Charles Darwin Quotes

“The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

“Allan praised Herbert for a job well done and for acting the part well. Herbert blushed, while dismissing the praise, saying it wasn't hard to play stupid when you are stupid. Allan said that he didn't know how hard it was, because the idiots Allan had met so far in his life had all tried to do the opposite.”

“In the future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by graduation.”

“Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes Error a fault, and truth discourtesy.”

“I will complain, yet praise;I will bewail, approve:And all my sowre-sweet dayesI will lament, and love.”

“Man is no star, but a quick coalOf mortal fire:Who blows it not, nor doth controlA faint desire,”

“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky;The dew shall weep thy fall tonight,For thou must die.”

“Who says that fictions only and false hairBecome a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?Is all good structure in a winding stair?”

“It was in the attempt to ascertain the interrelationships between species that experiments n genetics were first made. The words "evolution" and "origin of species" are now so intimately associated with the name of Darwin that we are apt to forger that the idea of common descent had been prominent in the mnds of naturalists before he wrote, and that, for more than half a century, zealous investigators had been devoting themselves to the experimental study of that possibility. Prominent among this group of experimenters may be mentioned Koelreauter, John Hunter, Herbert Knight, Gartner, Jordan. Naudin, Godron, Lecoq, Wichura--men whose names are familiar to every reader of Animals and Plants unders Domestication.”

“But that’s life right? It’s just a shitty hand of cards. But then maybe somebody pulls out an Ace, and somebody else gets a four, or a ten. It’s all in the draw and how you play it.”