Charles Robert Darwin was a naturalist and geology expert from England, who is most well-known for propounding the theory of evolution that is often regarded as among the most significant findings in the history of biology. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, before going on to attend Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge. It was at Cambridge that he followed his lifelong passion of the natural sciences. After completed a voyage on HMS Beagle that lasted 5 years, Darwin started studying all that he collected during that time in 1838 and eventually laid the foundations of the path breaking theory of natural selection. It took him decades of painstaking research to finally publish his conclusions and his theories remain the only accepted version of evolution due to its scientific rigour. His most well-known works are ‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’ about evolution and ‘The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms’ among others. His findings have made him one of the most important men in history. Darwin was a man who was far ahead of his time and his curious mind allowed him to explain one of mankind’s oldest questions. Here are some of the famous quotes by Charles Darwin.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.
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.
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.
Charles Darwin
Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
Charles Darwin
The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
...I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can.—
The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.
Charles Darwin
The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.
Charles Darwin
We are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps
But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art.
But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?
The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination.
Charles Darwin
I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work; and I still think there is an eminently important difference.
But a plant on the edge of a deserts is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent upon the moisture.
A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.
Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely.
Charles Darwin
What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame; the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly.
Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
Charles Darwin
I have stated, that in the thirteen species of ground-finches, a nearly perfect gradation may be traced, from a beak extraordinarily thick, to one so fine, that it may be compared to that of a warbler.
Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather.
Charles Darwin
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
Charles Darwin
How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!
Charles Darwin
...ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge...
Charles Darwin
Or she may accept, as appearances would sometimes lead us to believe, not the male which is the most attractive to her, but the one which is the least distasteful.
In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by a long habit of observing ourselves.
Charles Darwin
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.
He [Erasmus Darwin] used to say that 'unitarianism was a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian.
Charles Darwin
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.
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 the what is the essence of the attraction of gravity?
I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.
What an extraordinary thing it is, Mr. Darwin seems to spend hours in cracking a horse-whip in his room, for I often hear the crack when I pass under his windows.
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.
Sexual selection acts in a less rigorous manner than natural selection. The latter produces its effects by the life or death at all ages of the more or less successful individuals.
Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals.
This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.
Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of Species.
Natural selection rendered evolution scientifically intelligible: it was this more than anything else which convinced professional biologists like Sir Joseph Hooker, T. H. Huxley and Ernst Haeckel.
 those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. )
