Quotes About Progress

Charles Darwin

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

we are always slow in admitting great changes of which we do not see the steps.

Puede decirse metafóricamente que la selección natural está haciendo diariamente, y hasta por horas, en todo el mundo, el escrutinio de las variaciones más pequeñas; desechando las que son malas, conservando y acumulando las que son buenas, trabajando insensible y silenciosamente donde y cuando se presenta una oportunidad, en el mejoramiento de todo ser orgánico en relación con sus condiciones orgánicas e inorgánicas de vida.

Natura non facit saltum.

I have read heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts— At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Lettre To Joseph Dalton Hooker [11 January 1844]

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.

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

Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle.

belirtilen çeÅŸitli engeller ve belki daha bilinmeyen baÅŸkalar?, toplumun tasas?z, bozuk ve baÅŸka bak?mlardan aÅŸa?? üyelerinin iyi insanlardan daha h?zl? çoÄŸalmas?n? önlemezse, dünya tarihinde pek s?k görüldüÄŸü gibi, ulus geriler.

All that at present can be said with certainty, is that, as with the individual, so with the species, the hour of life has run its course, ans is spent.

Celui qui n'évolue pas disparaît.

It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing and clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-Saxon race will have spread and exterminated whole nations; and in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

On the other hand, I am not very sceptical,—a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable.

It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.

Can it be that there is anything of more consequence in life than the great business in hand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say, it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach our destination sooner—getting there quickly being a supreme object. It is well to force the soil to yield a hundred-fold, to congregate men in masses so that all their energies shall be taxed to bring food to themselves, to stimulate industries, drag coal and metal

Well! this time next year, we will know all of which we are now ignorant.

No looking back. Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past having nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness. Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.

That's the way it is at some point in life. An inevitable consequence of living. A lot of things begin falling away.

The window apparently wanted only to take his thoughts back. Which was fine with him, for he had seen the metal face of the age and had been so stunned by it that when he thought into the future, all he could vision was a world from which everything he had counted important had been banished or had willingly fled.

But one day leads to another, and so on. No way around it. It's that merciless thing that time does.

I won't go into it any further, other than to say that year by year the world darkens down and things are always going away.

They did what they did, and moved forward despite whatever trail of ashes they left behind.