
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.

This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.

It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

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

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

We are optimists, until we are not.

I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.
![Charles Darwin quotes: [T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements. Charles Darwin quotes: [T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.](//www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/charles-darwin-quotes-654831.jpg)
[T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.

Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.

The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.

Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete.

The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.

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

I believe man . . . in the same predicament with other animals.

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

Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.

I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision.

I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts.

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.

There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved

I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.

I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.

Light may be shed on man and his origins.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.

None can reply - all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue, which teaches awful doubt.

Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation, but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.

This prophecy has turned out entirely and miserably wrong.

Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.

Language is an art, like brewing or baking ... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.

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

Sympathy for the lowest animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed.

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.

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

The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change.

The normal food of man is vegetable.

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.

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

Sympathy will have been increased through natural selection

I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.

I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley

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

The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.

He who understands baboons would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

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

I am not the least afraid to die

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

Even people who aren't geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.

I agree with Agassiz that dogs possess something very like conscience.

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

Sexual selection will also be largely dominated by natural selection tending towards the general welfare of the species.

The man who walks with Henslow.

Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.

Whilst Man, however well-behaved,
At best is but a monkey shaved!

Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character.

If man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception.

A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.

Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.

I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.

The age-old and noble thought of 'I will lay down my life to save another,' is nothing more than cowardice.

A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question. Charles Darwin