Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Quotes

• It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

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

• We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowlege: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

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

• The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

• Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty?

• It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

• Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

• We must, however, acknowledge as it seems to me, that a man with all his noble qualities...still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

• It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

• In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

• Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

• Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.

• I love fools� experiments. I am always making them.

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

• Doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.

• We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe[s], to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.