Quotes by Charles Darwin

[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.

Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely.

Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.

We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.

Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.

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

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

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

Light may be shed on man and his origins.

I have called this principle by which each slight variation if useful is preserved by the term natural selection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love fools experiments. I am always making them.

The very essence of instinct is that its followed independently of reason.

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.

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.