seems cannot be made to understand.

Charles Darwin