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

More quotes by 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
Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete.
Charles Darwin
Image
You ask about my opinion on vivisection. I quite agree that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.
Charles Darwin
Image
There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.
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
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
Charles Darwin
Image
It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.
Charles Darwin
Image
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
Image
So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers. etc., are certainly transmitted.
Charles Darwin
Image
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
Charles Darwin
Image
I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.
Charles Darwin
Image
Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us - of their imagined approbation or disapprobation.
Charles Darwin
Image
Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life
Charles Darwin
Image
Progress has been much more general than retrogression
Charles Darwin
Image
We are optimists, until we are not.
Charles Darwin
Image
Man is developed from an ovule, about 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals.
Charles Darwin
Image
I fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animal, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important....It is the most noble of all the attributes of man.
Charles Darwin
Image
Even the humblest mammal's strong sexual, parental, and social instincts give rise to 'do unto others as yourself' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself'.
Charles Darwin
Image
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.
Charles Darwin
Image
If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.
Charles Darwin