Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. His proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors is now widely accepted, and considered a foundational concept in science. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.
By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.
Some of the best quotes from Charles Darwin are listed below.
- “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin
- “A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.” – Charles Darwin
- “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
- “A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.” – Charles Darwin
- “An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.” – Charles Darwin
- “Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.” – Charles Darwin
- “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
- “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
- “How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.” – Charles Darwin
- “I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.” – Charles Darwin
- “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
- “I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.” – Charles Darwin
- “I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.” – Charles Darwin
- “I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.” – Charles Darwin
- “If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” – Charles Darwin
- “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
- “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin
- “It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.” – Charles Darwin
- “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
- “Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.” – Charles Darwin
- “Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.” – Charles Darwin
- “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.” – Charles Darwin
- “On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.” – Charles Darwin
- “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” – Charles Darwin
- “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
- “The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.” – Charles Darwin
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!” – Charles Darwin
