Charles Darwin Evolution Quotations

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

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 love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

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.

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?

The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.

But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree

The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven't changed much.

Some call it evolution, And others call it God.

Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved

In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

Man is developed from an ovule, about 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals.

The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is and will always be a wild animal.