Which are your favorite Charles Darwin quotes?
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist and geologist;
He lived from 1809 – 1882 and is famously known for his theory of evolution, and contributions to the science of evolution. Darwin is the reason for the majority of people believing in evolution in this day in age.
Here’s our collection of the most inspirational Charles Darwin quotes:
40 Inspirational Charles Darwin Quotes
1. “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin
2. “Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.” – Charles Darwin
3. “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.” – Charles Darwin
4. “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.” – Charles Darwin
5. “Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.” – Charles Darwin
6. “The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.” – Charles Darwin
7. “A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.” – Charles Darwin
8. “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.” – Charles Darwin
9. “I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.” – Charles Darwin
10. “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin
11th of 40 Charles Darwin Quotes
11. “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.” – Charles Darwin
12. “To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.” – Charles Darwin
13. “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.” – Charles Darwin
14. “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.” – Charles Darwin
15. “I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.” – Charles Darwin
16. “It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.” – Charles Darwin
17. “On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.” – Charles Darwin
18. “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.” – Charles Darwin
19. “A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.” – Charles Darwin
20. “How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.” – Charles Darwin
21. “I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.” – Charles Darwin
22nd of 40 Charles Darwin Quotes
22. “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.” – Charles Darwin
23. “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” – Charles Darwin
24. “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.” – Charles Darwin
25. “An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.” – Charles Darwin
26. “I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.” – Charles Darwin
27. “If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” – Charles Darwin
28. “Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.” – Charles Darwin
29. “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” – Charles Darwin
30. “What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!” – Charles Darwin
31. “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” – Charles Darwin
32nd of 40 Charles Darwin Quotes
32. “The love for all living creatures is the most notable attribute of man.” – Charles Darwin
33. “We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.” – Charles Darwin
34. “I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men” – Charles Darwin
35. “Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.” – Charles Darwin
36. “Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.” – Charles Darwin
37. “Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.” – Charles Darwin
38. “Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.” – Charles Darwin
39. “Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.” – Charles Darwin
40. “One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” – Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin – Prophet of Evolution
Summary
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Great article Dan! And a very motivational video, thanks for sharing!
I especially liked number 10 and here is another Charles Darwin quote I keep reminding myself:
“We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.”
― Charles Darwin
Darwin said in his book Origin of Species “To suppose the eye with its inimitable contrivances for adjusting focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light and the correction of spherical and chromatic aberrations could have been formed by Natural Selection, I freely admit ABSURD in the highest degree”
How could he possibly admit to that and still believe in his theory of Evolution?