110+ Charles Darwin Quotes On Change, Evolution And Natural Selection

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who is best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He proposed the theory of natural selection, which states that species evolve over time through the process of adaptation to their environment. His 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, is considered a foundational work in evolutionary biology. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Charles Darwin on change, evolution, natural selection.

Top 10 Charles Darwin Quotes

1. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
2. A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
3. The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
4. The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change.
5. A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
6. 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.
7. An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
8. It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.
9. What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
10. The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

Charles Darwin Short Quotes

• The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance.
• It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
• A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
• A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.
• Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music.
• Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.
• I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
• It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
• ...for the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.
• ... not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

Charles Darwin Quotes About Change

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, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats. — Charles Darwin

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment. — Charles Darwin

It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. — Charles Darwin

The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage. — Charles Darwin

we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps — Charles Darwin

I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce [direct] evidence of one species changing into another, but I believe that this view is in the main correct, because so many phenomena can thus be grouped end explained. — Charles Darwin

Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed. — Charles Darwin

The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven't changed much. — Charles Darwin

You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly. — Charles Darwin

I find in the domestic duck that the bones of the wing weigh less and the bones of the leg more, in proportion to the whole skeleton, than do the same bones in the wild duck; and this change may be safely attributed to the domestic duck flying much less, and walking more, than its wild parents. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Evolution

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. — Charles Darwin

A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." Charles Darwin — Charles Darwin

The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith? — Charles Darwin

Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science. — Charles Darwin

Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved — Charles Darwin

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? — Charles Darwin

The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel. — Charles Darwin

From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows. — Charles Darwin

Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. — Charles Darwin

Some call it evolution, And others call it God. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Natural Selection

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. — Charles Darwin

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure. — Charles Darwin

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation — 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

Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short steps. — Charles Darwin

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree — Charles Darwin

I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most. — Charles Darwin

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection. — Charles Darwin

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent. — Charles Darwin

This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Education

The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. — Charles Darwin

I suppose you are two fathoms deep in mathematics, and if you are, then God help you. For so am I, only with this difference: I stick fast in the mud at the bottom, and there I shall remain. — Charles Darwin

The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. — Charles Darwin

I am a firm believer, that without speculation there is no good and original observation. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Survival

It's not the strongest, but the most adaptable that survive. — Charles Darwin

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence. — Charles Darwin

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability. — Charles Darwin

The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection. — Charles Darwin

In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection. — Charles Darwin

It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the "race is for the strong" and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science. — Charles Darwin

Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive. — Charles Darwin

Only the fittest will survive. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Animals

There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. — Charles Darwin

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal. — Charles Darwin

Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral. — Charles Darwin

It is a truly wonderful fact - the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity - that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to group. — Charles Darwin

We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals. — Charles Darwin

After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. — Charles Darwin

The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children. — Charles Darwin

There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank; it becomes a picture full of the most varied and animated figures. — Charles Darwin

So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers. etc., are certainly transmitted. — Charles Darwin

Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Time

I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them. — Charles Darwin

I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue. — Charles Darwin

I often had to run very quickly to be on time, and from being a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided. — Charles Darwin

May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times? — Charles Darwin

Traveling ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly kind-hearted people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance. — Charles Darwin

The Times is getting more detestable (but that is too weak word) than ever. — Charles Darwin

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. — Charles Darwin

On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'” — Charles Darwin

Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Nature

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. — 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. — Charles Darwin

Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature's cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception. — Charles Darwin

So great is the economy of nature, that most flowers which are fertilised by crepuscular or nocturnal insects emit their odour chiefly or exclusively in the evening. — Charles Darwin

...I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them. — Charles Darwin

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness. — Charles Darwin

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. — Charles Darwin

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die. — Charles Darwin

It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind. — Charles Darwin

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Observation

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions. — Charles Darwin

It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards. — Charles Darwin

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

From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed. ... To group all facts under some general laws. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Theory

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. — Charles Darwin

Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory. — Charles Darwin

Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. — Charles Darwin

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 no such case. — Charles Darwin

I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Facts

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

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

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. — Charles Darwin

Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. — Charles Darwin

Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them. — Charles Darwin

I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it. — Charles Darwin

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please. — Charles Darwin

It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the plan of creation or unity of design, etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. — Charles Darwin

It occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made of this question (the origin of the species) by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it — Charles Darwin

Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Created

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

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation. — Charles Darwin

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designedly created...that a cat should play with mice. — Charles Darwin

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Science

When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. — Charles Darwin

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. — 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. — Charles Darwin

The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me 30 miles to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape of my nose. — 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

Formerly Milton's Paradise Lost had been my chief favourite, and in my excursions during the voyage of the Beagle, when I could take only a single small volume, I always chose Milton. — Charles Darwin

Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd [should] be forestalled ... I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters. — Charles Darwin

I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things; and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever - much cleverer than the discoverers - never originate anything. — Charles Darwin

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 gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction. — Charles Darwin

The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Quotes About Laws

Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life! — Charles Darwin

With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms. — Charles Darwin

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth. — Charles Darwin

Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. — Charles Darwin

A surprising number [of novels] have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-against which a law ought to be passed. — Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — 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

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

That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection. — 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

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman. — Charles Darwin

I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. — Charles Darwin

We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven. — Charles Darwin

Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. — Charles Darwin

There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved — Charles Darwin

Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us - of their imagined approbation or disapprobation. — 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 love of a dog for his master is notorious; in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life. — Charles Darwin

On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true. — 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

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. — Charles Darwin

It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist. ... I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. — Charles Darwin

I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. — Charles Darwin

Man himself cannot express love and humility by external signs, so plainly as does a dog, when with drooping ears, hanging lips, flexuous body, and wagging tail, he meets his beloved master. — Charles Darwin

What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern? — Charles Darwin

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

It strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching. — Charles Darwin

Ultimately a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense or conscience. — Charles Darwin

Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves. — Charles Darwin

Even the humblest mammal's strong sexual, parental, and social instincts give rise to 'do unto others as yourself' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. — Charles Darwin

What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame; the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly. — Charles Darwin

I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. — 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. — Charles Darwin

Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement. — Charles Darwin

Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather. — Charles Darwin

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications. — Charles Darwin

Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt. — Charles Darwin

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms. — Charles Darwin

...he who remains passive when over-whelmed with grief loses his best chance of recovering his elasticity of mind. — Charles Darwin

I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations. — Charles Darwin

It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. — Charles Darwin

Life Lessons by Charles Darwin

1. Charles Darwin taught us that change is inevitable, and that adapting to our environment is essential for survival.
2. He also showed us that by understanding our environment and the creatures around us, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the world we live in.
3. Finally, his work demonstrated that through observation and experimentation, we can uncover the secrets of nature and uncover the truth of our world.