Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Would
Evolution
Omnipotent
Thinking
Atheism
Persuade
Garden
Feeding
Created
Bodies
Parasitic
Within
Express
Wasps
Living
Intention
Beneficent
Cannot
God
Caterpillars
Body
Species
Agnosticism

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.
Charles Darwin
Image
Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
Charles Darwin
Image
Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.
Charles Darwin
Image
I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.
Charles Darwin
Image
It's not the strongest, but the most adaptable that survive.
Charles Darwin
Image
I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce [direct] evidence of one species changing into another, but I believe that this view is in the main correct, because so many phenomena can thus be grouped end explained.
Charles Darwin
Image
It may be doubted that there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures.
Charles Darwin
Image
The traveler may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence.
Charles Darwin
Image
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.
Charles Darwin
Image
Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, ... temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
Charles Darwin
Image
It occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made of this question (the origin of the species) by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it
Charles Darwin
Image
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
Charles Darwin
Image
The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.
Charles Darwin
Image
A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.
Charles Darwin
Image
What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly.
Charles Darwin
Image
It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
Charles Darwin
Image
Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin