Quotes from Charles Robert Darwin

The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter at a remote period, Man, the wonder and the glory of the universe, proceeded.

A hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits.

Man with all his noble qualities… with his godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system… still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design, or indeed of design of any kind, in the details.

I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.

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

When the views advanced by me in this volume, and by Mr. Wallace, and when analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history.

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

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

Both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—the mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.

I never dreamed that islands, about fifty or sixty miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, would have been differently tenanted.

The plow is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly plowed, and still continues to be thus plowed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.

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 everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness.

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.

The assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Diety.