Charles Darwin Quotes – Species that survives …
- I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.
- The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?
- A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.
- A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.
- 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
- It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
- I feel most deeply that this whole question of creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of (Isaac) Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can.
- I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion
- The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic
- It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known: 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.
- 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
- To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree
- 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 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
- 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 my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
- Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress
- In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed
- 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.
- As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.
- The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?
Categories: Science and Technology, Stiinta biology, Charles Darwin, Darwin Quotes, Evolution, strongest species
