Charles Darwin Of 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.

I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

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?

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.

It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction...

Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

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.

Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

... not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

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

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

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.