Charles Darwin

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.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

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.

—Charles Darwin

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

—Charles Darwin

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

—Charles Darwin

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

—Charles Darwin

We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.

—Charles Darwin

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.

—Charles Darwin

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

—Charles Darwin

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

—Charles Darwin

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.

—Charles Darwin

How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.

—Charles Darwin

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.

—Charles Darwin

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

—Charles Darwin

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives – of approving of some and disapproving of others.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.

—Charles Darwin

I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin