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Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull & undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite! Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.

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
Animal
Tails
Hermaphrodites
Water
Ancestor
Genealogy
Science
Swimming
Bladder
Great
Imperfect
Breathed
Swim
Skull
Pleasant
Undoubtedly
Evolution
Skulls
Mankind
Tail
Hermaphrodite

More quotes by Charles Darwin

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There is no fundamental difference between humans and the higher mammalsin their mental faculties
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It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved that the subject was in the air, or that men's minds were prepared for it. I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.
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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.
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The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven't changed much.
Charles Darwin
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It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.
Charles Darwin
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What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern?
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At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.
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There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.
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...for the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.
Charles Darwin
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As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
Charles Darwin
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In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.
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I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.
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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
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And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.
Charles Darwin
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But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
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Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.
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The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
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I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects.
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We are optimists, until we are not.
Charles Darwin