Quotes from Charles Darwin

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

It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

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

Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.

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.

I cannot see ... evidence of design and beneficence ... There seems to me too much misery in the world.

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.

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

Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.

A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

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.

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.

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