Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.
The main conclusion here arrived at ... is that man is descended from some less highly organized form.
The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.
I feel like an old warhorse at the sound of a trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles.
Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than humans would at first suppose.
I cannot see ... evidence of design and beneficence ... There seems to me too much misery in the world.
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.
It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards.
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather.
The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
The age-old and noble thought of 'I will lay down my life to save another,' is nothing more than cowardice.
On your life, underestimating the proclivities of finches is likely to lead to great internal hemorrhaging.
I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley
Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.
It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.
It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest the public, and I am sure that the views are original.
...he who remains passive when over-whelmed with grief loses his best chance of recovering his elasticity of mind.
I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.
A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved
Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.
An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
If man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception.
Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.
Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.
Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.
With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms.
What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame; the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly.
There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.
Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designedly created...that a cat should play with mice.
Man is developed from an ovule, about 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals.
Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.
I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.
The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.
[T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.
To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree
At no time am I a quick thinker or writer: whatever I have done in science has solely been by long pondering, patience and industry.