Charles Darwin Quotes

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

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

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.”

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

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.”

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.”

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.”

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

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

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.”

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.”

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

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

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.”

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.”

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!”

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!”

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

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