Charles Darwin Quotes
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Even insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation.
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A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
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I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.
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But some degree of intelligence appears, as we shall see in the next chapter, to be exhibited in this work,-a result which has surprised me more than anything else in regard to worms.
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It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.
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My object in this chapter is solely to shew that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.
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The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
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Mere chance … alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.
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The young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.
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The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!
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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 out no such case.
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I often find myself going back to Darwin's saying about the duration of a man's friendships being one of the best measures of his worth.
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Owen says my book will be forgotten in 10 years; perhaps so, but, with such a list of prestigious scientific supporters, I feel convinced that the subject will not.
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Man differs from woman in size, bodily strength, hairyness, &c., as well as in mind, in the same manner as do the two sexes of many mammals.
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It is a curious little world within itself
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The comparison here implied between the actions of one of the higher animals and of one so low in the scale as an earth-worm, may appear far-fetched; for we thus attribute to the worm attention and some mental power, nevertheless I can see no reason to doubt the justice of the comparison.
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The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people.
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Disinterested love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man.
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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.
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Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters that he cannot answer them all. He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.
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I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.
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It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but 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.
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Through the principle of associated habit, the same movements of the face and eyes are practised, and can, indeed, hardly be avoided, whenever we know or believe that others are blaming, or too strongly praising, our moral conduct.
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I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.