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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

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
Botanist
Carcinologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Travel Writer
The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Created
Bodies
Parasitic
Within
Express
Wasps
Living
Intention
Beneficent
Cannot
God
Caterpillars
Body
Species
Agnosticism
Would
Evolution
Omnipotent
Thinking
Atheism
Persuade
Garden
Feeding

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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.
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[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.
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There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.
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The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.
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Some few, and I am one of them, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. In the long-run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. Great God! how I should like to see the greatest curse on earth - slavery - abolished!
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It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science.
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People complain of the unequal distribution of wealth [but it is a far greater] injustice that any one man should have the power to write so many brilliant essays... There is no one who writes like [Thomas Huxley].
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The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.
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A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.
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Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.
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Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.
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I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.
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But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand.
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Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise and this into astonishment and this into stupefied amazement.
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I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts.
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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.
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My books have sold largely in England, have been translated into many languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy but judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years.
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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.
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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.
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Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory.
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